Avaliar na alfabetização: uma reflexão sobre as dificuldades docentes

Our work leads up to the context of evaluation during alphabetization process as a moment of an educational action cycle that requires planning, teaching and learning of reading and writing. It aimed to research the difficulties lived by teachers of a public elementary school during the specific task of evaluating children in the alphabetization process. This qualitative research took place as a case study at Emília Ramos Municipal School, in Natal, capital city of Rio Grande do Norte State, Brazil. Semi-structured interview and questionnaire were used as fact-gathering proceedings. Two pedagogical advisers and seven teachers formed the group of research subjects. All of them worked with elementary school first cycle classes, in that school, in the year of 2003. The analysis shows that teachers difficulties concern to theoretic questions of conceptual and methodological orders, although these questions indicate an important knowledge of teachers about alphabetization and evaluation. Our reflection about these problems articulates two points: alphabetization and evaluation. Concerning alphabetization, we took reference on Psychogenetic studies of Ferreiro and Teberosky (1985) which emphasizes fundamental points for a coherent evaluation practice: a) objective knowledge is not a beginning data; it is a construction process, which the learner does not conquest step by step on a linear way; b) objective knowledge acquisition happens through a global re-construction, and some of them may seem mistakes if we consider conventional writing but these mistakes are constructive and necessary. We also took reference on Interactionist-constructivist theory. Here, Vygotsky (1984) proposes that writing must be specially understood as language, symbolical activity, cultural practice. So, acquisition of writing process, as language learning, must be understood as a development of abilities relative to symbolical and communicative activity of sense production. On this way, Hoffmann (1994) advises that is necessary to overtake current evaluation practices, limited by their terminality character, only pointing right or wrong questions. According to a new paradigm, valuation appears as one of the mediations by which teachers must indicate re-ordination of pupil s knowledge, and re-organize their own practices too. The comprehensions of these questions plays decisive part in order to overtake our difficulties in evaluating. Besides, it points a way to build a coherent valuate practice, with an emancipating character and able to create new teaching-and-learning situations, leading to a better alphabetization Pedagogy

Avaliando a aprendizagem de língua inglesa em uma escola de ensino médio a partir de contribuições discentes

This study discusses the evaluation of the English language‟s learning developed in a public high school from Lajes-RN in 2011 starting from a qualitative evaluation proposal (SAUL 1988; CANAN, 1996; DEMO, 2008) aiming the production of knowledge about the evaluation process developed in the classes of English language involving the contributions from students. To diagnose and characterize the evaluation process of English language of the researched school, identifying the representations that students attributed to the evaluation, we have implemented the evaluation instruments suggested by students to perform the evaluation of language learning and allowed a reflection about the student‟s participation in the construction of the evaluation process of the English language, subject discussed by Sant‟anna (2002) and other theorists (CANAN, 1996; BRAZIL, 2002; PEREIRA, 2009). To conduct the research work, we use the qualitative approach with ethnographic basis, substantiate in authors like Bogdan, Biklen (1994), Mazzotti; Gewandsznajder (1998), Strauss, Corbin (2008) among others. The methodology was the action research (ANDRÉ, 1995; NUNAN, 2007; LANKSHEAR; KNOBEL, 2008) described as research of empirical basis which associates an action with a resolution of a collective problem, because in it, its researchers and employees are engaged in a cooperatively way (THIOLLENT, 1985). When we treat about the evaluation of English language‟s learning (ALMEIDA FILHO, 1993; SCARAMUCCI, 2009) practiced before and after the contributions made by the students of the second year of the refereed school, the study considers that high school students have a more critical and reflective conscience with regard to their evaluations, not just opining on the assessment of learning English but also about the assessment of other subjects from their scholar curriculum and so this research presents possibilities for performing the act of evaluation which consider the participation of students in decisions regarding this process, because we cogitate that when the teachers share the decisions with their students, teachers can add quality to the evaluation process

"Eu pensei que ia sair daqui falando inglês": um estudo sistêmico-funcional sobre papéis sociais atribuídos por alunos de um curso de Letras/Inglês

