Students’ Perspectives on Extensive Literature : Using Literature to Enhance Communicative Competence and Cultural Understanding in the EFL-Classroom

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the use of literature within the Swedish Upper Secondary EFL-classroom from the students’ perspective. How do the students in the study relate to literature and its use to enhance and enable their communicative competence and cultural understanding? Also, how do their answers compare with their teacher’s and the adult perspectives and findings from previous international research? The empirical data obtained from the study has been analysed from the perspectives of sociocultural and motivational theory, and the findings show that the participating students believe literature to be a good didactic tool to apply in the EFL-classroom, both in order to enhance their communicative competence and their cultural understanding. The students prefer to have a sociocultural approach to their literature-learning, with group-discussions of various sizes. The key for the students in this respect is interesting, relevant and engaging subject-matter, as well as a positive and motivational teacher. The responses given by the students correlate with those given by their teacher as well as previous international research. The students regard literature as a way of gaining new perspectives, as well as experiencing language in use. Where they diverge somewhat from the international research is in regard to literature’s use for enhancing their competence to speak in class, and that some students seem to think that communication and cultural understanding are separable. Future studies within this field might include the conducting of a larger and more in-depth survey regarding the students’ ideas about literature, culture and communication. Why do so many of the student respondents neither agree nor disagree with the statement concerning communication and cultural understanding being inseparable? This can be an important issue to investigate in today’s global climate of cross-cultural and intercultural experiences, especially in view of the political climate of diverse attitudes towards refugees, immigrants and emigration

Using an animated pedagogical agent to interact affectively with the student

This work proposes an animated pedagogical agent that has the role of providing emotional support to the student: motivating and encouraging him, making him believe in his self-ability, and promoting a positive mood in him, which fosters learning. This careful support of the agent, its affective tactics, is expressed through emotional behaviour and encouragement messages of the lifelike character. Due to human social tendency of anthropomorphising software, we believe that a software agent can accomplish this affective role. In order to choose the adequate affective tactics, the agent should also know the student’s emotions. The proposed agent recognises the student’s emotions: joy/distress, satisfaction/disappointment, anger/gratitude, and shame, from the student’s observable behaviour, i. e. his actions in the interface of the educational system. The inference of emotions is psychologically grounded on the cognitive theory of emotions. More specifically, we use the OCC model which is based on the cognitive approach of emotion and can be computationally implemented. Due to the dynamic nature of the student’s affective information, we adopted a BDI approach to implement the affective user model and the affective diagnosis. Besides, in our work we profit from the reasoning capacity of the BDI approach in order for the agent to deduce the student’s appraisal, which allows it to infer the student’s emotions. As a case study, the proposed agent is implemented as the Mediating Agent of MACES: an educational collaborative environment modelled as a multi-agent system and pedagogically based on the sociocultural theory of Vygotsky.

A formação do formador de professores: perspectivas de colaboração entre graduandos e pós-graduandos no projeto Teletandem Brasil

Este artigo apresenta os resultados de um estudo qualitativo realizado no projeto Teletandem Brasil sobre os processos de supervisão e estratégias pedagógicas utilizadas por uma mediadora no processo de mediação de um par interagente. Baseando-nos no paradigma da formação reflexiva, na teoria sociocultural de Vygotsky e na aprendizagem colaborativa de línguas, com especial ênfase para o regime tandem, analisamos as contribuições da relação colaborativa formada entre uma aluna de pós-graduação e uma aluna-professora em formação. Os resultados trazem implicações para o campo da formação de professores de línguas, em relação a uma perspectiva de formação na prática, evidenciando a experiência de ensino e aprendizagem colaborativos no Teletandem como uma oportunidade para a formação reflexiva do aluno-professor, o interagente, e também do futuro formador de professores, o mediador.

A oralidade na sala de aula de língua inglesa de alunos ingressantes no curso de Letras: contribuições para a formação do professor

Pós-graduação em Estudos Linguísticos - IBILCE

Uma Proposta de utilização de um software educacional para o ensino de poliedros

This paper presents an educational proposal to use an educational software for the teaching of mathematics, following in the conduct of activities, the main aspects of sociocultural theory of Vygotsky. For this, it chose the Poly educational software, with which were developed teaching and learning activities for the polyhedra content provided in the São Paulo State Mathematics curriculum for the 7th year of elementary school. The objectives of this pedagogical proposal are to stimulate situations of social interaction among students and between students and the teacher, using an educational software as a mediator instrument and present a different way of using digital technology in math classes, aiming production of mathematical knowledge

Uma Proposta de utilização de um software educacional para o ensino de poliedros

This paper presents an educational proposal to use an educational software for the teaching of mathematics, following in the conduct of activities, the main aspects of sociocultural theory of Vygotsky. For this, it chose the Poly educational software, with which were developed teaching and learning activities for the polyhedra content provided in the São Paulo State Mathematics curriculum for the 7th year of elementary school. The objectives of this pedagogical proposal are to stimulate situations of social interaction among students and between students and the teacher, using an educational software as a mediator instrument and present a different way of using digital technology in math classes, aiming production of mathematical knowledge

L1 en el aula de L2: ¿por qué no?

Una de las cuestiones más polémicas que ha recorrido la enseñanza de lenguas modernas a lo largo de todo el siglo XX ha sido, sin duda, el debate sobre el empleo de la primera lengua de los estudiantes en el aula de idiomas. A ese respecto, han sido muchos y muy variados los argumentos a favor y en contra. Nuestro artículo se propone revisar tanto las razones que se han argüido para rechazar la presencia de la L1 en la clase de lenguas extranjeras como las que se aducen para incluirla, con especial atención a las aportaciones más recientes de la Teoría sociocultural del aprendizaje de idiomas. No se trata de un tema meramente lingüístico, sino que entran en juego también factores de índole psicológica, social y cultural, que vinculan directamente este asunto con los fenómenos de multicompetencia y plurilingüismo.

Literacy Content and Core Practices: Teacher Educator Pedagogy as the Bridge Between Knowing and Doing

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-04