Today’s post fills me with excitement because it combines a few things that I love: teaching English outside the box, utilizing Instagram for learning, and Inglês Feito à Mão’s creativity! If you’ve been following me for a while then you know how much I love to utilize Instagram to teach, especially in outside the box (or non-traditional ways). If you are just joining me on this English journey, then welcome! I am happy to have you here. Don’t forget to pop over to my Instagram and join the party… @ jenesl760
In this new blog series, “Learning Outside the Box with Instagram,” I’ll be sharing some of my favorite Instagram accounts that are bringing you exciting new ways to learn and improve your English skills. These accounts have caught my eye (got my attention) because they are doing something different, doing something unique, and definitely doing something outside the box. Each user I’ll be featuring on this series will bring something fresh that you might not have seen before, and my first feature, Inglês Feito à Mão definitely does that! Not only do their posts teach you important vocabulary and grammar concepts, they engage their followers with an interactive way to learn, and do so in a beautiful way. Today you’ll be reading an interview with Jonas Dias Ferreira e Lígia Amélia, the hands behind Inglês Feito à Mão.
So let’s get this started. First, in honor of our guests…
What is Inglês Feito à Mão?
‘Inglês Feito à Mão’ (which means ‘Handmade English’) is the way we found to share content in English to Brazilians in a very accessible way. There are many fantastic Instagram accounts and YouTube channels teaching English out there. But we always felt that we had the tools to create something different, something that would reflect the way we teach in real life. The three main things that we wanted to do: 1 – We focus on showing, not explaining. We never explain how language should be used, we merely give examples of it being used and expect that learners can produce their own content. 2 – Although we have plans to appear in some videos (maybe not on Instagram, but on Youtube), we feel that the most important thing to be on the screen is the content that is being given. 3 – We don’t want to focus on the mistakes students make. We like to think of them as attempts at communicating in a different languague. So we don’t want to say things like “Brazilians always say this or that wrong”, we want to provide students with examples of language being used in an appropriate way and see where they can go from there.
What is the best way for learners to improve their English with your page?
Our goal with our videos so far has been to teach using examples. So the idea is that the learner can read and listen to the examples and then try to create their own phrases using the videos as reference. This is the most important part. We always encourage our followers to create their own sentences, always reminding them that there’s no right or wrong, and each attempt is an important part of the process of learning. And, of course, we are always looking at the comments, so we can always provide some extra help to those who post their own sentences. And, as our videos are really short, they can be watched several times until you get the hang of it. Finally, we always provide some explanation and more examples in the description of each video, so they can take a look at it as well.
What is your biggest tip for utilizing Instagram to learn and improve English?
As we said before, there are many pages teaching English on Instagram, and most of them are really good ones. Follow as many as you can. And be active. Comment, ask questions and try out the things that you have learned. We are always on our page helping with any questions people may have and we believe the other teachers do the same. And be curious: if you see a teacher talking about a song, or about a TV series, go listen to that song, or go check that series out. If somebody is talking about a word or a grammar rule you didn’t know before, go find more information about it.
What was the inspiration to start something on Instagram, and can we find you anywhere else online?
We saw that Instagram was getting bigger and bigger and that the a lot of interesting interaction was going on there. We thought that it could be our first step, because the idea of sharing meaningful content in only 15 seconds felt challenging to us. Also, we like that a 15-second video is not a huge commitment. You can just watch it, post a short sentence and carry on with your day. Right now our focus is really on Instagram, but you can also find us on Youtube and Snapchat (just search ”inglesfeitoamao”). We also have a page on Facebook, where we concentrate all our content, which is called “Jonas Dias e Lígia Bonfanti – Aulas de Inglês e Tradução”
https://www.facebook.com/jonaseligia/
Can you tell the readers a little more about you?
We are in our early 30s and we live in São Paulo, Brazil. We both have been teaching English for over ten years. So with the experience we have a pretty good idea of what people need. and having learned English as a second language we understand the journey. We work mainly with private students, and we also teach via Skype. We are boyfriend and girlfriend and we live together. We met four years ago and we did not meet teaching, as most teachers couples do, lol. We met in a ballroom dance class.
Don’t forget to visit Inglês Feito à Mão over on Instagram @inglesfeitoamao and follow them to continue getting updates and more ways to learn and improve your English skills!
A big THANK YOU to Jonas and Lígia for sharing this information with us. We all wish you the best and…
Happy Studying ♥
If you like what you read today, please take a moment to share this article with someone you know learning English, using Instagram, or would like to start improving their language skills. Thank you!
Click here if you want to improve your English! Receive a free ebook to improve your fluency
