The book is still on the table: using the English textbook in primary school

Some time ago, when we asked a Brazilian what he had learned in English classes at school, he replied: ’I learned to say ＂The book is on the table＂’. The research carried out in this book shows us that foreign language teaching in Brazil has come a long way, but we still have a long way to go. Hence the book’s title ＂The book is still on the table＂. In the three chapters of this book, we present some national, Latin American and BRICS indices on language teaching and the population’s English language proficiency, as well as some methods and approaches used in foreign language teaching. We finish by presenting some suggestions on how to plan English lessons using both the English Student’s Handbook, distributed by the São Paulo state government, and the English textbook, which is provided by the federal government. Our idea here is not to exhaust the subject, but to pave the way for new perspectives regarding the teaching of English in Brazilian public schools.