Are Portuguese people the easiest students to teach?

7 年前

And, is English the easiest language for a Portuguese person to learn?
I ask this because I live in Portugal and for 15 years most of my students were local, but now we have had seen an exponential growth in tourism and people coming to reside here. I am now teaching many different nationalities and my job has got much harder in many ways.
For example, there is very little pron work needed when teaching Portuguese people as they have a very natural, almost neutral accent. They still need to work on their TH, but then again as a child I remember I, too had to be constantly reminded by parents and teachers to say my TH.
They grow up watching television that is not dubbed and so in terms of listening skills they are all pretty good once they have reached a certain age.
So, for me they have definitely been easy to teach in comparison to the Chinese, Moldavian, Russian, Ukrainian students I am seeing more and more of. However, it has put me on a new learning curve and I am enjoying the new challenges and I find the lessons just as enjoyable as ever.
So, do you think there is an easiest student to teach?
Would love to hear your thoughts :)
Gerry