DIVERSITY, TEACHING AND LANGUAGE: WHAT CHALLENGES AND COMMITMENTS WILL THE CONTEMPORARY LANGUAGE PROFESSIONAL FACE?

In general, diversity can be conceptualized as the expression of opposites (BARROS, 2008). Despite the homogenization of several kinds and in the various areas promoted by the current process of globalization, the so-called ‘flat world’ will never be able to express the whole without considering the parts. In such a context of different ways of being in the world, language learning is a crucial condition for citizenship education, it is the key to get to know other people (BYRAM, 2006). Because of that, educational processes have been going through significant changes, fostering, among other things, postures aligned with the new world order, where the preparation of learners to able to exercise their rights at a global level and take advantage of mechanisms which guarantee their intercultural citizenship, has continually gaining ground. Linguistic education has been taking a similar path. In its scope, discourses and pedagogical practices which take into consideration the sociopolitical character of any educational process start to be required. In other words, it has been demanded an egalitarian linguistic education which, above all, struggles for diversity and is able to guarantee total inclusion, creating ample opportunities, especially for those learners who come from less privileged classes and historically marginalized groups. Having human diversity in the background, the article aims to discuss the role of the contemporary language teaching professional, highlighting the challenges and commitments which await them at different levels, and the central position this professional occupies at this crucial moment of the global society in which we fight for the historical, cultural and social (re)construction of our differences.

LINGUISTIC VARIATION: A PERSPECTIVE OF EDUCATIONAL SOCIOLINGUISTICS

This study discusses the aspects related to linguistics variation from the perspective of Educational Sociolinguistics. It has as main purpose to comprehend the relation between elements resulting from Sociolinguistic and the education of Native Language, as well as to motivate a reflection about the process of teaching-learning to make a profound study of the discussion of questions related to linguistic variation in the scholar context, looking for an improvement of teaching methodology. This study makes use of a methodological approach of qualitative and bibliographic character, since it aims to develop theoretical knowledge about Educational Sociolinguistics articulating these aspects with practical elements of teaching languages. For so, it was tried to develop an education intervention proposal, in order to motivate the teachers to develop their educational practices, based on language use, communicative situations, for the purpose of improving the students communicative competence. It refers to a proposal that has not been applied yet and that should be adapted according to the extra linguistic context, in which learning community is inserted, becoming then a real intervention. For now the aim is to encourage thoughts about its viability.