O ensino de portugês para crianças estrangeiras: reflexões sobre um fazer docente.

La presencia de personas extranjeras radicadas en la província de Rio Grande del Norte trae a la escuela el desafio de recibir alumnos hablantes de otros idiomas. En esa perspectiva, el estudio tiene como objetivo investigar la practica pedagógica desarrollada por una profesora de Pipa - RN, con destaque en la enseñanza de Portugués para niños inmigrantes en la Enseñanza Fundamental. Esa temática se hace relevante al proponer posibles alternativas para el desarrollo de una acción docente reflexiva y mediatizadora de la enseñanza de una língua segunda. Para la concretización de este trabajo disertativo, se há realizado un estudio de caso de tipo etnográfico y de naturaleza qualitativa en una institución privada de la playa de Pipa - RN, en el período de noviembre de 2007 a agosto de 2008. Se há utilizado como procedimientos, la observación participante, la entrevista semiestruturada gravadaen áudio, la análise documental, el registro en diário de campo y el registro fotográfico. Se há elegido como referencial teórico las discusiones de Almeida Filho (1992, 1997, 2002, 2005), Cunha (1999, 2002), Freire (1996, 2004), Moita Lopes (1996), Vygotsky (1998), Wachowicz (1995) y Zabala (1998). La análise revela que, aunque la profesora observada no tenga conocimientos específicos sobre la enseñanza de PL2 en la escuela regular, su acción educativa há demonstrado avanzos, especialmente, al considerar los aprendizes como sujetos del processo de enseñanza aprendizaje, entre ellos los niños extranjeros; contemplar la identidad y las diferencias culturales y linguísticas de estos educandos; incluyese el aspecto lúdico en la preparación de las actividades; articular vínculos sociales, afectivos y cognitivos, entre otros aspectos destacados. Sin embargo, evidenciase la necesidad de una formación pedagógica específica para el trabajo con niños inmigrantes, a través de la interlocución entre los currículuns de los cursos de Filología y Pedagogia de las Universidades brasileñas, a partir del cual estudios y debates podran ser fomentados en la busqueda por uma enseñanza de PL2 verdaderamente comunicativo y democrático.

Interação em sala de aula de língua inglesa: o feedback como estratégia do desempenho assistido

This dissertation aims at characterizing the practices as well as the effects of a teacher s feedback in oral conversation interaction with students in an English Language classroom at a Primary School, 6th Grade in Açu/RN, Brazil. Therefore, this study is based on Vygotsky s (1975) and Bruner´s (1976) researches, which state that the learning process is constructed through interaction between a more experienced individual (teacher, parents and friends) and a learner who plays an active role, a re-constructor of knowledge. It is also based on Ur´s (2006) and Brookhart s (2008) studies (among other authors in Applied Linguistic) who defend that the feedback process needs to be evaluative and formative since it sets interfaces with both students autonomy and learning improvement. Our study is based on qualitative, quantitative and interpretive researches, whose natural environment (the classroom) is a direct source of data generated in this research through field observations/note-taking as well as through the transcriptions of five English classes audio taped. This study shows the following results: the teacher still seems to accept the patterns of interaction in the classroom that correspond to the IRE process (Initiation, Response, Evaluation) in behaviorist patterns: (1) he speaks and determines the turns of speech; (2) the teacher asks more questions and directs the activities most of the time; (3) the teacher´s feedback presents the following types: questioning, modeling, repeated response, praise, depreciation, positive/negative and sarcasm feedback, whose functions are to assess students' performance based on the rightness and wrongness of their responses. Thus, this implies to state that the feedback does not seem to help students improvement in terms of acquiring knowledge because of its normative effects/roles. Therefore, it is the teacher´s role to give evaluative and formative feedback to a student so that he/she should advance in the learning of the language and in the construction of knowledge

O desenvolvimento da interlíngua na aprendizagem da escrita em inglês em uma escola bilíngue: um estudo exploratório

The aim of this study is to investigate the development of written Interlanguage in English as an Additional Language (AL) by students in the 2nd grade of Ensino Fundamental I in a bilingual school in the city of Natal-RN. For this purpose two research questions guided this study: (a) which hypotheses could be inferred from the writing development of the bilingual learners of English as AL? and, (b) what is the impact of the type of input monomodal or multimodal in the Interlanguage development in the AL of bilingual learners? The 38 learners were divided into a control group, with 21 learners exposed to monomodal input, and an experimental group, with 17 learners exposed to multimodal input, and pre and post-tests were applied to both groups. A mixed methods research design was conducted (DÖRNYEI, 2007) to involve both qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis. The qualitative aspect comprehended descriptive characteristics that interpreted the central cognitive processes in the acquisition of writing in AL by the learners. Through these interpretations, it was possible to understand the constitution of written Interlanguage (SELINKER, 1972) according to the data generated by the learners. The quantitative data were presented as the results generated from the experimental design. Thus, they narrowed the relations between the dependent variable the writing development, that is, how close it is to the target form which was modified throughout the process by the independent variable the quality of input (VAN PATTEN, 2002, GASS, 1997, SCHMIDT, 1986, PARADIS, 2009; 2010, ELLIS, 1995), which, being monomodal or multimodal, its function was possibly to alter the route of acquisition. The quantitative results pointed towards significant gains by the experimental group, which had multimodality present, suggesting that the learners in this group seem to have been more able to cognitively register (SCHIMDT, 1990) aspects of learning than the learners in the control group

