Normalização de dispositivos móveis no processo de aprendizagem de inglês : um estudo à luz da complexidade

We live in a world inherently influenced by technology and in which education is immersed in realities made possible by the support of digital technologies, such as electronic mobile devices. Thus, the general aim of this study lies in mapping and analysing the influence of mobile devices on teaching, especially with reference to learning the English language. The specific aims are to investigate how the use of mobile devices is present in the research participants’ practices, consider whether such use is beneficial, according to the students, to the English language learning as well as mapping how the use of mobile devices favours the normalisation stage, taken in this research as a complex process.The theoretical background of this study includes the premises of the Paradigm of Complexity, especially concerning the acquisition of a second language, as well as the precepts of Normalisation, which is related to the total integration of digital technologies into the English teaching and learning process in such a way that they become invisible, and the theories of language learning mediated by computers and mobile devices. Methodologically, this is an ethnographic qualitative research and its context is a language institute located in the Triângulo Mineiro region. In addition to students from five groups in the institution, two teachers and an administrative assistant participated in the survey. Data was collected through an online questionnaire, learning reports produced by students and interviews with teachers and administrative staff. The analyses indicate that mobile devices are present in the daily practices of English learners, but these uses, in most cases, are carried out through the teacher's encouragement. Moreover, despite having positive sayings on the role of digital technologies in the process of English teaching and learning, there is, among students and teachers, a dichotomy between saying and doing about the learning contexts considered valid. Additionally, the use of mobile devices in the English learning process is not yet established as a normalised issue because the process of integration of technology in teaching is still ruled by traditional uses of the technology. I conclude that the use of mobile devices in the English learning process is still not normalised, because even if students use their mobile devices every day, they generally do not realize the affordances of such use as possibilities to learn English.

A escrita da escrita em (d)enunciação no espaço sócio-escolar: um espaço (em vão) para a (cri)atividade escrita

This thesis is a writing of (d)enunciation because it reveals the language experiencies of those individuals who take, in social school space, the social role of the teacher and of the student, for some reason, they feel restrained by a demand which prevents them of teaching and learning how to write – and, even, their own writing. On this basis, we consider some questions concerning Benveniste‘s theory of enunciation and the teaching and learning process in Portuguese from the triad among teacher – teaching of writing/ knowledge – student, making this theoretical area closer to the pedagogical one. We support in the working hypothesis that is based on the position of the loosening of this triad has its effects in the process of intervention-interference to the point where it does not leave a scar which can remain working on productive effects on the student‘s writing. As a consequence, we show two findings which allow us to think the teaching of writing in Portuguese is a space for writing creativity in such a way it reveals itself as a sine qua non condition for the institutionalized and subjective writing. The first finding is that taking genre as a model has some implications in the teaching and learning process of writing according to the instructions of the official documents. The second finding, as a result of the first one, is the assumption that genre is at the same time a model and a transgression and taking it as a (ex)sample opens space for writing creativity which ―is a transposition of the interior language‖ (BENVENISTE, 2014 [1968-1969], p. 132) in a way this creativity makes it intelligible and highlights what is a model (interactiveness) and a transgression (inventiveness). From such findings, we organize our heterogeneous corpus according to these procedures: recording the classes in audio; recording the interviews we made with teachers and students in audio; and constituting an archive with the students‘ writing production. From this corpus, we analyzed the (d)enunciative mo(ve)ments in the teacher – teaching of writing/ knowledge – student triad and the history of (d)enunciations, of language experiences. Besides, we analyzed the teacher‘s discourse in relation to the way he plans his classes based on the knowledge that must be taught and his own way of managing this knowledge in order to understand his interference in his students‘ writings. Our analyses (re)affirm that when the loosening of the triad happens, the students become lost, what makes them unable of working upon their own writing epilinguisticaly. Because of it, schools have lost their specificity as a place for teaching students how to read and write as they open space for training, only. On this basis, we consider that the effect of such a loosening generates complaints and denunciations. Therefore, based on such (d)enunciations, we present the Primary sketches of a proposition for intervention-interference in teaching how to write and we aim at introducing much knowledge to teachers and students in order to allow them to think about possible ways out.

Crenças e experiências de professores no PIBID de Língua Inglesa : interação e ressignificação?

There are diverse studies about beliefs in Applied Linguistics since 1970 or so (BARCELOS, 2004), especially beliefs about teaching and learning Foreign Languages. The research about beliefs and experiences of English language teachers, who take part in a program of teaching incentive (Pibid), and, therefore, are immersed in public schools for elementary education, is relevant, once the (ac)knowledgment of these beliefs related to their teaching and learning experiences allows these teachers to reflect about the aspects that involve their teaching practice and their role as teachers of English language. The present work aims to investigate the interaction of beliefs and experiences related to foreign language teaching and learning of teachers who are participants of Pibid, in the subproject of English Language at the Federal University of Uberlândia (UFU), in 2013. The objective is to identify the beliefs and experiences about teaching and learning that the pre-service teachers (PI), the coordinator teacher (PF) and the supervisor teachers (PS) of the program show and how their beliefs and experiences influence each other and can or cannot be redefined. This is a qualitative and interpretative master’s research, in which I analized one narrative of each PI, one interview of PF and another of each PS, and, also, two meetings – the first between the PF and the PIs, and the second between all the participants in the subproject. All the data was collected at the end of their participation in Pibid, approximately one year and six months later. Therefore, I raised some beliefs and experiences about English language teaching and learning present in the teachers’ discourse and analized excerpts in their speech that evidenced the interaction with other participants and its influence to the formation, confirmation, demystification and redefinition of their beliefs. The results of this analysis bring elements that may help the constant reflection of university teachers, teachers in practice and pre-service teachers about the aspects that involve the teaching experiences in public schools.

