This text has the aim to present the results of our practice as English teachers in Brazil and how we overcame their low self-esteem towards the English language.
  After many years as English teachers in Brazil we came to notice that some students showed a different attitude towards the English language. These students, teenagers, gave up learning this foreign language. They would not even try to understand a text. They showed either a passive or an aggressive position in the classroom, mentioning how much they did not like English.
  Questioning and observing these students, we concluded that these teenagers were scared. They did not want their colleagues to make fun of their lack of knowledge. They also had in mind that if they were not able to speak English properly, it was their opinion they would not be able to accomplish success in any of the other language skills: reading, writing and listening.
  We observed, as well, that teachers were more concerned with what to teach rather than how to teach. Most of them knew about the poor motivation their students had but they could not or did not know how to help. Teachers also tend not to talk about motivation problems. They, many times, feel it can be a personal problem so they do not want to share their negative experiences.
  We had the desire to study the students behavior, their understanding of failure towards the English language and the importance these students gave to oral skill. We also wanted to find a way for them to react and be able to overcome this attitude.
  Bibliography references:
  The main base to our study were Vygotsky's theories: how the culture and socialization play an extremely important part in the development of the students. Vygotsky's also made clear the important role teachers had in students' life and their development
  Based on these readings we studied through some papers about reading and reading difficulties in general (the students' mother language), and applied this knowledge to foreign language reading difficulties. According to Raylene Kos, young students with difficulties grow older with negative and indifferent attitude about learning.
"Remedial readers at the secondary level are often caught in a cycle of failure. They have frequently been involved in a heavy skills instruction program, and when "it" did not work, they were given more of the same. Thus, many disabled readers never saw reading as a language operation. They never saw reading as something they could do - it was something to be avoided." (Collins, 1999)
  Jeremy Harmer wrote that purpose and interest are the two main things to consider when teaching reading. A student that does not have a purpose or an interest when reading a text will not consider any methodology involved to learn how to read a foreign language.
  So, using the material we have been reading we came to develop a methodology to avoid low self-esteem problems and lack of interest from the students towards English.
  Methodology:
  This method was developed to be applied in, at least, four main steps. We used it with 140 students in High Scholl (ages 15 and 16), during the period of a school year
  As teachers we had to keep in mind our roll in this method.
"Success or lack of it plays a vital part in the motivational drive of a student. Both complete failure and complete success may be de-motivating. It will be the teacher's job to set goals and tasks at which most of his or her students can be successful - or rather tasks which he or she could realistically expect the students to be able to achieve. To give students very high challenge activities (high, because the level of difficulty for the students is extreme) where this is not appropriate may have a negative effect on motivation. It will also be the case that low challenge activities are equally de-motivating. If the students can achieve all the tasks with no difficulty at all they may lose the motivation that they have when faced with the right level of challenge."(Harmer, 1991, pg 7)
  The challenge then was choosing the material to be applied. Ammann and Mittelstead wrote about an experience where failure reading was avoided by using newspapers instead of regular text-books. Norma Collins infers that teachers must choose texts that are relevant to students. This will lead to the acquaintance of strategies that will result in comprehension.
  Texts must be appropriate not only to students interests but also to their social and economical status and their age. It is important to use, in the beginning, texts that come from their every day world: advertisements, weather reports, newspaper articles, readers letters, menus from restaurants. It seems also important not to bring in the classroom material they already know about, like wide spread advertisements or news, otherwise it can contaminate the results.
  To prepare the students for the text they are about to read proved to be really useful. Sometimes we would show pictures related to the text they were about to read and sometimes we would write down words related to the text and talk about the text's subject prior to reading it.
  Having all this in mind we began to practice our method.
  First we gave the students a text in Portuguese (their own language). They showed surprised because they could not understand why the English teacher was giving them a text in Portuguese. In this text, the students had to underline all words that are used in Portuguese and are imported from English.
  In a second class we challenged them with a contest: working in pairs, they should write a list of 70 words in Portuguese that are imported from English. We advised them that the words they underlined in the first text, could not be used this time. Their first reaction was negative. They could not remember using so many English words in Portuguese. Slowly, asking for the teacher's help, they were able to build their list of words, and showed surprise to notice there were a lot more than 70 words to write in their list.
  The third step was taken in a different class. We handed the students a text in German, with comprehension questions in Portuguese. After making sure they were not in the wrong class they did not even try to answer the questions, as they did not know any German. We explained to them there are important things to do before reading a text and answering questions about it. They should try to identify what type of text it was (newspaper article, brochure, advertisement), read the questions and then, try to find the questions in the text. Even though they were uncomfortable with this reading, so we showed them how to answer the first question. At the end of the activity, when they have answered all the questions about that text in German, we opened a discussion about how much you must know to understand the main idea of a text either in a foreign language or in one's own language.
  This was the breakthrough towards success. From that class on the students reaction about reading was absolutely different. We were able to use different reading techniques, as reading for specific information and reading for a purpose and we felt the students would not give up reading prior to trying.
  Conclusion:
  The study made allowed us to learn that only large involvement in teaching a foreign language can solve the problem of lack of motivation when reading is difficult.
  The knowledge of students' experiential background is important when choosing the material to be used in a class. When a text refers to things, situations, concepts the students do not know about it will be impossible for them to comprehend the material.
  It seems very important to slowly build the students self-esteem and confidence. It is imperative that students are showed how difficult it is to read and understand texts in their own language and then move on this experience to a foreign language. Once they know this they will not feel obligated to understand the meaning of each word in a foreign language, they will want to understand the general idea.
  As soon as the students feel comfortable enough reading a foreign language, it is the teacher's responsibility to continue building their confidence with the proper choice of activities and material.
  Bibliography:
1- AMMANN, Richard and MITTELSTEADT, Suzanne. Turning on Turned off Students. Journal of Reading, 30(8), 708-15. [EJ 350 581]
2- COLLINS, Norma Decker. Motivating Low Performing Adolescent Readers. Bloomington: ERIC Digest, 1999.
3- DANIELS, Harry (org.). Vygotsky em foco: Pressupostos e Desdobramentos. Campinas: Papirus, 1997.
4- HARMER, Jeremy. The Practice of English Language Teaching. London: Longman, 1991.
5- KOS, Raylene. Persistence of Reading Disabilities: The Voices of Four Middle School Students. American Educational Research Journal, 1991.
6- REGO, Teresa Cristina. Vygotsky: Uma Perspectiva Hist-rico-cultural da Educaç‹o. Petr-polis: Vozes, 1999.
  VYGOTSKY, Lev S. A Formaç‹o Social da Mente. S‹o Paulo: Martins Fontes, 1998