THE PRACTICE OF ORAL PRODUCTION CONCERNING THE CONTINUING EDUCATION OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHERS AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY

The scope of the present study is to comprehend the professional identity of a group of English Teachers. The research sought the answer to the following question: How does the mastery of the speaking aspect of the English Language influence teacher’s professional identity? The choice of the topic arose during a continuing education course offered by the authors of the present work, whose partakers were EFL teachers. The research took into consideration both, experiences observed during the continuing education course and relevant data collected with the help of an open questionnaire, which participants answered at the end of the course. Contemporary literature also supported the conclusions concerning teacher’s professional identity and its close relation to two important factors: the way teachers perceive themselves and how others see them. Regarding the English Language Teacher professional identity, the participants of the research stated that professionals from this area are not as valued as they should; in their opinion, the lack of oral fluency of most teachers is a key factor on the existence of a professional misrepresentation. Results have shown that, for them, oral fluency is essential for academic and social recognition of their profession. All participants stressed the need of continuing education in terms of oral practice, due to the lack of opportunity of practicing the English Language daily. They also pointed that teachers with limited-fluency tend to avoid the use of the target language in order to “hide their deficit” on EL; on the other hand, teachers that are fluent in English “feel safer and with self-steam”. We have concluded, from our research, that the oral fluency is indeed important for the constitution of English Language teacher’s professional identity, exerting a positive influence on it. On the other hand, the fact of not being fluent in English Language contributes for the so called “teacher’s professional identity crisis”. 

MEMORIES AND TRAJECTORIES: IMPLICATIONS IN THE IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION OF THE PROFESSIONAL LANGUAGE

Teachers, as professionals, carry out an essential role in the process of the social change. For this purpose, the process of teachers’ formation are deserving highlighted in the research field of Applied Linguistics, aiming to enhance the work of language professionals. In this term, the current paper seeks to investigate the previous knowledge of the students of Letters Course at Unioeste, subjects of this study, about teaching career and professor’s identity constitution.  Simultaneously, it is discussed some implications between the educational trajectory and these students’ Professional choice, considering that it is found in the initial stage of this formative process. The adopted methodology consists of a qualitative approach from memorials, seeking to stand out the conceptions and representations of those subjects about constitution of the teacher. Among some characteristics that stand out in the narratives regarding teacher identity, are the complexity of teaching, like the profession, as well as the diverse teaching practices and 'transgressive'.

THE IMPLICATION OF PLAY AND FANTASY IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE MEANING OF CHILDREN’S ENUNCIATION

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of issues related to the meanings of children's enunciation, considering particularly the role of play and fantasy. To achieve this, we have based ourselves on theoretical and conceptual contributions from the Theory of Enunciative Operations in association with cognitive psychology, through its position towards the construction process of the enunciations and their meaning (CULIOLI, 1990; DE VOGÜÉ, FRANCKEL, PAILLARD, 2011) – and towards interactions characterized as routinized, integrated into the concept of format (BRUNER, 1983), still stressing the relationship between play, fantasy and language in early childhood (WINNICOTT, 1982). Throughout this study we presented the analysis of the speech of a male child, GUS, registered between 24 and 35 months of age, provided by published audiovisual data, recorded and transcribed through the CLAN system, that is part of NALíngua, a databank that is integrated to interdisciplinary research project coordinated by DEL RE (UNESP/FCLAr-CNPq). The analysis focuses on GUS interactions that are observed at the play with different car toys, a themed card game, also about cars, and the animated film's plot “Cars”(PIXAR, DISNEY, 2006), that are presented within a wide range of supports for the child to interact with, stimulating his verbal and nonverbal production. By examining its presence in the process of acquiring structural aspects of the language, we demonstrated how the child is able to adopt representations accessed by the use of words and expressions, due to an intersubjective process of adjustment that integrates fantasies and ludic experiences.  

"LEVY’S FRUIT OF THE LEMON" (1999) AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF IDENTITY

The slave-system, with extant repercussions on contemporary society, is accountable for the globalized exclusion scheme not only in the ex-colonies but even in the former metropolises. Official History is subverted by re-narrating what happened to non-Europeans during the last five hundred years and in Fruit of the Lemon black British author Andrea Levy utilizes orature to trigger the subjectification process in Faith Jackson, a British-born black female whose parents hail from Jamaica. Orature involve the construction of a new subject through revelations on the daily struggle for work, friendship, community-building, racial inclusion and the dire facts of the Caribbean diaspora. Since transindividual social tensions affect the British black subject, native or immigrant, the novel denounces the immigrants’ “amnesia” as a policy and the myth of a British multicultural society accepting peacefully ex-colonial subjects. Results show that remembrance through orature is a powerful means of subjectification and identity, besides being an antidote against a racialized society. In Fruit of the Lemon Levy installs an agonistic stance in which the authority of hegemonic discourse is subverted and a new liberating and hybridized discourse produced.

THE CONSTRUCTION OF FHE FUTURE IN THE PRESS DISCOURSE ON THE PRIVATIZATION OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS

In the 90s of the 20th century, Brazil has undergone significant changes in its development model, with the withdrawal of the state from economic activities. We consider how the discourse on privatization constitutes a relevant place for observation of recent Brazilian history. In this period, the privatization of state companies, among them telecommunications ones are performed. This article analyzes, based on the theoretical and methodological principles of discourse analysis in the tradition opened by Michel Pecheux, as the press feeds the imagination of future in the discourse on privatization of telecommunications companies. To do so, in order to understand the discursive relationships established in dominant commercial media, we devote our analysis to a corpus of reports and articles extracted from newspapers Folha de S. Paulo and O Estado de S. Paulo, which, in general, have taken a position in favor of privatization and changes in the Brazilian development model. The analysis shows that the future benefits are designed for the whole society. Thus, the past is represented negatively, because it would have produced bad effects on society and must therefore be rejected and denied in its historical continuity. In this discursive practice, privatization is introduced as a symbolic milestone period related to modernity and the construction of citizenship prosperity that will fall in the future to be built from this event. Positive meanings are focused in the future, which is directly related to privatization. Thus, the privatist position of the analyzed newspapers try to crystallize the sense of 'privado' as something beneficial and desirable, stabilizing a memory for the discursive event of privatization. This management of historical time, therefore, produces a line of continuity between present and future and a rupture between past and present, whose links are deleted to produce positive meaning for the privatization of the telecommunications.