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.

A noção de relação na teoria linguística de Ferdinand de Saussure

Our work aims at investigating the notion of relation in Ferdinand de Saussure’s linguistic reflections. As we observe his theoretical production, we see this notion was amply worked in the elaboration of other concepts of his, for example, language, signe, value, arbitrariness, among others. However, beyond the capacity of the notion of relation to produce other concepts, the way it was conceived and the theoretical space it was placed allowed Saussure to break through the essentially historical-comparative studies of the epoch, what made a new way of thinking language to have its starting point. Taking it into account, firstly, by reading the work of Herman Paul, the one who represents the neogrammarians in our text, we examine in which way Saussure is distant from his contemporary linguistics when he distinguishes the linguistic relations and give them a new status in his investigation. Secondly, we study how the notion of relation has it own place in Saussure’s theoretical process of thinking the fundamentals which later would be considered the milestone for Modern Linguistics. For that, we analyse one of his manuscripts, Notes pour un livre sur la linguistique générale, and the Course in General Linguistics. The first is composed by sketches which would become a book, as Saussure promised in a letter to Meillet; and the latter contains the principals for the science of Linguistics. So we aim at researching how the notion of relation is treated in this corpus in order to see the way it is conceived both in the particular production of a manuscript written by Saussure itself and the book which was published and considered the turning point for Linguistics.

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.

Educação bilíngue para surdos : um estudo acerca de práticas de letramento crítico com alunos surdos usuários da Língua Brasileira de Sinais

At a time when the issue of the inclusion of hearing-impaired students in regular schools has been discussed, it becomes necessary to reflect upon the relevance of a recurrent educational process in schools specialized in education for the hearing-impaired: the bilingual schools. Such institutions, still scarce in Brazil, offer an oriented and specialized education to hearing-impaired children and adolescents, since they have the Brazilian Sign Language as a language of instruction in all subjects, and the Portuguese written language as an additional language, which gives them the bilingual status. This research aims to investigate how the practices developed in my Portuguese classes in a bilingual school have contributed to the development of student‟s literacy, specifically the Critical Literacy (STREET, 1985, 1990, 1998), in two classes of hearing-impaired students enrolled in the final grades of elementary school. It is a qualitative, ethnographic research, which uses the triangulation system for analyzing data: (i) the pedagogical sequences; (ii) the students‟ activities and (iii) the teacher‟s and students‟ written accounts registered as field notes. Through the intersection of the data, this work evaluates whether students have achieved some level of Critical Literacy, and what kind of collaboration and/or activity is relevant during this process. This research is justified by the need to evaluate practices at bilingual schools that, although supported by current law in Brazil, are still a minority whose work is still not acknowledged or valued. The results show that activities using real texts of different genres can contribute to the development of Critical Literacy, and also to dynamic classes, with discussions about relevant topics to society in Sign Language. Also, activities that encourage students to do research and that provide to the hearing-impaired student, the understanding of the real usefulness of Portuguese as an instrument for the social inclusion of the hearing-impaired providing opportunities for them to change their social position can collaborate to this process.

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.

Classificação de atividade eletromiográfia facial de indivíduos saudáveis e com hanseníese por meio de máquina de vetores de suporte

