Jimmy Mello: Language Teaching
Jimmy Mello comes on the show to talk about teaching languages for more than 20 years and how his own personal method: The Mello Method came to be.
April 17, 2015 · 49 min
Season 2, episode 5, Jimmy Melo, language teaching. This is the actual fluency podcast, helping you become a better language learner by providing motivating weekly inspiration, as well as top tips and tricks from expert guests. And now, your host, Chris Broholm. All right, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the actual fluency podcast. Today, I'm really delighted to welcome Mr. Jimmy Melo onto the show. Jimmy is from Brazil, and he's been teaching languages for over 20 years, and he's also the founder of the Melo Method, which we're going to hear about today. So, Jimmy, how are you doing today?
I'm doing great. How about you, Kris?
Oh, I'm fantastic. Fantastic. I love Thursdays, you know. Okay. Favorite day of the week. So, Jimmy, take us back, you know, you've obviously been learning languages for a long time, and how did you get started? How did you get interested in languages back then?
Wow, this is a tricky question. I'm not sure, really. I since I was a child, I got uh, involved with languages. Uh, my family, uh, part of them came from uh, Spain, from Barcelona. Uh, even though I didn't use this language at home, I generally, um, listened to this language, and my aunt, she's married to an Italian guy, and so, uh, from time to time, when we met each other, I heard that that language, and so, I really got, see.
Uh, for me, as a child, I said, uh, I couldn't see differences between Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and after, I became very interested, uh, in learning languages, in learning this kind of, uh, for me, it was a kind of, uh, um, uh, not a symbol, but a kind of code that I would like to to get into it. I would like to to just to try to get contact with the husband of my aunt, uh, to my family, to to know more about that.
And so, uh, I would say that I I fell in love with languages since I was 11 years old. Uh, or, I don't know, exactly, but since I was a child, I cannot say that it's before or after languages. For me, language is a part of my life. Uh, as a hobby, as everything I do is related to languages.
Right. And so you because you had sort of a in your family, you had a lot of connections, or a lot of different languages around you, do you think that sort of sparked your interest in other languages?
Yeah, maybe it started. Yes, it started. Yes. Uh, nowadays, my aunt, she lives in Italy, but I do not have contact with this anymore. But after, this, uh, caught my attention to start learning that. And then, uh, uh, it was a long time ago. We had no internet. And so, I had to discover ways to learn foreign languages. And I have a very good library here in my city. And so, weekly, I went there to take a book and try to learn by myself. And just after, I started to learn languages in a formal way, because I think 20 years ago or more, uh, it was not so easy as it is today. And so, language learning is uh, is my passion.
That's wonderful. Uh and I'm sure a lot of the listeners are uh agreeing with you on on that. And, um, it's interesting to hear what you say about back then, when how it was more difficult, and I'd like to just emphasize that, because I think a lot of people are new to the language learning. Yes. Okay, yeah. They just think, oh well, the internet, you know, it's so easy. But you know, the internet is quite new. So,
Yes. Yes. Yes. When I was 11, 15 years old, uh, I had no access to audios, for example. There's no audios here. I live in, yes, my country is not very small, but it's the third, uh, capital of Brazil. But even that, it's very difficult. It was very difficult to find out material. And so, uh, I had to take materials from libraries, because, uh, the bookshops, it was impossible to find foreign languages.
And the only way I had to listen to authentic material was, uh, with a radio, what we called, I don't know, I'm not sure how to say this in English, but in radio we have AM and FM. M, but in in shortwave. Right. Something like that. It was very bad. Uh, yeah, not sure the name of that, because we we could take bad quality program from Germany, from Italy, but it was very, very bad. Bad quality. Only resource I had in that time to listen to audios.
And it was very difficult. And if I if I could find some things, it was that the old long plays or cassette. And, uh, it was very, very expensive. Right. And so, uh, I came from a poor family. And so, I had to save any % that I gain, try to buy something. It was, uh, time. We had no, we couldn't that. It was very difficult. 20 years ago. Right. Or more than 20. Yes, more than 20 years.
Yeah, it's uh, it's interesting, and I think a lot of people who who try to learn languages today, they don't realize how how much easier it's actually gotten. But how how you transition from a student into a teacher? Because I find it interesting when people sort of take that step. Because in my world, they're quite different. Okay. Are we recording? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay.
