É preciso conhecer português para se aprender inglês?

[Redseahorse]

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Eu acredito verdadeiramente que SIM, é imprescindível! E vocês, o que pensam?

Meu entendimento acerca deste assunto, é o seguinte:

Este é um tópico que é raramente debatido nos ambientes de ensino e aprendizagem de línguas, e sempre que alguém se apresenta com sua opinião sobre, isso aduz alguma estranheza ou impugnações.
“Quer aprender bem inglês, estude português.”
Há muito tempo, tenho observado alguns padrões de aprendizagem, com o intuito de identificar fatores facilitadores e dificultadores da aprendizagem de uma segunda língua, e uma das teses que eu tenho defendido, é a da importância de se ter um bom nível de conhecimento da língua portuguesa para se aprender bem a inglesa.
O assunto é apontado de modo particular para os estudantes, professores e entusiastas brasileiros, mas não apenas, isto acomoda qualquer estudante da língua inglesa, independente da língua materna.
Tenho dito: “O seu nível de proficiência na própria língua (materna), é um elemento -muitas vezes negligenciado, que na sua jornada de aprendizado poderá ser um dos mais importantes e determinantes para seu desenvolvimento na língua inglesa ao nível aproximado ao de um bom falante nativo”. Por conseguinte, extrai-se deste entendimento que estudantes mais letrados, ou seja, com melhor proficiência e com a fala e escrita na língua portuguesa mais fluída, se desenvolvem mais e melhor na língua inglesa, o oposto, por norma, é também constatado.
Saber bem a língua portuguesa, por si só, já representaria uma erudição típica de indivíduos que previamente já demonstravam certa aptidão, ou no mínimo um interesse mais aguçado pela linguagem. Para esses indivíduos, penso, transpassar as barreiras linguísticas e se desenvolver na língua inglesa tem demonstrado ser mais profícua e melhor qualitativa e quantitativamente.
Bilinguismo competente:
Compreender mais a língua portuguesa, melhora exponencialmente a comunicação geral na língua inglesa, seja através da linguagem escrita ou da falada. Um vocabulário robusto e bons entendimentos das classes gramaticais na língua portuguesa, refletirá em um raciocínio mais lógico, na construção melhor das frases, na escolha das palavras e na transmissão de ideias com mais clareza para seu interlocutor na língua inglesa. A interpretação de textos e o pensamento crítico em inglês ficam mais acurados.
Maleabilidade ambiental:
As línguas são mutáveis e dinâmicas, elas estão sempre se transformando, evoluindo. Os indivíduos que permanecem na vanguarda dessas transformações, estão sempre lendo e aprendendo português e inglês; portanto, fazem melhor uso do conhecimento em ambas as línguas nas mais variadas situações.
Bons sabedores da língua portuguesa fazem associações, traduções, versões e adaptações mais efetivas e com muito mais desembaraço. Eles são maleáveis, permutam com leveza e mais fluência entre a linguagem culta e a coloquial, sabem usufruir desse conhecimento moldando-o conforme as pessoas e os ambientes.
São pessoas capazes de usar a norma culta em ambientes sociais, acadêmicos e profissionais. Se comunicam com mais liberdade e interagem bem quando o ambiente ou o interlocutor requer mais informalidade, como nas conversas entre amigos e nas comunicações virtuais nas redes sociais. Essa flexibilidade é típica daqueles falantes que conhecem profundamente as duas línguas.
Campo profissional:
Excelente nível cultural e boa proficiência da língua portuguesa, tanto quanto da inglesa, são essenciais para uma comunicação convincente e para uma boa liderança.
Domar a própria língua materna, no fim do dia, também propiciará ao aprendiz da língua inglesa, uma comunicação superior no ambiente profissional ou fora dele, durante reuniões, ligações telefônicas e na comunicação via e-mails.

ENG VERSION

Is it necessary to know Portuguese to learn English?

I truly believe that yes, it is essential! What are your thoughts?

My understanding of this matter is as follows:

This is a topic that is rarely discussed in language teaching and learning environments, and whenever someone takes the floor to give his or her thoughts on this, it adds some strangeness or objections:
"If you want to learn English well, study Portuguese."
For a long time, I have observed some learning patterns with the aim of identifying factors that facilitate and hinder the learning of a second language, and one of the theses that I have defended is the importance of having a good level of knowledge of the Portuguese language to learn English well. The subject is aimed particularly at Brazilian students, teachers, and enthusiasts, but not only. It accommodates any student of the English language, regardless of their mother tongue.
I have said: "Your level of proficiency in your own language (mother) is an element (often neglected) which in your learning journey can be one of the most important and decisive for your development in English at a level close to that of a good native speaker." And therefore, from that comprehension, it is extracted that more literate students, that is, with better proficiency and with more fluid speech and writing in Portuguese, develop more and better in English, while the opposite, as a rule, is also asserted.
Knowing the Portuguese language well, by itself, would already represent a typical erudition of individuals who have previously demonstrated a certain aptitude, or at least a keener interest in the language. For these individuals, I reckon, overcoming language barriers and developing in the English language has proved to be more prolific and better qualitatively and quantitatively.
Competent bilingualism
Understanding the Portuguese language exponentially improves general communication in English, whether through written or spoken language. A strong vocabulary and an understanding of the word classes (parts of speech) in Portuguese will result in more logical reasoning, better sentence construction, word choice, and clearer communication with your interlocutor in the English language. Text interpretation and critical thinking in English will become more accurate.
Environmental malleability
Languages are changeable and dynamic. They are always changing and evolving. Individuals who remain at the forefront of these transformations are always reading and learning Portuguese and English; therefore, they make better use of knowledge in both languages in the most varied situations.
Good speakers of the Portuguese language make associations, translations, and easier and more effective adaptations. They are malleable and they exchange with lightness and more fluency between formal and colloquial languages. They know how to take advantage of this knowledge by molding it according to people and circumstances.
They are people capable of using the formal norm in social, academic, and professional environments. They communicate more freely and interact well when the environment or the interlocutor requires more informality, as in conversations between friends during virtual communications on social media. This flexibility is typical of those speakers who know both languages in depth.
Professional field.
An excellent cultural level and fluency in both Portuguese and English are required for effective communication and leadership. At the end of the day, mastering your mother tongue will also provide the English-language learner with superior communication skills in the professional environment or outside of it, during meetings, phone calls, and communication via e-mail.