A number of studies in the areas of Biomedical Engineering and Health Sciences have employed machine learning tools to develop methods capable of identifying patterns in different sets of data. Despite its extinction in many countries of the developed world, Hansen’s disease is still a disease that affects a huge part of the population in countries such as India and Brazil. In this context, this research proposes to develop a method that makes it possible to understand in the future how Hansen’s disease affects facial muscles. By using surface electromyography, a system was adapted so as to capture the signals from the largest possible number of facial muscles. We have first looked upon the literature to learn about the way researchers around the globe have been working with diseases that affect the peripheral neural system and how electromyography has acted to contribute to the understanding of these diseases. From these data, a protocol was proposed to collect facial surface electromyographic (sEMG) signals so that these signals presented a high signal to noise ratio. After collecting the signals, we looked for a method that would enable the visualization of this information in a way to make it possible to guarantee that the method used presented satisfactory results. After identifying the method's efficiency, we tried to understand which information could be extracted from the electromyographic signal representing the collected data. Once studies demonstrating which information could contribute to a better understanding of this pathology were not to be found in literature, parameters of amplitude, frequency and entropy were extracted from the signal and a feature selection was made in order to look for the features that better distinguish a healthy individual from a pathological one. After, we tried to identify the classifier that best discriminates distinct individuals from different groups, and also the set of parameters of this classifier that would bring the best outcome. It was identified that the protocol proposed in this study and the adaptation with disposable electrodes available in market proved their effectiveness and capability of being used in different studies whose intention is to collect data from facial electromyography. The feature selection algorithm also showed that not all of the features extracted from the signal are significant for data classification, with some more relevant than others. The classifier Support Vector Machine (SVM) proved itself efficient when the adequate Kernel function was used with the muscle from which information was to be extracted. Each investigated muscle presented different results when the classifier used linear, radial and polynomial kernel functions. Even though we have focused on Hansen’s disease, the method applied here can be used to study facial electromyography in other pathologies.

Classificação de atividade eletromiográfia facial de indivíduos saudáveis e com hanseníase por meio de máquina de vetores de suporte

A number of studies in the areas of Biomedical Engineering and Health Sciences have employed machine learning tools to develop methods capable of identifying patterns in different sets of data. Despite its extinction in many countries of the developed world, Hansen’s disease is still a disease that affects a huge part of the population in countries such as India and Brazil. In this context, this research proposes to develop a method that makes it possible to understand in the future how Hansen’s disease affects facial muscles. By using surface electromyography, a system was adapted so as to capture the signals from the largest possible number of facial muscles. We have first looked upon the literature to learn about the way researchers around the globe have been working with diseases that affect the peripheral neural system and how electromyography has acted to contribute to the understanding of these diseases. From these data, a protocol was proposed to collect facial surface electromyographic (sEMG) signals so that these signals presented a high signal to noise ratio. After collecting the signals, we looked for a method that would enable the visualization of this information in a way to make it possible to guarantee that the method used presented satisfactory results. After identifying the method's efficiency, we tried to understand which information could be extracted from the electromyographic signal representing the collected data. Once studies demonstrating which information could contribute to a better understanding of this pathology were not to be found in literature, parameters of amplitude, frequency and entropy were extracted from the signal and a feature selection was made in order to look for the features that better distinguish a healthy individual from a pathological one. After, we tried to identify the classifier that best discriminates distinct individuals from different groups, and also the set of parameters of this classifier that would bring the best outcome. It was identified that the protocol proposed in this study and the adaptation with disposable electrodes available in market proved their effectiveness and capability of being used in different studies whose intention is to collect data from facial electromyography. The feature selection algorithm also showed that not all of the features extracted from the signal are significant for data classification, with some more relevant than others. The classifier Support Vector Machine (SVM) proved itself efficient when the adequate Kernel function was used with the muscle from which information was to be extracted. Each investigated muscle presented different results when the classifier used linear, radial and polynomial kernel functions. Even though we have focused on Hansen’s disease, the method applied here can be used to study facial electromyography in other pathologies.

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.

O /R/ em posição de coda silábica na cidade de Uberlândia

The aim of this research is to describe and analyze the realization of the /R/ at the end of the syllable (coda) in the city of Uberlândia-MG, taking into account variationist aspects and possible phonological phenomena that permeates the variable realization of this segment. We used the labovian variationist methodology, that gave us the needed support to investigate and systematize the variation of one linguistic community. The corpus was compound by 5139 occurrences of /R/, which 2528 were retroflex realizations, 2480 were deletions and 132 were occurrences of other segments. The informants of this research were stratified by: sex; age group; scholarly; they were born in Uberlândia or they arrived in this city before fifth birthday. Beyond the extralinguistic variables (sex, age group and scholarty), we established as linguistic variables: following context; previous context; tonicity of syllable; lexical item; coda position in the syllable; and, at last, the word size. After the statistic analisis computed by the Goldvarb software, the favoring contexts to the retroflex realization were: coronal segments in the following context; labial segments in the previous context; unstressed syllables; nouns and others (non verbs); and words with one syllable. The favoring contexts to deletion were: dorsal segments int the following context and verbs. The extra linguistic variables favored the variation less scholarty. So, the factors male sex and age group from 26 to 49 years favored the retroflex variant, while the factors female and the age group with more than 49 years favored the deletion.

