Most Brazilian students learning English face difficulty when studying thepresent perfect. It is one of the most challenging aspects of the Englishlanguage for Portuguese speakers due to the similar form with a divergentsemantic value. The Brazilian Portuguese present perfect forces iteration andthe student automatically transfers the same meaning when translating anEnglish sentence literally. Brazilian learners get confused about when and inwhat situations to use the English present perfect and frequently are not able todistinguish it from the simple past use. This study is comprised of two parts.First, a comparative study was done to investigate which Portuguese tensetranslators of famous literary books consider to be equivalent to the Englishpresent perfect according to the message which is being conveyed. Thedatabase used was the bidirectional parallel corpus of English and PortugueseCOMPARA. Second, textbooks developed to teach English in Brazil wereanalyzed in order to verify from what perspective students were beinginstructed concerning the present perfect and whether the semantic differencesbetween the two languages were pointed out. According to the translationcorpus, the English present perfect is mostly equivalent to Brazilian Portuguesesimple past. Adverbs are also often needed to express the English presentperfect meaning in Portuguese. The textbooks were found to present poorexplanations and seem not to call the learners’ attention to the source of the problems. Textbooks do not stress the importance of the semantic value and thecontext, and do not call attention to the different meanings between theBrazilian and the English present perfect.

[pt] A valorização do professor é de suma importância para seu crescimento profissional. Ela pode se dar de diversas formas. O foco da presente dissertação é tentar compreender de que formas essa valorização é entendida por três profissionais da área de ensino de língua inglesa da cidade do Rio de Janeiro. Através de entrevistas individuais e autobiográficas, cada uma das professoras aponta sua trajetória profissional e o que as motiva a pensar em deixar a carreira ou prosseguir nela pelo prisma do que entendem por valorização em sua área de atuação. A pesquisa é qualitativa e interpretativa na tentativa de compreender o que motiva as entrevistadas. Mesmo partindo de contextos distintos (escola pública, curso livre de inglês e escola particular), as três possuem visões comuns no que diz respeito à liberdade de atuação, remuneração e identidades impostas pela lógica mercantilista que o neoliberalismo trouxe para dentro do cenário de ensino. Todas dialogam, tendo ou não conhecimento teórico prévio, com teorias sobre valorização profissional docente, através de uma corrente da Linguística Aplicada voltada para as profissões. / [en] Teachers professional appreciation is of the utmost importance for their professional development. It can be achieved in a plethora of ways. The present dissertation focuses on trying to understand in which ways such valorization is perceived by three professionals of the area of English language teaching-learning in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Through individual and autobiographical interviews, each of the teachers discusses their professional journey and what motivates them to either consider leaving their profession or continue working as teachers, as they attempt to comprehend what professional appreciation is in their area of expertise. The research is qualitative and interpretative attempting to understand what motivates the interviewees. Even coming from different backgrounds (public schools, English courses and private schools), the three of them share similar visions in relation to freedom of agency, salary and identities imposed by the mercantilist agenda brought about by neoliberalism to schools. Regardless of having theoretical background knowledge about the theme, all of them echo theories about professional appreciation, also related to Applied Linguistics of the professions.

The general aim of this study was to investigate the implementation of active learning approaches in the teaching of English Language support courses to first-year university students. The study was planned to identify factors that affected the implementation of active learning in classrooms where English as a Foreign Language (EFL) is taught, the perceptions of EFL instructors and their students regarding active learning, the linkage between assessment practices and productive skills, and the commonly used types of active learning techniques. The study was conducted in three Ethiopian universities and employed a qualitative approach to data generation and analysis. As such, data generation strategies focused on relevant documents, classroom observation, individual interviews, and focus group discussions. The participants of the study included 27 EFL instructors and their students (17 groups of focus group discussion), enrolled for English Language support courses at freshman level. Based on my analysis of the data, the primary barriers to the implementation of active learning techniques in EFL classrooms were as follows: Students’ poor background exposure to the English language; Students’ negative associations with language learning; EFL instructors’ ineffective classroom management; The adverse influence of students’ external social environments; Dependency in group work; low relevance of English Language support courses; Lack of administrative support from Universities. The participants of the study were aware of the importance of active learning and student-centred approaches and in favour of the implementation thereof. Despite this, they did not feel that they practised them effectively in the teaching and learning process. In fact, the instructors explained that, in the face of very unfavourable circumstances for active learning and student-centred approaches, they felt utterly disappointed, with no sense of achievement, when attempting to use these approaches in their classrooms; they did not believe that the existing situation was conducive to the implementation of active learning and student-centred approach. Furthermore, these EFL instructors did not use a variety of active learning techniques in the teaching and learning process of English supportive courses. The dominant techniques they used were group work and pair work. They did not utilise alternative techniques to teach essential productive skills (i.e. speaking and writing).The participants also indicated that the assessment techniques they used were not closely related to lesson objectives or language learning goals in the development of productive skills. The relationship between assessment types and active learning techniques was characterised by traditional pencil-and-paper tests designed solely for grading purposes; and not to improve the actual learning process. In grading, the weight given to productive skills was very small in contrast to that assigned to receptive skills (i.e. listening and reading), grammar and vocabulary. Their relationship involved teaching simply to prepare students for tests, irrelevant and untimely feedback, substandard assessment, absence of dynamism in the two-dimensional assessment techniques, and incongruence between assessment techniques and actual language skills and competence. In relation to feedback, both the students and their instructors pointed out that EFL students were more concerned with their grades than with the potential to learn when receiving feedback on their writing or oral presentations. In line with these findings, this thesis concluded by offering relevant recommendations for alleviating the problems observed in the teaching of English language support courses - both in general and with particular regard to productive skills development. / Curriculum and Instructional Studies / D. Ed. (Didactics)