SPEAK UP CLUB: AN EXPERIENCE WITH ACTIVE LEARNING METHODOLOGIES IN PORTUGUESE AND ENGLISH TEACHING

Abstract

This practice report presents the interdisciplinary project Speak Up Club: How the Interest in Exchange Programs Reframes Learning in Portuguese, developed with 9th-grade students in a public state school. The initiative emerged from students’ growing interest in English, stimulated by government-promoted exchange programs. This enthusiasm fostered a spontaneous demand for conversation classes, even among those with low performance in Portuguese, leading to the creation of an extracurricular conversation club held during lunch breaks.

At the same time, statistical performance reports, particularly the 2025 diagnostic assessment, revealed significant difficulties in Portuguese Language descriptors, such as D102_P — recognizing the effect of meaning derived from orthographic and morphosyntactic resources — which reached only 19% accuracy. Other gaps involved narrative structure, enunciation markers, and text comparison, highlighting the need for integrated strategies to address learning gaps.

Within this framework, the project combined English oral practice and vocabulary expansion with reflections in the mother tongue. Bilingual cards, designed using remediation materials available on the SEGES platform, were strategically employed to link English activities with the development of Portuguese reading and interpretive competencies.

The report demonstrates how students’ genuine interest in English was channeled into overcoming weaknesses in Portuguese, fostering a contextualized, motivating, and inclusive approach. Grounded in active learning methodologies, the initiative illustrates the potential of interdisciplinary practices to strengthen engagement, improve language skills, and promote meaningful learning.