O funcionamento da comunidade discursiva constituída em torno das fanfictions

Dans le contexte du cyberespace, il peut voir qu'il ya beaucoup de jeunes qui produisent des histoires de fiction en fonction de leurs univers de fiction préférés; ceux-ci sont les fanfictions. Il est remarqué, encore, qu'il ya, autour de les fanfictions, l'organisation d'une communauté discursive - constituée par des pratiques discursives de ficwriters (producteurs de fanfictions), lecteurs, betareaders (examinateurs de fanfictions) et webmistresses (administrateurs des sites ou des blogs qui publient les fanfictions). Une de ces pratiques, qui est devenu très fréquent, est le manuel de comme de faire des fanfictions. Nous cherchons, dans cette dissertation, à analyser le fonctionnement de la communauté constituée autour de les fanfictions et, plus spécifiquement, comment les ficwriters, que sont membres de cette communauté, traitent des manuels de fanfictions. Le corpus de notre recherche est essentiellement constitué par fanfictions sur Harry Potter, publiée dans les sites Floreios e Borrões et Niah fanfiction, et des textes qui se disent comme " manuel de comme de faire des fanfictions ", trouvé dans les sites et les blogs liée à fanfictions. Pour analyser ces textes, nous nous servons fondamentalement de concepts postulés par Dominique Maingueneau dans les livres Gênese dos Discursos (2008b) et Discurso Literário (2009). Notre hypothèse est que les manuels de fanfictions sont un moyen d'institutionnaliser les signes d'appartenance de communauté discursive formée autour de les fanfictions, et que cette tentative d'institutionnalisation laisse des traces dans le fonctionnement de l'instance de inscripteur: les ficwriters se positionner par rapport à ces manuels – que, dans une certaine mesure, de normaliser l'espace de l'interlangue - pour constituer le code langagier de votre fanfictions, qui affirme les signes d'appartenance dans cette communauté.

A noção de sistema na fundação da linguística moderna

This work is intended to investigate the saussurian notion of system. Such a notion is fundamental to Ferdinand de Saussure's theorization, since it composes the definition of "langue", as he thought it. This definition was crucial to the delimitation of linguistics' specific object of study, which granted its place among modern sciences. However, the notion of system was not created by Saussure. Not only in Linguistics, but also in other areas, this notion appeared in very ancient studies, mingling with the establishment of man in society and the development of their economic and organizational activities. Specifically, in the context of language studies, the system consists in a notion that composed the work of the first grammarians in the West, in ancient Greece. Moreover, this notion was also used afterwards, in the synonymy studies and in the comparative analysis of languages, developed by scholars of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, although Saussure had had his formation in Leipzig and Berlim, amid comparatists studies, his notion of system is an innovation, while is also continuing. In light of this, we aim to highlight the aspects of the saussurian notion of system that allow the establishment of a relationship of continuity and rupture with other conceptions of system. For that, we will investigate four Saussure authored documents: the « Cours de linguistique générale », the « Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes », and the two sets of manuscripts « De l'essence double du langage » and « Notes pour le cours III ».

