Before starting a course take an International Certification of foreign languages

Is it important to have an international certification? 

Everything will depend on what you want to do with the language. There are several international certificates for virtually all the languages in he world, the most famous are:

For English:

TOEFL, TOEIC, Exams of Cambridge and of Michigan.

For Spanish:

DELE, CELU

For French:

DELF, DALF, TFL

For Italian:

CELI

For Russian:

ТРКИ

And so on...

As it can be seen, there are a large variety of certificates, and the most interesting is that I could continue the list and you will be surprised on how many certificate for each of the main languages still exist.

So, should you really take this one of them?

This is one of the main questions I heard from my students, as we are an authorised TOEIC, TOEFL and TFL centre in my Country, and my answer is: Yes, absolutely!!!

Specially,  if you:

-want to prove to some else your ability,

-want go get a career in languages, or at least in the language,

-want to get a job where a certain level of fluency is required,

-want to improve your confidence in yourself and in your language skills, because some people tend to believe that they do not know the language, and by doing such tests is like having a real "photograph" of your level,

When should I take this exam?

If you can afford it, take it at the very begging stage, so that you can check after some months of you have learnt something, or if it was just what we call "monkey score", that is a note that e everyone that has your mother tongue will get by doing this exam. To get clear, if a Brazilian person takes the Spanish test, specially in the reading and in the in the listening part, it is almost sure that he/she will get a some reasonable answers, and the same is true with the pairs French/Italian, Dutch/German, Swedish/Danish/Norwegian, Spanish/Catalan, and even depending on how smart you are Russian/Polish, and Italian/Romania.

Even despite of the language pair, in multiple choices questions exams everyone runs this risk of "guessing" instead of knowing, for this reason it would be perfect if you could take one of those tests when you first start doing a language course, if you cannot afford it, try a mock test in the Internet for free, and keep the score in save place, so that you can compare results in the near future.

When I present this idea to people, they react saying that they will not understand anything, and I reply that this is the goal, check, prove and record in a real form this truth, and later on check again of you got any piece of real knowledge, this is useful for several reasons:

-you can be focused on what is really important, in international standards, not only in your teacher or book's opinion.

-you can be motivated to overcome yourself, it is a kind of self challenging.

-you can control closely if your studies are reaching their real goal, or just losing your time,

-you can have a statistical improvement, not only idea,

-you can answer accurately when asked about your level,

I could continue this listing, but I think you got what I mean.

CELI - Italian Language

DELF - French Language

DELE - Spanish Language

TOEIC - English Language

And so?

Well, not matter what language you are studying now, check in google for mock tests of it, and evaluate how good you are, and then check it again after 3 or 4 months, you will be surprised with your results.

Keep in touch!

Jimmy Mello

Brazilian polyglot

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Polyglots are language specialists!!!

Future of the learning 

When I look back I realise how difficult was the learning process, I dare say that I am a veteran in this area, when nobody else was in YouTube showing his talents I already helped people to learn languages. In the time I started learning languages, and specially in my country, people had a great difficulty to get material, specially audios, and the handbooks were of a very poor quality. To Find a person who was able to teach a language was an adventure, and if we manage to get one this could be a very expensive investment, in my country people tented to prefer native speakers to teach language despite of the fact that they were not teachers, that is, they could not teach no one. So, time after time, it was established a culture of expensiveness and lack of quality, and the sad part id that this Era has not finished yet,  Brazil is the biggest market for learning languages in the world, it is common to find in just one street three or even four language schools. Is this good? Is this bad? Like always there is not just one answer for this question, Internet fortunately has increased a lot and the quality of courses and virtual lessons over Skype has become a reality in many countries, therefore this has forced the some schools get updated.

Is there any future for language schools?

Nowadays we can have lessons with native-teacher over Skype, we can get a friend from all over the world and practice with them the language we are learning, and all free of charge. Why should you get enrolled in a language school? Why should you lose your precious time in commuting to the school? Why should you be in the hands of schools directors that just want your money? The answer is that nothing is more important than the human contact, schools will always exist, the difference is that nowadays we have more choices, and with a competitive market the quality of the schools tends to improve. So, in my opinion as a linguist and pedagogue, schools will keep a part of our lives, but more alternatives will be added.

Internet reality

Nowadays we are bombarded with publicity from all the sides, there are polyglots being born in many YouTube channels, some are really gifted, but others not so good, but the fact is that the community has been increased a lot since I began in this area. And together  with the polyglots we see a new market, everyone is trying to be polyglot, and every time I go to a library I see "magic pills" for learning languages, the editors of nowadays took the role of the old greedy language schools directors, what they really want is to sell, and sell, and sell more. People now can learn easily, and it is even easier to find material to buy or even download, but the quality is not always good,  if you take some minutes to see the reviews of material in YouTube, you will be surprised to notice that all of them review the same ones, so why do we have a so huge market if the polyglots are using just the small group of three or four publishers, like "Assimil", "Colloquial" and "Teach yourself"? The answer Is: the general public has not knowledge about that, is like asking a mechanic about a the treatment for heart-attack, that is "non-sense" at all.

How to choose the best languages resources?

How to know the treatment for a heart attack? You might say, obviously by asking a medical doctor. So, how to choose the language resources? The answer is obvious again, the only way is by asking the polyglots, they can be considered the "owners" of the language. Do not believe, in linguists that claim to know everything about languages, I am a linguist, but I am qualified to tell you about languages not because of that, but because of the fact that I am polyglot as well. So, never a a book, or language kit, based on the advice of a seller in a bookshop, not even of a friend or a family member. Ask the advice of a person who really knows about that, and who really tested the methods.

How about the future of learning?

The future of language learning will be something hybrid, smart and successful people will be able go to language schools, but will use by themselves the other available resources. And the most important thing, there is no miracles, hard work will always be the most important part of this fabulous personal adventure.  

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Belo Horizonte, my city, in Christmas time

Chistmas Tree in Liberdade Square

Entrance of Liberdade Square- Praça da Liberdade

This is just a short post to show my city, Belo Horizonte, in Christmas time. Brazil is a huge country, but people when hear the name Brazil, the only thing that springs their minds are Rio de Janeiro, and beaches. I live in a beautiful city, and there are no beaches here. Belo Horizonte is the capital of Minas Gerais, in the Heart of Brazil, very close by Rio and São Paulo. The Portuguese spoken here in Belo Horizonte, together with Rio and São Paulo, is considered the standard Brazilian Portuguese. It is a city famous for the bars and its food is considered one of the best in the country, many famous writers and poets are from this Region, Gimarães Rosa and Carlos Drummond de   Andrade are some examples. I am very proud to be born here.

As it can be see in the photos, we are not as marvellous as Paris or London's decoration, but we are a very "young" city compared with those centenarian cities, only 115 years, we still have time to improve, but for sure it is very beautiful.

If you are wondering to come to Brazil, put Belo Horizonte in your list!!!!

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