Teaching English or Teaching Logic?

I'm so close to my Pantanal vacation, I can taste it! As you can imagine, this last week of work is especially hard to get through because I just want to be out with Bianca and the birdies already.

I've been feeling extra frustrated with teaching lately (note need for said vacation). I've been feeling like I am not successful in teaching in many of my classes because all of the teaching methods I've learned (and learned from) don't seem to work.

Why don't they work? I think a lot of my students lack basic critical thinking, logic, and deduction abilities. Really. The ways I've learned how to teach are all essentially based on logical deduction. I don't know how to TEACH people how to deduce things. I just know how to use deduction to teach them English.

Example:

Student says:

"The mother of his" or "the mother of him" or "the mother of he" or something wrong like that.

This is a literal translation of a mãe dele (the student is trying to say "his mother"). So far, no problem. This is a common mistake for a very basic student to make (most of them still make it, even after I've shown them a list of my/your/his/her/our/their and told them that ALL these words go first in English, not just some of them). 

So I say (IN PORTUGUESE):

OK, so remember that we put all these words first in English. You know how in Portuguese, you can say minha mãe? How do we say that in English?

Student says:

"My mother."

I say:

Right. You said "my" first. So we use minha and sua at the beginning in English, too, but we use dele and dela at the beginning. All these words go first.

Then I write:

My mother

Your mother

His mother

Her mother

Their mother

I use lots of board support. 

Then I say:

See? All the words are first, before "mother." In Portuguese, you can put them before or after.  Also, there's no "the" in English in this situation. 


I write "the mother of his" like they said. I put a big X through "the" and another one through "of." I put an arrow to move "his."

Sometimes I say:

You know how in formal Portuguese you can say seu pai instead of o pai dele? See how you change the word order? You need to change the word order in English, too.

Student says:

OK.

Then I say:

So which one is a mãe dele from this list?

Student says:

His mother.

I say:

Right, great. OK. What if I want to say, o pai dele?

For those reading who don't speak Portuguese, the correct answer is "his father". This is where the logical deduction part comes in, so you may have figured that out yourself. 

Student says:

The father his.

And then I take deep breaths and try not to bang my head against the table.

This kind of stuff happens in so many situations when I try to get the students to learn something by making a logical conclusion or using critical thinking. THEY CAN'T DO IT. You'll notice that I've long given up on any kind of technical explanations, like "noun" or "verb" or dare I say "possessive adjective". I don't expect people to know those kinds of technical explanations THAT well, but if you're studying a foreign language, you need to at least know the basics of the basic of how to recognize grammar in your native language (like recognizing a noun or a verb in a sentence).

The same thing happens with more advanced students who are required to think critically. I give them modified newspaper articles to read about interesting topics (for example, one guy's opinion on when and why you should give allowance to children). I make the English appropriate for their level. I write discussion questions that include reading comprehension and opinion questions (so in this case, something like "in what 3 situations does the author think you should give allowance to children?" and then "do you agree with the author's opinion? When do you think children should receive an allowance?"). 

I would say that a good 80% of my students seriously just copy random sentences from the article as their answers. This is apparently acceptable in the Brazilian education system. Paraphrasing and summarizing don't seem to be taught or valued. And when it comes to arguing for a logical opinion? Forget it. Again, students just copy the author's opinion, or write something very general like "it's good" or "it's bad." Many even just write "I don't know."

I don't think it's a lack of English abilities, because (a) I am careful to give level-appropriate work and (b) the students who DO possess critical thinking skills will try to write something out, even if it has mistakes.

So I'm frustrated because I don't know how to teach logical reasoning / critical thinking / independent thinking. These are necessary skills, not only for learning a language, but for LIFE. I feel like I learned these skills almost completely by reading a lot, and also from my math teachers who made me do proofs and lots of logical deduction activities. (Plus, I guess it's just engrained in the American teaching system-- rather than, ya know, copying and parroting shit back.)

I've tried to research things. Everything I find is for second - fourth graders. I have one student who has asked me to help her at this level of language learning, because she's having a really, really hard time with understanding very basic English. I gave her an activity with a basic text about making pizza at home vs. buying pizza in the store. There were a handful of words I knew she wouldn't know. She had to deduce the meaning. I gave her a list of questions she can ask herself, like "does the word seem positive or negative?" "do you see an opposite word or a synonym somewhere else in the text?" "What information is missing when you translate this sentence in your mind?" "Imagine yourself in this situation. What would you do? How would you feel?" We did a couple together and then she had to finish as homework. She didn't even bother guessing the meanings because she said the activity was too hard and she didn't know the answers to the questions.

Here's an example from the text (she already learned the word "crust" with me):

After you have chosen your crust, you must then add the sauce. Making your own sauce from scratch can take a long time. You have to buy tomatoes, peel them, and then cook them with spices. If this sounds like too much work, you can also buy jarred sauce from the store. 

The only thing she figured out was jarred, because it looks like the Portuguese word for jar, which is jarra. She couldn't figure out "from scratch" or "peel" from the context. I know there's no perfect word for "from scratch" in Portuguese, but she could have figured out "at home" or something, anything like "not buying it at the store." I mean, students need to be able to be flexible without word-for-word translations.

So I'm just at a loss. I don't know how to teach things that I thought educated adults just knew how to do instinctively. I'm teaching the top 5% of this country in terms of income and education, and this is what I get. I don't like to just give up on students, especially if they're really trying hard  and are really motivated and all that. But I kind of feel like this is beyond my ability.

Have you guys had students like these? What do you do? Just give up and let them talk about soccer and beer and their friends and hobbies in incorrect English and just leave it at that? I don't want to be that kind of a teacher.