A tale of two Montreal communities: parental perspectives on their children's multi-lingual and multi-literate development

This comparative inquiry examines the multi-/bilingual nature and cultural diversity of two distinctly different linguistic and ethnic communities in Montreal – English speakers and Chinese speakers – with a focus on the multi/bilingual and multi/biliterate development of children from these two communities who attend French-language schools, by choice in one case and by law in the other. In both of these communities, children traditionally achieve academic success. The authors approach this investigation from the perspective of the parents’ aspirations and expectations for, and their support of and involvement in, their children’s education. These two communities share key similarities and differences that, when considered together, help to clarify a number of issues involving multi/biliteracy development, socio-economic and linguistic capital, minority/majority language status, mother-tongue support, home–school continuities, and linguistic identity.

At the Front: common traitors in West German war films of the 1950s

The article looks at the figure of the traitor in 1950s’ West German films about World War II. It focuses on the representation of Wehrmacht soldiers who entertain relations with the Soviet enemy and are therefore seen to betray their nation. The discussion of three well-known films – 08/15, Der Arzt von Stalingrad, and Unruhige Nacht – shows these ‘traitors’ to have a highly ambivalent function: their narrative punishment is part of German post-war exculpation, yet they are also reminders of German guilt and ethical responsibility towards the ‘other’.

Change in the archive: Blanchot's 'L'Entretien infini'

Today we are faced with the problem of how to relate the archives of deconstructionist thinkers to their thought, which seems opposed to historically-oriented or genetic criticism. This article is the first to look comprehensively at the gestation of Maurice Blanchot's L'Entretien infini, including the work's page-proofs which were made available in 2009. I thus address the multiple processes of change at work throughout Blanchot's writing, with change being a process whose importance goes beyond any single new form of writing resulting from it. My presentation of the archival material is contextualized via a discussion of the notion of L'Absence de livre (the project's working title). Rather than being a straightfoward incompleteness or fragmentation, this notion establishes a fraught relationship between such ideas and what it calls ‘le Livre’.

English-medium instruction in Sweden : Perspectives and practices in two upper secondary schools

This thesis presents English-medium instruction (EMI) in the Swedish context, focusing on perspectives and practices in two schools. The research question is as follows: How and why is EMI offered, chosen, and practiced in the Swedish upper secondary school today? The aim is to explore the status of the educational option, the reasons for offering EMI to stakeholders, the stakeholders’ beliefs about and goals of EMI, and the implementation of EMI in the classroom. A survey of all upper secondary schools in Sweden was conducted to ascertain the spread of content teaching through a foreign language. The educational context was studied from an ecological perspective using methods based in linguistic ethnography. Language alternation, academic language, and language hierarchy were all considered. Interviews were analysed for content; and classroom language use was analysed for language choice and function. The concepts of affordance and scaffolding together with translanguaging were key. The de facto policies of the micro contexts of the schools were examined in light of the declared national policy of the macro context of Sweden. The results indicate that the option in Swedish schools has not increased, and also tends to only be EMI—not Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) or instruction through other languages. EMI is offered for prestige, an international profile, marketing potential and personal interest. EMI students are academically motivated and confident, and see the option as “fun”. 100% EMI in the lessons is not the goal or the practice. Translanguaging is abundant, but how language alternation is perceived as an affordance or not differs in the two schools. One focuses on how the languages are used while the other focuses on how much each language is used. In conclusion, the analysis suggests that a development of definitions and practices of EMI in Sweden is needed, especially in relation to language policy and language hierarchy.

