We Must Love What We Do!

People from all over the world have chosen Rafa's Vocabulary Ticker. We are proud to have members of different countries and backgrounds using it. It is a sign of recognized excellence.

Language is the reflection of ourselves:
A language is an exact reflection of the character and growth of its speakers. - "Cesar Chavez"

Olá!
O meu nome é Rafa... OK, my name is Rafael Tavares, better known as Rafa, and I believe you have clicked here because you want to know a little about who is behind this, am I right?

I was born in South America – Venezuela – a Spanish speaking country. Because my parents are Portuguese, I grew up bilingual – Portuguese (at home) and Spanish (in the streets and at school). I obviously started speaking Portuguese and Spanish when I was a child – acquiring language that could satisfy my needs. I lived in Venezuela up to the age of 10 and then I moved to Portugal, with my parents where I lived for 17 more years. I also spent a lot of time of my childhood in Brazil where I also have family. It was in Portugal where I completed my first degree in Teaching and Education. I specialised in the field of

Language Acquisition and Development. But one day, I decided to move to London UK. When I decided to move to London, I didn’t know how to speak English, because I had studied French and Latin, but never English. When I landed in London, English was a completely different language, with a different structure and I felt really lost. I was meant to come to London to enjoy the experience of living in a different country, with a different language and with a secured job, but, because I hardly could express myself, very soon after I ended up jobless.

The degree I had in Teaching and Education helped me to find a solution: I started giving Portuguese classes to English speakers to make a living but, even so, I needed to communicate with my English speaking students. Every time I recall those days, a feeling of a hard time comes to my mind. Those times were hard, I can tell you!

Nevertheless, in the meantime, I realised that if I used a method, I could learn English quickly. I had a great deal of knowledge about how to acquire a language as a child, but I didn't know much about how to learn a language as an adult. That was my main problem. So I started the process of creating my own method of learning a language, and I definitely learned how to speak by using it! This method was what, later on, inspired me to create this Rafa's Vocabulary Ticker.

Anyway, I became so passionate and amazed with my accomplishments, by following my method, that I couldn't resist learning more and more about how to learn a new foreign language.

I kept on studying new vocabulary as well as trying to understand the intricacies of the English language simultaneously. My method was mainly comparing and contrasting English and the way I expressed myself in Portuguese, so that I could manage to build up and learn a reasonable amount of words, sentences and structures to survive in a great number of day-to-day situations.

So, 3 years later, I decided to go further. I went to one of the top universities in London and I enrolled for a post-graduation in Modern Foreign Languages Education. What I realised with surprise was that countless people had already and profoundly researched and theorised about how to learn languages. The more I studied, the more I realized that what I had used as a method for learning a foreign language as an adult was right! The (so called) experts had discovered great techniques and had had great thoughts about it, but they had it expressed it in a language that only academic people could understand – the academic language. It seemed to me that they all were there in their ivory towers talking about things – extremely important indeed – but with little chance to be understood and accessible by "normal people", people like me.

So, I decided to use all that knowledge and develop a language tool that everyone could use in the practical world. I decided to collect all that information and create this Vocabulary Ticker.

And here it is.

Here I am putting the knowledge, the words and the expressions I have collected throughout the years available for you! I have created this Vocabulary Ticker with all the passion I have for languages, and, here I'm giving you what nobody gave me or made available for me when I most needed it.

But to make this story short, by using all this knowledge, I reached a point where can speak English confidently to anyone and deal with the language in any situation. I can even compete with other English-native-speaker boys when chatting to girls! Joking!

Well, I obviously have to admit that I have an accent when I speak, but having an accent is charming, attractive and appealing to others.

Anyway... Later on, I eventually managed to get a job (yes, I couldn't be jobless forever...) and then another one, and one more. As per some of my latest jobs, I worked as a Senior Lecturer of Portuguese for 3 top universities in London where I taught both undergraduates and postgraduates (BA, MA and MBA students) Portuguese for business and for general purposes. I also had the privilege to coach, for several years, several diplomatic members of the Foreign Commonwealth Office in London, investment and retail bankers, members of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), among people with several other institutional areas of expertise.

At the present moment, and because the world is changing as we speak (and so are languages), I decided to carry on with further language research around the Portuguese-speaking countries. I still provide language services for several organizations, and I teach Portuguese to people all over the world over the Internet as well. I just love what I do! I can't help it.

And this is it. This is Rafa's life experience in one page.

I’m here to share with you what I've discovered, studied, researched and created, which I still am as a continuous process. I'm here to share with you what I've learned with my students too, to whom I'll be eternally grateful. Thank you!

I'm also here to share with you the certainty that you can also achieve fluency and much, much more!

Are you ready?

If so, please give me your hand and let me show you how to overcome the obstacles. With this I mean, please download the Rafa's Vocabulary Ticker now and learn Portuguese quickly and without frustration, maximizing at the same time those long hours you spend every day working at your computer.

Rafael Tavares.