When it comes to strategies to encourage students to learn English better and faster, an important element that is usually left behind is that students don´t learn English just during the class time, but there are many other factors that influence the way, and how nicely our students will learn, one of these aspects is that the students must be in touch with the language not only in classroom, but they need to have English as part of their routines to both have reasons to want to study, and to feel how real the importance of English is their lives.
Althought Brazil is a country where English is neither the first or the second language, it´s a fact that thanks to globalization, nowadays English is present in everyone´s lifes and its important to find ways to identify how the students relationship with English is stabilished.
Series, movies franchises, youtube chanels, fandoms, and others are really nice spaces where people can find a reason, and a context where they are able to learn, using these cultural elements, people can continually have contact meanwhile they learn culture, get used to specific accent and variations, gestures, places, and other elements that bring English closer to our students.
In series for example, we can see a great variety of cultural backgrounds been developed, so non native speakers can realize how people use the language in all kind of situations having contact to a not very formal English, and language much more conected to life, than the English present in school books.
A manner to help students to discover the better way for them to deeper their English skills is to research their tastes and offer opportunities for them to be in touch with things they already like, but in an English spoken context. It´s necessary to take into consideration that each student has different routines and cultural backgrounds, so asking is a good way to start choosing what to recommend or not, and this can be done orally, or even throught online forms, conversational games, board games with likes and dislikes, and everything else imagination allows the teacher to create in order to know students better and offer a more pleseant and effective learning experience.