Aprendizagem de escrita de língua de sinais pelo sistema SignWriting : língua de sinais no papel e no computador

Esta tese trata de como o sistema SignWriting pode servir de suporte a uma nova proposta pedagógica ao ensino da escrita de língua de sinais e letramento para crianças surdas usuárias da Língua Brasileira de Sinais - Libras e da Língua de Sinais Francesa - LSF. Escrever deve ser uma atividade significativa para a criança. No caso da criança surda, a escrita fundamenta-se em sua competência na língua de sinais, sem precisar da intermediação da língua oral. A criança surda, quando em um ambiente onde ela e seus colegas se comunicam em língua de sinais, efetivamente tenta escrever sinais, quando é incentivada a fazê-lo. Em nossos experimentos, usamos o sistema SignWriting para mostrar ás crianças surdas (e a seus pais e professores) como escrever textos em línguas de sinais de ambas as formas: manuscrita e impressa, usando o programa Sign Writer para editar textos em línguas de sinais. A base teórica que apóia a tese é a abordagem bilíngüe para a educação de surdos, a língua de sinais, a teoria de Piaget, e de Ferreiro quando trata das etapas da alfabetização em língua oral. Esta investigação possui um caráter exploratório, em que o delineamento metodológico é dado pela pesquisa-ação. O primeiro estudo apresenta um levantamento do processo de aquisição da escrita de sinais, em sua forma manuscrita, pela criança e jovem surdo no Brasil e na França. O segundo estudo trata da ajuda que a informática pode dar a essa aquisição e de como utilizamos os softwares de escrita de língua de sinais em aulas de introdução ao uso do computador e em transcrições da LSF de corpus vídeo para a escrita de língua de sinais. Os resultados sugerem que as crianças evoluem em sua escrita, pois muitos signos que elas escreveram não foram sugeridos pela experimentadora, nem por outro meio, mas surgiram espontaneamente. A introdução de um software como o Sign Writer ou o SW-Edit nas classes para introduzir as TI traz a essas aulas muito maior interesse do que quando usamos um editor de textos na língua oral. Também as produções das crianças são mais sofisticadas. As conclusões indicam que a escrita de língua de sinais incorporada à educação das crianças surdas pode significar um avanço significativo na consolidação de uma educação realmente bilíngüe, na evolução das línguas de sinais e aponta para a possibilidade de novas abordagens ao ensino da língua oral como segunda língua.

Arquitetura residencial em João Pessoa-PB a experiência moderna nos anos 1970

In the mid-1980s, the magazine Projeto published the Actual Brazilian Architecture catalogue presenting texts by Hugo Segawa and Ruth Verde Zein with a corpus of works and engaged architects of the 1960s and 1970s. To comprehend the Brazilian architectural production post-1964, in those years of the 1980s, became a significant mission to reactivate the Brazilian architectural debate weakened by the military dictatorship. In his doctoral thesis Spadoni (2003) deals with the different ways which characterizes the Brazilian architectural production of the 1970s. Marked by inventiveness, this production was in tune with the modern thinking and in the transition period between the 1970s and the 1980s it synchronized with the international debate about post-modern architecture. Considering Spadoni s doctoral thesis, this work deals with the modern experience observed in the one-family-houses built in the seventies in João Pessoa. Some modern experiences were not clear outside, to observe it, it was necessary to search for the type of experience into the spatial disposition and of the know-how constructive, because into the appearance some houses not make explicit the use of the modern language. Other observed experiences allude to the repertoire of the Brazilian period in the years 1940s-1960s, to the experience of the modern architecture in São Paulo of the 1960s, to the experiences in which the climate of the Northeastern region strongly influenced the architectural conception. We can also find in a reduced number of houses a particular experience: it refers to experiences that expose the constructive doing, which leave the material apparent and apply to the residential type the experience of the industrial pre-fabricated buildings