Research in the area of teacher training in English as a Foreign Language (CELANI, 2003, 2004, 2010; PAIVA, 2000, 2003, 2005; VIEIRA-ABRAHÃO, 2010) articulates the complexity of beginning teachers classroom contexts aligned with teaching language as a social and professional practice of the teacher in training. To better understand this relationship, the present study is based on a corpus of transcribed interviews and questionnaires applied to 28 undergraduate students majoring in Letters/English emphasis, at a public university located in the interior of the Western Amazon region, soliciting their opinions about the reforms made in the curriculum of this Major. Interviews and questionnaires were used as data collection instruments to trace a profile of the students organized in Group 1, with freshmen and sophomore undergraduates who are following the 2009 curriculum, and Group 2, with junior and senior undergraduates who are following the 2006 curriculum. The objectives are to identify, to characterize and to analyze the types of pronouns, roles and social actors represented in the opinions of these students in relation to their teacher training curriculum. The theoretical support focuses on the challenge of historical and contemporary routes from English teachers initial education programs (MAGALHÃES; LIBERALLI, 2009; PAVAN; SILVA, 2010; ALVAREZ, 2010; VIANA, 2011; PAVAN, 2012). Our theoretical perspective is based on the Systemic Functional Grammar of Halliday (1994), Halliday and Hasan (1989), Halliday and Matthiessen (2004), Eggins (1994; 2004) and Thompson (2004). We focus on the concept of the Interpersonal meaning, specifically regarding the roles articulated in the studies by Delu (1991), Thompson and Thetela (1995), and in the Portuguese language such as Ramos (1997), Silva (2006) and Cabral (2009). Moreover, we ascribe van Leeuwen s (1997; 2003) theory of Representation of Social Actors as a theoretical framework in order to identify the sociological aspect of social actors represented in the students discourse. Within this scenario, the analysis unfolds on three levels: grammatical (pronouns), semantic (roles), and discursive (social actors). For the analysis of interpersonal realizations present in the students opinions, we use the computational program WordSmith Tools (SCOTT, 2010) and its applications Wordlist and Concord to quantify the occurrences of the pronouns I, You and They, which characterize the roles and social actors of the corpus. The results show that the students assigned the following roles to themselves: (i) apprentice to express their initial process of English language learning; (ii) freshman to reveal their choice of Major in Letters/English emphasis; (iii) future teacher to relate their expectations towards a practicing professional. To assign the roles to professors in the major, the students used the metaphor of modality (I think) to indicate the relationship of teacher training, while they are in the role of a student and as a future teacher. From these evidences the representation of the students as social actors emerges in roles such as: (i) active roles; (ii) passive roles and (iii) personalized roles. The social actors represented in the opinions of the students reflect the inclusion of these roles assigned to the actions expressed about their experiences and expectations derived from their teacher training classroom

Processos cognitivos que operam na configuração de narrativas: uma pesquisa exploratória dos fenômenos que subjazem à compreensão de textos

This paper investigates the cognitive processes that operate in understanding narratives in this case, the novel Macunaíma, by Mário de Andrade. Our work belongs to the field of Embodied-based Cognitive Linguistics and, due to its interdisciplinary nature, it dialogues with theoretical and methodological frameworks of Psycholinguistics, Cognitive Psychology and Neurosciences. Therefore, we adopt an exploratory research design, recall and cloze tests, adapted, with postgraduation students, all native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. The choice of Macunaíma as the novel and initial motivation for this proposal is due to the fact it is a fantastic narrative, which consists of events, circumstances and characters that are clearly distant types from what is experienced in everyday life. Thus, the novel provides adequate data to investigate the configuration of meaning, within an understanding-based model. We, therefore, seek, to answer questions that are still, generally, scarcely explored in the field of Cognitive Linguistics, such as to what extent is the activation of mental models (schemas and frames) related to the process of understanding narratives? How are we able to build sense even when words or phrases are not part of our linguistic repertoire? Why do we get emotionally involved when reading a text, even though it is fiction? To answer them, we assume the theoretical stance that meaning is not in the text, it is constructed through language, conceived as a result of the integration between the biological (which results in creating abstract imagery schemes) and the sociocultural (resulting in creating frames) apparatus. In this sense, perception, cognitive processing, reception and transmission of the information described are directly related to how language comprehension occurs. We believe that the results found in our study may contribute to the cognitive studies of language and to the development of language learning and teaching methodologies

