Abstract

This paper aims to diagnose, through a qualitative comparative study, the main differences concerning the
teaching of English in Brazilian regular schools when compared to language schools. There has been a growing
tendency of students to attend language schools while still having English classes at their regular schools, and
this has led to a lot of change in teachers’ beliefs and approaches in general over the years. To establish this
diagnosis, a questionnaire consisting of 14 key points related to this topic (ranging from teaching resources and
methodologies to workloads and knowledge of grammar) was answered by six teachers of English, three
working at regular schools, and three at language schools. The main findings can be summarized by the fact that
heavier workloads, bigger groups, lack of resources and focus on reading and writing have made regular school
teaching less effective than the experience students have when attending classes at language schools.

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