Estudo contrastivo da interlíngua em corpus oral e escrito de aprendizes de ele

El presente trabajo tiene como objetivo hacer una representación de los “errores” producidos por los aprendices de español del Curso de Letras (Habilitación en Español de la Universidad Federal de Uberlândia. Para este fin, fue compilado un corpus lingüístico a partir de las producciones orales y escritos de los alumnos del segundo, cuarto, sexto y octavo semestre. Los principales temas y autores que dieron sustento teórico a nuestro estudio, en cuanto a los análisis descriptivos fueron: Interlengua (CORDER, 1967; SELINKER, 1972; BARALO, 1999, 2004; DURAO, 2007), Lingüística Contrastiva (SÖHRMAN, 2007), Modelo para Análisis de Errores (DURAO, 2004; ANDRADE, 2011; SANTOS GARGALLO, 2004), entre los principales. Cabe destacar que adoptamos una perspectiva de análisis de base empírica, apoyados en los subsidios que propicia la Lingüística de Corpus (BERBER SARDINHA, 2004). Otro componente importante en esta tesis fue la metodología. Se detalla paso a paso desde el levantamiento y lectura del referencial teórico, hasta la finalización del proceso de escritura del trabajo. Presentándose de esta manera como un futuro referencial para investigaciones que se basan en la utilización de LC como abordaje metodológica, y en el análisis de errores de aprendices. Los análisis desarrollados en el transcurso de este trabajo, comprendieron primeramente el dimensionamiento de los corpora utilizados, seguido de listas de las palabras más recurrentes, análisis cuantitativos y cualitativos, los cuales constituyeron un mapeo de los “errores”, otorgando de esta manera, un valor potencial al tratarse de un estudio que podrá ser utilizado como referente para una eventual elaboración de material didáctico, pensado especialmente para las clases de español que ofrece el Curso de Letras/Habilitación en Español de la Universidad Federal de Uberlândia.

O conceito de motivação em dizeres de professores de língua inglesa

This work aimed at analyzing the speeches constructed about motivation by English teachers who teach at public state schools in the interior of Minas Gerais. We aimed at delineating the concept of subject underlying the subjects’ notion of motivation and identifying the role that the English teacher attributes to himself and to the student when he/she enunciates on motivational issues, problematizing the possible consequences of these issues for some English teachers while working in public schools. In order to do so, our investigation made use of theoretical assumptions from Applied Linguistics and Discourse Analysis. The theoretical fundamentation deriving from Bakhtin Circle as well as from Michel Pecheux’s theoretical basis were also very relevant for this research. The intersection of these studying fields entails a theoretical construction that considers the voices of those who live the social practice (MOITA LOPES, 2006), which allows one to see the subjects through their heterogeneity, fluidity and fragmentation. Moreover, it generates knowledge about language in its political, ideological, social and historical aspects. AREDA (SERRANI, 1998) was used as a theoretical and methodological framework for data collection. In our analysis, we considered the voices and the conditions of production that constitute 5 English teachers and, from some selected speeches extracted from their discursive production, some notions as intra and interdiscourse, discursive resonance, discursive memory, among others, can be seen interwoven. We hypothesize that the production of meaning deriving from these English teachers comes from a cleavage between the interdiscursivity about motivation and their position in relation to the English language. Some of these teachers’ discursive inscriptions were delineated as they follow: i) the silenced motivation, in which the teachers come up with several voices, repeating what that has already been said about motivation through silence by excess; also, through an inscription in a process of anomy, the English teachers silence motivation, as they come up with other sayings, in an anomic order, denying their identification with their mother tongue and culture because of a desire to learn the foreign language and culture; ii) the motivation in/from/ by others that resounds, in the way the teachers speak, a relation of alterity on what, in/from desire of other relations (colleagues, students, teaching materials, media, etc.), other forms and alternatives are established as a guarantee of students’ motivation; the teachers are also inscripted in in-service practice training as a space of educational development, because they imagine that the experience of the in-service practice alone, which excludes the educational instruction from the Languages course in which they graduated/were graduating at, taught them how to motivate the students; iii) the motivation as a will of power/knowledge, which means there seems to be teachers’ inscription in the relationship between power and knowledge (Foucault, 1996), disconsidering the conflicts that constitute the English classroom to say that there is a control of the English teaching and learning process and, as a result, they also sustain that they hold control over how to motivate; furthermore, the presence of a resonant voice, whose effect is given by an inscription on the (illusion of) completeness can be seen, because the English teachers believe that while motivating their students, this motivation will provide them with all the missing elements, which would mean that when they motivate students, they would be able to fulfill all the gaps in their learning process.