A aprendizagem de inglês mediada por jogos eletrônicos do tipo MMORPG

Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) are role-playing games that, through the Internet, can integrate thousands of players interacting at the same time in at least one virtual world. This way, these games can provide, further than fun, a greater familiarity with the additional language and opportunity to improve the linguistic proficiency in a real context. Hence, what is proposed in this study is extended knowledge about the learning of an additional language mediated by MMORPGs for teachers to know how, if relevant, to present, use or encourage this practice to their students. Based on this major purpose, we seek to answer the following research questions: (a) what distinguishes the learning profile of the gamers and non-gamers; (b) if MMORPGs can, through a hybrid and systematic approach, assist the development of proficiency of the additional language and (c) what the think-aloud protocols show about the learning mediated by the MMORPG Allods Online. Following an experimental method (NUNAN, 1997), 16 students of the curricular component Reading and Writing Practices in English Language have comprised the control group and 17 students of the same class formed the experimental group and were submitted to a pre and post-test adapted from the Key English Test (KET) by the Cambridge University (2008). The tests were conducted before and after a period of 5 weeks of 3 hours of practice with Allods Online a week (experimental group), and classes of the curricular component (both groups). A quantitative analysis of the questionnaires about the exposure to English profiles of the participants, a quantitative analysis of the tests scores and a qualitative analysis of the thinkaloud protocols collected during the experiment were conducted based on the theories of (a) motivation (GARDNER, 1985, WILLIAMS & BURDEN, 1997, BROWN, 2007, HERCULANO-HOUZEL, 2005); (b) active learning (GASS, 1997, GEE, 2008, MATTAR, 2010); (c) interaction and collaborative learning (KRASHEN, 1991, GASS, 1997, VYGOTSKY, 1978); (d) situated learning (DAMASIO, 1994; 1999; 2003, BROWN, 2007, GEE, 2003) and (e), tangential learning (PORTNOW, 2008; MATTAR, 2010). The results indicate that the participants of the experimental group (gamers) seem to be more engaged in tangential English learning activities, such as playing games, listening to music in English, communicating with foreigners and reading in English. We also deduced that the period of experiment possibly generated positive results on the gamers proficiency scores, mainly in the parts related to orthographic development, reading and comprehension, writing with focus on content and orthographic accuracy. Lastly, the think-aloud protocols presented evidences that the gamers have engaged in active English language learning, they have interacted in English with other players, and learned linguistic aspects through the experience with the MMORPG Allods Online

O impacto das tarefas de aprendizagem mediadas pela lousa digital interativa na motivação situacional de aprendizes de inglês

Some authors have suggested that learning tasks conducted in L2 classes can motivate learners in different ways. Similarly, Interactive Whiteboards (IWB) have already been linked as drivers to engagement and enthusiasm in L2 classes, which may cause some impact on affective variables that influence learning (e.g. motivation). This crosssectional mixed-methods study aims to understand how situational motivation caused by learning tasks mediated by the IWB impact participants. We seek to answer the following research questions: (1) How does motivation as a personality trait of the learner relate to his/her additional language learning performance?, (2) How does the type of learning task mediated by the IWB impact the learner s motivation?, (3) How does motivation vary along the learning task mediated by the IWB? and (4) What is the relation between the learning task motivation and the learners perception about the task mediated by the IWB? Data collection lasted four months with 29 learners from a private language school. The instruments used were the following: (a) an initial questionnaire (adapted from the Attitudes/Motivation Test Battery by GARDNER, 2004), (b) situation-specific on-line scales to assess learners motivation in three moments: before, during and after the task, and analyze how motivation varies along the task; (c) class observations and field notes resulting from these observations, (d) participants end-of-course grades to understand the connection between academic success and their motivational profiles and (e) a final questionnaire with the qualitative purpose to know learners perceptions about the tasks mediated by the IWB. Our theoretical framework is based on Task-Based Learning and cognitive aspects present in tasks (WILLIS, 1996; SKEHAN, 1996), theories on motivation and second language learning (GARDNER, 2001; DÖRNYEI e OTTÓ, 1998; DÖRNYEI, 2000; 2002) and conceptions about L2 learning mediated by technology (GIBSON, 2001; OLIVEIRA, 2001; MILLER et al, 2005). Our results do not point out to a significative correlation between learners end-of-course grades and their motivational profiles. However, they indicate that there is some variability in situational motivation along the tasks, even among learning tasks from the same type. Furthermore, they show that learners report different perceptions for each learning task and that the impact of the IWB on participants did not have a large proportion

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

Referências culturais e heterogeneidade discursiva :Uma proposta para o ensino-aprendizagem de língua inglesa

The purpose of this research is to approach the English literary text from the point of view of the culture and the heterogeneity of discourse in its role as a source of elements that facilitate the teaching/learning process of English as a foreign language. Several instances of discourse heterogeneity are analyzed through cultural references in the original texts of the following English novels: Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855), published in 1847; The Mill on the Floss, by George Eliot (1819-1890), published in 1860 and Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens (1812-1870), published between 1860 and 1861. Theoretical support was sought in Kramsch, Bakhtin, Maingueneau, Authier-Revuz, Widdowson and Larsen-Freeman. Activities in English are proposed in the end whereby it can be seen that the questions at issue can be used extensively in the classroom.