O latim, uma língua morta?: uma metáfora em análise: o olhar da lingüística aplicada e suas implicações para o ensino

The focus of this research is the teaching of the Latin language. Due to the fact that its teaching has been facing a growing crisis in the last four decades, which currently persists, we ponder about external and internal causes of its decline, aiming at pointing out an alternative that enable us to find a way out of this situation. So, our research questions mainly concern how the teaching of Latin is viewed amongst the academic society, also investigating if it has kept up with the development of the scientific reflection about human language and the new approaches on language teaching. Furthermore, we analyse the contribution that the study of Latin can provide to the academic formation of language teachers and try to identify the areas of knowledge that can contribute to a reshaping of its teaching. Based on these guidelines, we have established as the goals of this research: 1) to reflect about the current situation of the teaching of Latin and the causes of its decline; 2) to determine its social representation among teachers and students of the Language Courses, as a way of defining the role it fulfills in the academic formation of teachers; 3) to accomplish an exploratory study of some handbooks that show alternative proposals on how to teach Latin, in order to detect their adequacy to current times and to the goals of the academic study of languages; 4) to offer an alternative proposal on how to teach Latin that takes into account the principles of Applied Linguistics, considering the socio-historical and cultural aspects of the language, enabling it to meet the requirements set by modern times. This research is divided into two parts. The first part presents the theoretical framework. We map the studies about Latin teaching inside and outside Brazil and argue against the concept of Latin being a dead language, presenting arguments set on changing this view. Then we describe and comment the notions of literacy, genre and culture, which helped us understand the reasons for the decline of the teaching of Latin and to point out suitable ways to overcome the crisis. The second part is dedicated to reflecting on the literacy practices in Latin teaching. We began by examining the answers to the questionnaires given to students and teachers about the view of Latin in the Language Courses; then we reflect on the teaching-learning of Latin as an academic literacy practice followed by an analysis of the didactic material used in teaching Latin. Finally, we suggest an approach of the familiar letter genre in ancient Rome as a means of teaching Latin in a contextualized way

A ferramenta VoiceThread em uma abordagem hibrida: o desenvolvimento da produção oral e da habilidade de noticing na aprendizagem de inglês como L2

VoiceThread (VT) is a collaborative and asynchronous web 2.0 tool, which permits the creation of oral presentations with the help of images, documents, texts and voice, allowing groups of people to browse and contribute with comments using several options: voice (microphone or cell phone), text and audio-file or video (webcam) (BOTTENTUIT JUNIOR, LISBÔA E COUTINHO, 2009). The hybrid experience with VoiceThread allows learners to plan their speech before recording it, without the pressure often existent in the classroom. Furthermore, the presentations can be recorded several times, enabling students to listen to them, notice the gaps in their oral production (noticing) and edit innumerous times before publishing them online. In this perspective, oral production is seen as a process of L2 acquisition, not only as practice of already existent knowledge, because it can stimulate the learner to process the language syntactically (SWAIN, 1985; 1995). In this context, this study aims to verify if there is a relation between the oral production of the learners more specifically the grammatical accuracy and the global oral grade and their noticing capacity, how the systematic practice with VoiceThread, in a hybrid approach, can impact the learners global oral development, their oral production in terms of fluency (number of words per minute), accuracy (number of errors in hundred words), and complexity (number of dependent clauses per minute), and on their noticing capacity (SCHMIDT, 1990; 1995; 2001), that is, the learner s capacity of noticing the gaps existent in their oral production. In order to answer these research questions, 49 L2 learners of English were divided into an experimental group (25 students) and a control group (24 students). The experimental group was exposed to the hybrid approach with VT during two months and, through a pre- and post-test, we verified if this systematic practice would positively influence these participants oral production and noticing capacity. These results were compared to the pre- and post-test scores from the control group, which was not exposed to VT. Finally, learners impressions in relation to the use of this tool were also sought through a questionnaire applied after the post-test. The results indicate that there is a statistically significant correlation between the learners speech production (accuracy and global oral grade) and their noticing capacity. Besides, it was verified a positive impact of VoiceThread on the learners speech production variables and on their noticing capacity. They also reveal a positive reaction by the learners in relation to the hybrid experience with this web tool

Escrita colaborativa com google docs: flash fiction, noticing e aprendizagem de inglês como L2

