This week we were lucky enough to be invited to talk with the Saturday morning English classes at the Distrito Industrial campus. The courses are part of a program called IFAM Idiomas, the project provides English classes at a very low cost to IFAM students and members of the community. The program is designed to accomodate basic to intermediate levels of English. Some objectives of IFAM Idiomas include: equipping students with communication skills, written skills, an enhanced vocabulary, as well as the development of cross-cultural experiences.
One Professor mentioned that many of his students travel long distances to get to classes because English is becoming an in demand skill for the workforce. Manaus is experiencing some major growth in it's eco-tourism industry, and the upcoming games of the 2014 World Cup will be hosted here. Manauara cab drivers and hotel staff are beginning to make more of an effort to learn some basic English. I have been surprised at the lack of English in Brazil especially regarding hotels and tourist areas.
We visited several classes at different levels of English, the classes were composed of a range of ages. We were interviewed by the students who had some pretty hard hitting questions, such as "Do you live to love or love to live?" and "Are you satisfied with your personality?". We had so much fun meeting everyone and participating in the classes, hopefully we can visit again!
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