O professor e sua formação linguística: uma interlocução teoria-prática

The work in screen constitutes a study of entitled doutoramento THE teacher and your linguistic formation: a dialogue teoria-prática. In him, the researcher, discoursing on subjects that involve the teaching-learning of the verbal language, it focalizes the importance of the linguistic formation for professionals that act in the years you begin of the Fundamental Education. In that perspective, lens to analyze the interrelações among them you know about the teachers, referring to the language (verbal), mobilized in the process teaching-learning of the production of texts written by the students, enrolled in the years you begin of the fundamental teaching. For so much, it developed a research Colaborativa, of qualitative nature, with four partícipes, being three of them teachers of the empiric field, EETB (pointed school for the " Prova Brasil " (2005) as among the ten Brazilian schools with the worst index of revenue discente in the abilities to read, to write and to interpret) and the other (researcher) educational of UERN. The research made use of several methodological procedures, among which stand out: questionnaire, glimpses, reflexive sessions and cycles of reflexive studies, among others. These specific of the Methodology of the Elaboration Conceptual Ferreiriana, adopted in the process of (re)elaboration, for the partícipes of the language concepts, text, textual gender, spoken language and written language. With relationship to the analytic procedures, those were based in contributions of the theory of the formation of concepts, of the Applied Linguistics and of the archaeology of the elect concepts. The results appear that the process of linguistic formation, established through the research colaborativa and of the methodology of the elaboration conceptual ferreiriana, uniting knowledge of the areas of the Education and of the Language, it was productive and he/she reveals a narrow relationship among the acquired knowledge for the partícipes, the (re)organization of the process teachinglearning of the language and the improvement of the productions written by the students of those educational ones

O gênero crônica na sala de aula do ensino médio

In this work we present the results of a research that aims to study the chronicle gender produced in a class of native language. The texts were written by students of a high-school class, under the orientation of the teacher who conducted a didactic sequence in order to explore this gender. In our analysis we observed aspect such as the structure of the general structure of the texts, types of speech and linguistic sequences, some mechanisms of textualization and the characteristics of the gender. In order to attain that, we adopted the theoretical presuppositions of Textual Linguistics and of the Socio-discursive Interactionism, grounding the study of texts and gender in Bronckart (2003; 2006) and Koch (2002; 2004). As a background of the Chronicle Gender we used the studies of Coutinho (1987); Moisés (2003); Sá (2005); Bender; Laurito (1993); Melo (1994); Cândido et al. (1992) among others. The corpus, made up of 15 texts, showed that the narrative is the most used linguistic sequence in the producing of the texts, the discursive world prevailing in the narrative and some instances of the world of exposing. As for the gender characteristics, the daily life was used in order to amuse the reader and make him to reflect upon the daily life. Humor, irony, social criticism and colloquial language were also observed in the texts produced by the students. Although some texts presented the characteristics of the gender, explored in the classroom, some were typically school narratives. That make us believe that a work with textual production under the approach of a text gender is viable, but it is not consolidated yet in many schools as the main object of the central teaching of the Portuguese language. This make us defend a better systematization of the teaching contents having as the main point the reading practice and text production in order to contribute for the growing of the students´ discursive potentialities and, therefore, their effective participation in the language social practices

O papel da leitura nas aulas de inglês: uma análise segundo a percepção dos professores do ensino médio de escolas públicas estaduais de Natal

This dissertation aims at investigating the teachers beliefs about the role of the reading ability in English at public state high schools in Natal and identifying the social value of the process of learning English for students of a foreign language. From the understanding of studies on reading, both in the field of Cognitive Psychology, as in Gibson & Levin (1975), as in the area of Psycholinguistics, as in Goodman (1970) and Del Re (2006), We researched the teachers perceptions about the skills and competencies that should permeate their educational practices, through their knowledge about theories of language acquisition as Cognitivism (Piaget, 1961) and Social Interactionism (Vygotsky, 1979) and the official documents (PCNEM, 1999; PCN+, 2002 ) that are the parameters for teaching a foreign language. We took into consideration other factors that influence the choice of the goals and the objectives to be worked out, such as: intensity of teachers workload, number of classes and students per class for each teacher, materials and technologies available, among other factors that will play an important role in the choice of the appropriate methodologies. To conduct a case study, two questionnaires were used in the construction of direct interviews with fourteen English teachers in twenty schools. According to data on the teachers beliefs we could find that for them the reading ability does not seem to have an special treatment in the teaching of a foreign language due to factors that undermine this process and therefore make teachers do not realize the real objectives of teaching English at public state high schools in Natal. As a consequence, the current process of education complicates the formation of autonomous learners capable of fighting for a social transformation