After we produced several episodes of Língua da Gente we were contacted by representatives of the US Embassy in Brasilia. It turns out that many who are assigned to work in that office had used Língua da Gente to study Portuguese. One of the offices at the US Embassy is the Regional English Language Office, where they coordinate the US-sponsored teaching of English in Brazil. This was the beginning of the proverbial beautiful relationship. With support from the US Embassy and the Regional English Language Office, Língua da Gente: Slice of Life is a new series of episodes designed to teach English for speakers of Portuguese. We follow the same format as the original Língua da Gente, but our starting point is simply to create dialogs in English, that we then explain for our Portuguese speaking audience. The production of the Slice of Life episodes continues to be produced at the University of Texas at Austin, with support from the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, the College of Liberal Arts, and COERLL, (The Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning). Língua da Gente: Slice of Life falls under the umbrella of BrazilPod, where we find all of the other UT-sponsored materials related to the learning of Portuguese.

Library

The homepage will always show our most recent lessons, but the library is where users can find all of the lessons that are part of Língua da Gente: Slice of Life. We sort the lessons in the library by level (Beginning, Elementary, Intermediate, and now “Slice of Life”). In the library we can also sort the lessons by general topics.

Podcasts

All of the audio lessons and dialogs are available from our online site and homepage. For everyone’s convenience, the lessons are also available by subscription via iTunes. Search for ‘Língua da gente’ and subscribe to the podcast lessons. Our Slice of Life lesson are part of the full Língua da Gente collection

Grant

We thank the US Embassy and the Regional English Language Office for financial support in the creation of the Língua da Gente: Slice of Life series.

Credits

Our Língua da Gente: Slice of Life team is led by lesson host Prof. Orlando R. Kelm, who writes all of the lessons and dialogs. He is joined by co-hosts Vivian Flanzer (Rio de Janeiro) and Andreana Marchi (Santa Catarina) who also contribute in all aspects writing, recording and hosting each episode.

Our Língua da Gente: Slice of Life community is supported by superb technical assistance, which is begins foremost by the Center for Open Education Resources and Language Learning (COERLL). COERLL is lead by its director Carl Blyth, with specific support provided by its project manager Sarah Sweeney and web developer Nathalie Steinfeld. Within the college of Liberal Arts, Língua da Gente enjoys technical support from the Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services (LAITS). Chief among its contribution is the expert audio recording and digitization from Michael Heidenreich, Jacob Weiss, Jared Marxuach, Lydia Fortuna and Jessica Gutierrez. Our collaboration with the US Embassy begins with Jennifer Uhler in the Public Affairs Section of the Regional English Language Office. She is supported by her team Helmara Morães, Luciana Santos, and Nathalia Lucena.