[Correa Silva]

Olá,

Outro dia eu li um livro bem interessante:

On Being a Language Teacher
López-Burton, Norma, Denise Minor
Yale University Press
2014

Veja o que diz o capítulo 5.

Chapter 5
History of Second Language Acquisition
DENISE MINOR

(...)
Noam Chomsky completed his PhD in linguistics in 1955 and then moved to Harvard for post-doctoral work. It was there in 1957 that he published a slim volume, Syntactic Structures, that would come to be considered a turning point for modern linguistics. What the young Chomsky began to see that the white-haired scholars around him failed to recognize was the incredible similarity among all human languages. Until that point, these similarities had mainly been attributed to the fact that all languages were members of “families” and had evolved from a common ancestor of those families. It makes perfect sense that, for instance, in both French and Italian indirect and direct object pronouns are usually placed before verbs because that is the way it was done in Latin. Some linguists believed that there was, in fact, one common ancestor for ALL human languages, and this would certainly explain the similarities among them.

But Chomsky proposed a new way to look at these similarities. He proposed that all languages are outward expressions of an innate system that all humans share, regardless of ethnicity or culture. Languages don’t all contain verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs because a group of people eons ago invented those concepts and the words to refl ect them, and then passed them down. Languages contain these concepts because they are built into our brains. Chomsky called this idea the Innateness Hypothesis, and later linguists further developed this hypothesis into what is known as Universal Grammar (UG). According to these linguists, we are born with a pattern of grammar in our heads just as we are born with a heart and lungs.
(...)

* Os grifos são meus.

Já no capíulo 6, destaco um dos itens do sistema proposto The Five C’s (Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities), que é "Comparisons":

Chapter 6
Standards of Foreign Language Teaching - The Five C’s
DENISE MINOR

(...)

Comparisons

When teachers encourage their students to compare and contrast languages and cultures, they are using the Comparisons standard. Obviously, this standard overlaps with the Cultures standard. But it also goes beyond that standard by expecting students to recognize patterns, make predictions, and analyze similarities and diff erences, thereby placing them in a situation in which they must use more complex language forms, particularly in their writing. When this standard is employed eff ectively, a teacher creates situations in which students must use a variety of verb tenses, particularly in the more advanced classes. Also through this standard, students learn to analyze grammatical structures and begin to see how some languages express concepts such as time very diff erently. For instance, some languages employ the present tense to express something happening in this moment. English, in contrast, uses the present tense mainly to describe habits and uses the present progressive to describe something happening NOW. (“I walk to class with my roommate” vs. “I’m walking to class with my roommate.”) The Comparison standard embodies SLA research in that it includes the importance of cultures and requires students to focus on and analyze grammatical forms in both English and the target language.

(...)

Redseahorse,

Caso tenha dificuldades em comprar esse livro, me mande uma mensagem que eu consigo uma cópia eletrônica para ti.

Espero ter ajudado.

[PPAULO]

I think knowing Portuguese well comes in handy when learning another language (say, English for instance).
But this statement per se (in itself) should be taken with a grain of salt. It's obvious that the more educated in our own language could have an advantage, and be successful at learning other things as well (piloting/driving/engineering, etc).
That could happen because we are capable of getting what others communicate (teach us) and give equally good feedback.
But here comes the caveats! We may get stuck in a pattern (for instance, not heeding words with a doube-letter pattern in English because we know them in Portuguese with no such pattern. The same goes for pronunciation issues.
Knowing the structures would is the first step to learning another language, knowing them well makes us more capable of making comparisons, associations, and even counter-intuitive findings in the L2.

Curiously, knowing Portuguese doesn't make sure we will learn Spanish easily (some similarities will help us, others will hinder our progress sometimes). The reverse might be more likely (knowing Spanish will speed up the learning of Portuguese).
Knowing Portuguese well would be highly useful in the sense of being an extra tool to dig deeper into the subtleties (nuances) of both languages and how they interconnect. As a plus, it adds diversity in our choice of words to express something, sometimes in more accurate ways.
It's my opinion here, of course.

[Redseahorse]

Sr. Correa,

Enviei MP, obrigado!

[Redseahorse]

PPaulo,

Hugely appreciated, sir!

[PPAULO]

Thanks for sharing that with us, RedSeahorse. It's worth many learners not to 'forget' their mother tongue, sometimes we get so engrossed into learning that we try to invent a new language, a mix of English and Portuguese, with a grammar of its own.