Beliefs about teaching and learning English in elementary school: a case study

ABSTRACT: With this work I aim to identify and inter relate the beliefs of the students from a public school about English language learning, and my beliefs as the students’ teacher about English teaching. To conduct this research I used reflexive diaries as instruments for data collection, they were written throughout the semester by the teacher and the students in a state school from Minas Gerais. With the analysis of the diaries, I noticed that the diary is a profitable tool for the apprehension of beliefs of the students and the teacher. Furthermore, students seem to be more accountable for learning, decentralizing the role of teacher.

Writing concepts in the textbook of elementary school: writing as a consequence with nuances of gift

The text production commands from a collection of textbooks Portuguese (6 to 9 years) were analyzed in order to verify the design of writing that guides the work with this practice in the classroom. Therefore, the study is guided in Applied Linguistics, in theoretical view of Geraldi (1996) and Fiad and Mayrink-Sabison (1994) and methodological of Sercundes (1997). The analysis and systematization of data allowed to highlight the writing concepts such as work, written as a result and writing as a consequence with nuances of gift, and in this article, the commands guided are presented in the latter, given the recurrence that was used in the activities. Thus, the results indicate that the commands of the collection, guided by the concept of writing as a consequence with the nuances of gift, promote dialogue between two predefined by Sercundes conceptions (1997) written as a gift and as a result, showing their overlapping for the realization of production activity. Moreover, the written are the result of activities carried out previously, at the same time that the student is asked to use their imagination, his gift of writing at the time of production, not setting actual production conditions written to students.

LETRAMENTOS: CONCEPÇÕES DE ESCRITA E PONTUAÇÃO

One of the barriers to be overcome so that a society can achieve a reasonable level of literacy is the understanding on the part of the mediators of this process that the whole conception of teaching how to write, whether it is guided by a vision of literacy or alphabetisation, presupposes a concept of writing. To help facilitate this understanding, in this article we propose a review of the concepts of literacy, seeking to present, discuss and recognise the concept of writing present in these conceptions of literacy, as well as their representation in schools. To this end, we analyse the use of punctuation in texts written by two children in the early stages of schooling and also the proposal for the use of punctuation in a Portuguese textbook, adopted for the first grade, second year of elementary school. The results indicate that although the school and the school textbook continue to focus on an autonomous view of literacy, there are cases where children demonstrate traits of authorship in their writings, either because they have the opportunity to study in a school that understands the social functions of writing, or because they arrive from home with different interactional modes relating to written text than that which predominates in their school. The data also allows us to point to the importance of articulating more unique perspectives with social perspectives of writing, since distinctive features may be indicative of social constructions of literacy, such as a child's access to written text and the ways of interacting with the written text. In conclusion, we emphasise the importance for a teacher undergoing training to recognise the concepts of writing that are present in both theory and practice.  

BELIEFS ABOUT ENGLISH LEARNING AND TEACHING IN A TECHNICAL SCHOOL IN THE CITY OF PONTA PORÃ/MS

Abstract: This study is part of my master research, which aimed to investigate the beliefs about  English learning and teaching of students entering to a High School Course integrated to Computer Technician at a Federal High School in the city Ponta Pora / MS , located at the  border  with Paraguay . In the context , great part of the students coming from public schools in the region  had not studied English as a foreign language in elementary school , once it is located  in a region of the border with Paraguay , it offers only Spanish as a foreign language. The interest for this research came up as of conflicting situations between the teacher way of teaching and students ways of learning, especially of those who had not studied English in elementary school. Thus we tried to study the beliefs of these students, analyzing how they process in that context in order to promote reflection of the teacher  to perform actions of intervention in order to reduce the mismatches between the ways of teaching and the ways that the students believe to be the right to learn. Keywords: Beliefs; English Teaching and Learning; Context

The Practice of Reading, Writing Papers and Linguistic Analysis in Teaching Portuguese: A Proposal for the Organization of Everyday School Life from the Perspective of Multiliteracies

This paper aims to reflect on the teaching of Portuguese language in the context of twenty-first century, taking as its starting point the proposal of multiliteracies. We propose to discuss the applicability of genres in the classroom as a condition to ensure the construction of fundamental knowledge to social practices of language. For this, we rely on recent studies on the possibilities that the genre can bring to practice reading, writing papers, and linguistic analysis. We intend, therefore, to assist the planning of teachers who still find themselves unsure on curricula that suggest what they have to do, but did not say how. Understand the reason why this work is another contribution to the teaching of Portuguese in the final years of elementary school and high school bringing out a space for discussion about what needs to be taught and some teaching procedures that favor the democratization of school and interaction linguistics. Curricular innovations and new ways of thinking about teaching and learning of mother tongue are already part of the reflections of most professionals, but there is still an open field to think of more effective alternatives through multimodality an interactionist conception of language.

Text production and the classroom: a look at the public school

Through projects linked to Procad/Unioeste/UFSC, with support from Capes, CNPq and also Fundação Araucária, studies carried out on written production in elementary school. This article presents a study of the conjunctions as guiding elements of viewpoint. It reported stages of project, mainly related to the reading of text support and to the practice what kind of positing was designed in the selection process of coordinating conjunctions. The essays selected for this research reveal certain argumentative strategies that act as execution a positioning of the author of the text on understanding of how to deal with writing, considering theme compatible with the daily reality.