Aprendizagem da língua japonesa apoiada por ferramentas computacionais: estudo e desenvolvimento do jogo Karuchā Ships Invaders

The use of technology tools for teaching and learning has grown increasingly in our daily life. In this context, a branch that has had tremendous growth is the area of teaching and learning language through computational tools. The study of CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning), accomplished in this research, aims to evaluate existing tools in this context, focused specifically on the Japanese language; and from this study, accomplish the development of a new computational tool that can assist teaching/learning of the Japanese language. As results, we present a wide survey on the subject in various technologies/devices, as well as the complete development process of a new tool, the Karuchā Ships Invaders game, that proposes to teach basic concepts of the language, blended with entertainment, and still, focusing on the Brazilian students of Japanese language audience. We will present all the concept phases of the game and its evolution through the research, as well as an interface evaluation. Still, we present proposal and validation of a method to evaluate motivational aspects of computational tools with educational focus, and results extracted from an experiment accomplished with prospective users

O ensino da língua portuguesa na televisão: uma análise através do programa afinando a língua

The present dissertation aims to an approach of the teaching of Portuguese language on television, trying to find how possible is the contribution of this communication media in the sense to give a higher classroom dynamism and to excite the students for that subject. The TV show Afinando a Língua (roughly, putting the language in tune ), a Canal Futura feature, have as one of these main purpose be shown on the classrooms as a tool that could enlarge the possibilities of a subject often took as particularly difficult. Blocked by the traditional grammatical teaching, the Portuguese lessons have been for years pictured as hermetic and far from the Brazilian speakers reality. So, people create myths around the language that earns adjectives as complicate and inaccessible and that Brazilians can t speak the Portuguese really good, because it only happens in Portugal, the original country of the language. These myths start exactly because the teaching orientation take their basis only on the standard language, in fact just one of the language variations by the way, anywhere in the world dictated by ancestral rules, once produced in Portugal. The regular school don t accept the Portuguese variation as a natural fact for a huge country as Brazil, with almost 190 million people, regarding it as a wrong way of talking. The repression that follows the students from the early school days make them repel the language supposedly learned at school. In fact, they normally face it as something unfamiliar, different from the language that they have use to learn at home, from the family and neighbors Instead of giving new possibilities for the language learning, the television, a powerful audiovisual device, only reinforces the idea that everyone, in any life situation, should talk the standard Portuguese, turning its back to the learning acquired much earlier that any person reach the school. This conservative attitude brings almost no changes, between the shows that try to teach the idiom and the traditional Portuguese lessons, wasting valuable tools that could lead to the possibility to open the classroom to the outside world, and to the wider knowledge of the differences from each Brazilian region culture, a positive attitude that could much enlarge the cultural and linguistic students universe

A intercompreensão em Línguas Românicas nas aulas de Espanhol: o que querem e o que podem essas línguas?

The official documents that guide the teaching and learning process of a Foreign Language in Brazil, Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais de Língua Estrangeira, suggest a linguistic and intercultural communication as the main objective of teaching a foreign language inorderto contribute withareflexive formation of the students.Toachieve this goal, a Virtual Interchange was realized connecting distant places like Córdoba, in Argentina, and Natal in Brazil, between High School students through Moodle platform and Facebook. The Interchange is based in the Intercomprehension in Romance Languages(IC) guidelines, inthiscase between Portuguese and Spanish, according to which every student speaks their own language and makes an effort to comprehend the others througha collaborative process thatgo es beyond the limits of mere linguistic objectives and favors the students’ reality acceptance before the diversity. This qualitative study with thno graphic characteristic stries to know whe ther differentiate projects can increase students’ interest to learn the target language. It was also set as an aim of this study to develop the intercultural competence of our students and foster the respect for different cultures. In the case of Argentinian and Brazilian students, wetried to promote reflection about social representation trying to destroy stereotypes between both groups. As methodological resources, we used interviews, questionnaires and intercomprehension activities during the Project, as well as a participant observation of the interactions betweenthe students of both countries.Webe lieve tobe contributing towards the integral formation ofth student asacriticalcitizenthatthinksa bouttheir posture before the world, which is one of the formal education aims according to Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais. Our theoretical foundation is based on Intercomprehension in Romance Languages (IC) as a plurilingualism didactics, (JAMET AND SPIŢĂ 2010; ARAÚJO AND SÁ et al., 2003; CAPUCHO, 2010; ANDRADE etal.,2003), some the oriesaboutinter culturalisman didentity(Vallespir, 1999;DUARTE&SANCHES,2004; REVUZ,1998;SILVA,2000;CHAUÍ2006; SERRANI-INFANTE 1998), motivation and second language learning (DECI & RYAN, 1985; DÖRNYEI AND OTTÓ, 1998; DÖRNYEI, 2000, 2001; 2011) and Significant Learning Theory (AUSUBEL, 1968). The results show an increase of students’ motivation when in contact with the target language through dynamic activities in an IC context. Moreover, we noticed that a deeper thinking aboutthe Argentinian culture helped to deconstruct previous cultural representation.