Google Docs (GD) is an online word processor with which multiple authors can work on the same document, in a synchronous or asynchronous manner, which can help develop the ability of writing in English (WEISSHEIMER; SOARES, 2012). As they write collaboratively, learners find more opportunities to notice the gaps in their written production, since they are exposed to more input from the fellow co-authors (WEISSHEIMER; BERGSLEITHNER; LEANDRO, 2012) and prioritize the process of text (re)construction instead of the concern with the final product, i.e., the final version of the text (LEANDRO; WEISSHEIMER; COOPER, 2013). Moreover, when it comes to second language (L2) learning, producing language enables the consolidation of existing knowledge as well as the internalization of new knowledge (SWAIN, 1985; 1993). Taking this into consideration, this mixed-method (DÖRNYEI, 2007) quasi-experimental (NUNAN, 1999) study aims at investigating the impact of collaborative writing through GD on the development of the writing skill in English and on the noticing of syntactic structures (SCHMIDT, 1990). Thirtyfour university students of English integrated the cohort of the study: twenty-five were assigned to the experimental group and nine were assigned to the control group. All learners went through a pre-test and a post-test so that we could measure their noticing of syntactic structures. Learners in the experimental group were exposed to a blended learning experience, in which they took reading and writing classes at the university and collaboratively wrote three pieces of flash fiction (a complete story told in a hundred words), outside the classroom, online through GD, during eleven weeks. Learners in the control group took reading and writing classes at the university but did not practice collaborative writing. The first and last stories produced by the learners in the experimental group were analysed in terms of grammatical accuracy, operationalized as the number of grammar errors per hundred words (SOUSA, 2014), and lexical density, which refers to the relationship between the number of words produced with lexical properties and the number of words produced with grammatical properties (WEISSHEIMER, 2007; MEHNERT, 1998). Additionally, learners in the experimental group answered an online questionnaire on the blended learning experience they were exposed to. The quantitative results showed that the collaborative task led to the production of more lexically dense texts over the 11 weeks. The noticing and grammatical accuracy results were different from what we expected; however, they provide us with insights on measurement issues, in the case of noticing, and on the participants‟ positive attitude towards collaborative writing with flash fiction. The qualitative results also shed light on the usefulness of computer-mediated collaborative writing in L2 learning.

Olimpíada de Língua Portuguesa: ressignificação de práticas de leitura e escrita

The search for new meanings in the basic education teaching-learning process has caused the development of public policies for mother language teaching, such as the Portuguese Language Olympics (OLP). To contribute to this search, this intervention project has as object of study reading and writing practices developed in the OLP through the educational model arising from literacy projects (TINOCO, 2008). In working towards, the general aim of reframing reading and writing practices through the PLO, developed from the teaching model that comes of literacy projects, we established three specific objectives: a) reflect on a national writing contest; b) to realign conceptual and methodological the Portuguese classes of the 7th grade school due to the developed project; c) to improve the reading and writing practices of the students in 7th grade of school where we operate. Therefore, we base ourselves in the history of Portuguese teaching in Brazil (SOARES, 2002; GERALDI, 2008), the dialogical conception of language (BAKHTIN, VOLOCHÍNOV [1929] 2009; SOARES, 1998; FARACO, 2009) in Literacy Studies (KLEIMAN, 2001, 2005, 2006; TINOCO, 2008; OLIVEIRA; TINOCO; SANTOS, 2011; STREET, 2014), the learning community concept (AFONSO, 2001), in studies of retextualization (OLIVEIRA, 2005; MARCUSCHI, 2010), gender discursive literary memories (CLARA; ALTENFELDER; ALMEIDA, 20--), in written evidence (POSSENTI, 2002) and Textual Linguistics (MARCUSCHI, 2008; ANTUNES, 2009; KOCH, 2011; SILVA [et. al.], 2013). Methodologically, this qualitative research (LÜDKE; ANDRÉ, 1986; ANDRÉ, 2005) is anchored in Applied Linguistics (MOITA LOPES, 1996). This research was supporting by students in the 7th grade, teachers, management team and parents, as well as people outside of school community. The instruments used for the generation of data were semi-structured interview, students‟ texts, audio recordings and video, photos, OLP material (teacher's book, a collection of texts and CD-ROM). The data generated allowed us to establish the following categories of analysis in relation to the texts produced: authorship, in formativeness, discursive progression, compositional structure, content, style, and language aspects. In addition, throughout the project, the collaborators have produced texts of various genres: oral interview and written request letter, legal, literary memories, oral and experience report. Also experienced a local award and participated in a national competition. They produced a video and a book with stories and student authorship of illustrations. The results achieved show that the literacy project developed also allowed macro changes: reading and writing practices, once considered strictly school studied, they were transformed into broader social practices, through which various literacy agents were able to collaboratively act. In short, they experienced writing practices that go beyond the classroom and the teacher-student relationship.