So, uh, I decided to, um, to become a teacher. Uh, this was for me, I thought that I suffered, and I think many people have have been suffering to find a good teacher. And so, uh, even on iTalki, there are a lot of, uh, teachers, but, uh, I don't know if this has, uh, already happened to you, but when you start the first lesson, they look at you and say, and so, what do you want to learn? Mm-hm. And you say, oh my God, I suppose that you are the teacher. You have to know what you have to teach me, not ask me this kind of questions.
And so, uh, after, when I, uh, decided to learn a language by myself, I besides besides loving languages, I, uh, have always, uh, been trying to find a perfect way, or a better way to teach a language, that is, to learn a language by myself, and then transfer that to the real world. Because, uh, every teacher that I found in my life, not every, but most of them, in the schools, they could not, uh, teach me languages. They, uh, they just taught me grammar.
Uh, uh, in schools, people, um, uh, the way people teach at schools do not work, mhm? Because they treat a language as a dead body, mhm? Uh, but for me, a language is a being, it's like a human being, that is, it was born, it grows, then it gets older and dies. And so, we have to to to look at the the language as something like that. But in schools, they insist in treating a language as a body, that is there, and you have to open the body and study what it is inside of it. That is, they only teach grammar. Grammar, grammar, and grammar.
And so, I I decided to say, wow, I have to do something about that. I cannot teach grammar. I love grammar. For me. But I know that people really do not understand grammar. They pretend that, okay, I know what's that. But in fact, they do not know what's that. If I try to teach you the subjunctive in English, in Spanish, oh sorry, in English, you don't have that, but in Portuguese, in Spanish, in French, you are going to pretend that you are understanding, but you aren't.
Uh, and so, uh, I had to find a way to teach, uh, to overcome that barrier and to help people. And so, for me, this came as a way, obviously, to earn money and to help people to overcome this barrier. In Brazil, it's very common to say, uh, uh, hello, do you speak English? No, I don't speak English, but I study English. This is terrible because they pass their entire life just studying English, and when they travel, uh, even in the immigration, they cannot speak anything. Maybe, uh, the officer, uh, if they are lucky, can change to Spanish, that Brazilians people can understand a little bit more. But I would like to change that.
And so, I decided to, uh, teach a language using a different approach. And this was not easy. I made a big research. I have I have been to university. I have two degrees, one in linguistic, and the other one in the science, in the educational science, or pedagogy. And, uh, I really want to know more about how we learn a language.
And, uh, it it's a at the beginning, obviously, when I started teaching a language, I used the same old-fashioned approach. Because I didn't know anything else, but the result was that the student did not learn anything. And so, after trying, reading, researching, I could, uh, create and use what I found in the market. And so, I decided to create my own method. And now, obviously, the method was born in 1995. Uh, this year, we are celebrating our 25th anniversary.
Congratulations.
Yeah, thank you. And, um, after that, obviously, the method has changed a lot, but the basis is the same. That is, I believe that we only learn a language through conversation. Uh, and so, what I think that's very important, uh, that this called my attention, that, uh, talking about your your your question. Uh, polyglots are not necessarily good teachers. They are good learners.
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
And sometimes, a person say thinks that, okay, I can speak 12 languages. Maybe I can teach a language. No, you can't. Because you can learn a language by yourself, and you cannot reproduce what you do to teach a person. I remember the time when I met Benny here in my city, uh, he was learning Arabic, and he passed, I think, I don't know, 12 hours studying Arabic in his flat. And, uh, uh, the question is, does it work? Yes, it works.
But we cannot transfer, uh, what Benny does, uh, in that three months studying 10 hours a day to a common person. And so, this, uh, sometimes, people get frustrated for that. Wow, that guy can learn a language in three months, but I can't. And I have sometimes to tell them the background. Yes, he can, because he's a very dedicated person. Right. He puts 10 hours during three months learning a language. Right. If you want to do this, you can. And the person says, wow, I have my life. I say, I know that.
For this reason, I decided to not to look, uh, uh, at my student as being a polyglot, as being, uh, talented person. But I look at my student as being a common person, that works eight hours a day, and can just attend a lesson twice a week for 50 minutes. Right. And so, I had to create something and not expect that that student will speak fluently in three months. Not because