As vogais médias tônicas: um estudo contrastivo da metafonia com base em corpus

This research analyzes the average previous stressed vowels [ε] and [e] and later [ɔ] and [o] in nominal and verbal forms in the 1st person singular and 3rd person singular and plural in the present tense, specifically the umlaut process of mid vowels /e/ and /o/, which assimilate in /ε/ and /ᴐ/ in stressed position. The general objective of this research is to describe and quantify the occurrence of umlaut and subsequently analyze in which words there is regularity or not. As specific objectives we have: i) to compile and to label an oral, spontaneous, synchronic and regional corpus, from radio programs produced in the city of Ituiutaba, Minas Gerais; ii) to describe the characteristics of the corpus to be compiled; iii) to investigate the alternating timbre of mid vowels in stressed position; iv) to identify instances of nominal and verbal umlaut of the middle vowels in stressed position; v) to describe the identified cases of nominal and verbal umlaut; vi) to analyze the probable causes for the variation of the middle vowels. To perform the proposed analysis, we have adopted as a theoretical-methodological basis multi-representational models: Phonology of Use (BYBEE, 2001) and Exemplar Theory (PIERREHUMBERT, 2001) combined with the precepts of Corpus Linguistics (BEBER SARDINHA, 2004). The corpus consisted of 16 radio programs – eight political and eight religious – from the city of Ituiutaba-MG, with recordings of about 20 to 40 minutes. We note, by means of the results generated by WordSmith Tools® software, version 6.0 (SCOTT, 2012), that the analyzed forms show little variation, which shows that the umlaut is a process already lexicalized in participants of the radio programs analyzed. We conclude that the results converge with the proposal of the Phonology of Use (BYBEE, 2001; PHILLIPS, 1984) that less frequent words that have no phonetic environment conducive to change, are changed first.

A nasalidade no dialeto quilombola do Norte de Minas: uma análise contrastiva baseada em corpus

This research investigated the nasality of vowels in the spontaneous speech of inhabitants of the quilombola communities of Brejo dos Crioulos and Poções (MG). As a theoretical framework, we based on the assumptions of Phonetics and Phonology, in renowned scholars on the investigation of nasality (CAGLIARI, 1977; CÂMARA JR., 1984, 2013; BISOL, 2013; ABAURRE; PAGOTTO, 1996; SILVA, 2015), with subsidies of the Corpus Linguistics. Its general goal was to investigate the occurrence of nasality, in the dialect of these quilombola communities, and their linguistic behavior, considering the linguistic factors that can interfere in the phenomenon. Specifically it was aimed to a) detect the occurrence of nasalized vowels with the help of the resources that the Corpus Linguistics provides (Praat and WorldSmith Tolls); b) discriminate the different types of occurring contexts of nasalized vowels; c) make quantitative and qualitative analyzes of the nasalized vowels in the study corpus; d) describe and analyze the behavior of nasalized vowels and; e) contrast the values of F1 and F2 of the oral and nasalized vowels. It was hypothesized that the nasality happens because it is conditioned by the nasal segment following the nasalized vowel - phonological process of “assimilation” - its position as the primary stress and grammatical category. It was believed that the quilombolas communities of Brejo dos Crioulos and Poções produce nasalized vowels in their speech and this linguistic phenomenon is favored by the adjacent presence of consonants or nasal vowels. Furthermore, it was hypothesized that the values of F1 and F2 of oral and nasalized vowels in these communities are distinct. The following research questions were elaborated: (i) is the presence of nasalized vowels in the speech of these quilombola communities conditioned to the presence of a nasal sound segment? (ii) does the nasal sound segment following the nasalized vowel favor the occurrence of the nasality phenomenon? is there a difference between the values of F1 and F2 of the oral and nasalized vowels in both quilombola communities considered? To compose our corpus, 24 interviews recordings were used (12 female speakers and 12 male speakers), a total of 24 participants. It was found that the following nasal sound segment tends to condition the nasalized vowel. In general, it assimilates the lowering of the soft palate of nasal consonant segment immediately following, but there are cases of nasal vowel segment - regressive assimilation; the stressed syllable tends to favor the nasality, but it occurs in pretonic and postonic position as well; F1 and F2 values of oral and nasalized vowels in the quilombola communities of Poções and Brejo dos Crioulos are distinct: the group of Brejo dos Crioulos tends to produce the F1 of oral and nasalized vowels more lowered than the group of Poções and the F2, in a more anterior position. The nasality tends to occur in verbs and nouns, although it is not specific to a grammatical category. This research found cases of spurious nasalization, confirming previous studies. In turn, it revealed cases of lexical items with favorable context for nasalization, but with its non-occurrence. This last case, considered as the lowering of the uniform soft palate in PB, presented pronounced vowels without the soft palate lowering. That is, it was detected variation in the phenomenon of nasalization in PB. With this work, it was promoted the discussion about nasality, in order to contribute to the linguistic studies about the functioning of Brazilian Portuguese in this geographical context.