About training and mentoring
Gabriel Anagnostides Cerante
Hi everyone,
Sorry if I'm being repetitive, I didn't find other conversations in the group about the subject.
My name is Gabriel, and I’m an English teacher from Brazil. I’ve recently started exploring the Silent Way, and I was really inspired by it.
I came across the “Becoming a Silent Way Teacher” programme on silentway.online, and I’d love some guidance on how to get started in a structured way or to connect with someone who could mentor me as I learn.
Right now I’m experimenting with the sound color chart and rods, and I even made my own simple chart to use with students. I’m especially curious about how student placement and progression work in Silent Way classes.
If anyone here has tips, resources, or are open for mentoring, I’d really appreciate it.
Thanks,
Gabriel Anagnostides Cerante
Cedric Lefebvre
Olá Gabriel,
Great to meet you, and thank you for your message! It's always inspiring to see teachers discovering the Silent Way and wanting to go deeper with it.
I’d be happy to help guide you in this journey: to answer your questions when I can, point you to helpful resources, and offer support as you explore the approach in your own teaching. And hopefully, others in this community will also join in so you can benefit from different perspectives and experiences.
To better understand how I can support you, I’d love to know a bit more about you and your context:
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Where in Brazil are you based?
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Do you teach in a school, privately, or independently?
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What kind of students do you work with (age, level, goals)?
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And what was it about the Silent Way that first caught your attention? What are you hoping to achieve or change in your teaching?
As for me: I’m a French teacher, but I’ve been living in Brazil for several years, and the Silent Way has been the foundation of my teaching for quite some time. So I’d be glad to share what I’ve learned along the way — including student placement, progression, materials, and how to adapt the approach to real classrooms and one-to-one lessons.
Looking forward to hearing from you and continuing the conversation!
Até mais!
Cédric
Stop Studying. Start Speaking.
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Roslyn YOUNG
Hi Gabriel,
Welcome to the group! I live in France and teach English and French. I'll be happy to help you any way I can. Any questions you ask are shared with the group, and I'll answer as well as I can.
With best wishes,
Roslyn
envoyé : 6 novembre 2025 à 16:18
de : Cedric Lefebvre <cedric...@gmail.com>
à : silentw...@googlegroups.com
objet : Re: [sw.online] About training and mentoring
To view this discussion, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/silentwayonline/CAFnobx_tx6Gd0QY9pt8mdFyqghF354ucfxsi99wAdWzDyhLgYA%40mail.gmail.com.
Gabriel Anagnostides Cerante
Well, I live in Extrema, Minas Gerais, about a 90-minute drive from São Paulo.
I run my own private English school (not a franchise), and I’m currently using Nat Geo courses. I have around 30 students of all ages, though most are adults.
I'll tell you what first got me interested in the Silent Way through a very practical case.
Some English words are extremely difficult for Brazilian Portuguese speakers. “World” and “Squirrel” are two great examples. For students who couldn’t pronounce these words, I had almost no success using traditional explanations. It was strange, because they could pronounce each sound individually, and I’d even heard them use the same sounds correctly in other words. Yet, when facing those two words, they simply couldn’t connect the sounds.
It was only when I experimented with my own hacked color chart that I finally heard, for the first time, a student truly pronounce one of those “impossible” words correctly. That experience completely changed how I saw pronunciation and opened the door to the Silent Way for me.
don cherry
Cedric Lefebvre
Oi Gabriel,
Thank you for sharing more about your story, and what a nice surprise to discover you’re also in Minas Gerais. I’m in Belo Horizonte. We’re not exactly close, but still within reach of each other, which means that if one day it makes sense to meet or work in person, it would be completely possible.
It’s also great to know that you run your own school and teach independently. That kind of freedom is precious when exploring a new approach. In more rigid systems, where the curriculum and the pace are fixed in advance, it’s much harder to work in a way that truly respects how students learn. So the space you’ve built for yourself is actually an excellent place to begin.
Your story about pronunciation really resonated: not because of those specific words, but because many of us arrived at the Silent Way through similar moments of noticing that something in the usual way of teaching just isn’t working. With pronunciation in particular, traditional solutions often involve repeating, imitating or explaining, with very poor results. What makes the Silent Way different is that it begins from how people actually learn: by perceiving, making inner comparisons, choosing, adjusting.
At the same time, pronunciation is only one of the entry points into the Silent Way. It’s a fundamental and powerful one, and if you want to explore it further there’s even a team called Teaching Pronunciation Differently focused specifically on English pronunciation. But the Silent Way goes much further. Staying only with pronunciation would be like fine tuning an instrument but never playing the music. Beyond the sounds, there is autonomy, inner criteria, self-expression, building the language from what students can create, a completely different progression framework, and a whole new way of seeing teaching.
In case it helps, here are a few resources you can explore at your own pace:
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many articles on silentway.online, which I believe you’ve already started exploring (e.g. A framework for students’ progress and syllabus for an English course)
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complete commented lessons and shorter videos on core principles on the Silent Way YouTube channel
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a structured introductory course on the Teaching Languages Differently platform
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and most recently, Roslyn Young’s new book on teaching English with the Silent Way, a very clear and comprehensive guide
These resources aren’t meant to replace your questions here. On the contrary: the idea is to feed your experience so you end up with even more questions! And that’s exactly why this forum exists. You’re very welcome to keep asking anything: big theoretical doubts, small classroom details, things that worked, things that didn’t. That back-and-forth is really where the learning happens for all of us.
If you’d like, I’ll be happy to follow along and support you in this beginning, together with my colleagues here.
Um abraço,
Cédric
Stop Studying. Start Speaking.
To view this discussion, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/silentwayonline/6ad7f2f6-17bd-4d24-8d62-bda8e605be02n%40googlegroups.com.