'Macarronic English'

Last week, I had quite a laugh when I saw this commercial.

If you don’t remember Joel Santana, he was South Africa’s coach during the last world cup. It was then that he became famous for two things: the amazing results he managed to achieve with his team, and his spectacular comments in a language that had some similarities with English. Check one of his interviews below.

I couldn’t help myself and posted the commercial on my Fan Page. But let me say something about this phenomenon I like calling “Macarronic English”, something that is a mix of English, the speaker’s first language and whatever comes to one’s mind at the moment of speaking.

I usually tell my students, especially those at the beginning stages, that it is preferable to speak something that sounds like English, than speaking Portuguese (my students’ first language) in class. The more outgoing ones really go for it, producing very interesting language, whereas others need to be sure that what they’re going to say is absolutely correct before they open their mouths.

The discussion between accuracy x fluency in the classroom is not a new one. And trying to come to a verdict of which is more important is a rather difficult, if not impossible matter, given all the circumstances, contexts and perspectives that must be taken into account.

However, I dare say that, generally speaking, I prefer to see my students attempting, taking risks and pushing themselves to produce language, than to have 100% correct but limited language production in class. I have one simple reason for that, which is that the main objective of any language is to enable its users to communicate. It doesn’t mean that I don’t mind whether my students speak correctly or not, far from it! What I’m saying is let’s try to get the message across first, and then we’ll worry about how it comes out. Simple as that!

For this reason, I’d say hats off to Mr. Joel Santana for communicating (or trying to). “See you guys mais tarde”!