Esta dissertação de mestrado trata do ensino do italiano como língua estrangeira (LE) a universitários brasileiros cuja língua materna (LM) é o português brasileiro. Esses estudantes estão inscritos no curso de graduação em Língua e Literatura Italiana da Universidade de São Paulo e, no que concerne à aprendizagem da LE, estão nos níveis A2-B2 do Quadro Comum Europeu de Referência para as Línguas (QCERL, 2001). O objetivo da pesquisa é analisar os recursos participativos, indicadores das formas de colaboração e aprendizagem, empregados pelos estudantes na realização de atividades didáticas que compõem as fases de um curso baseado na metodologia Glottodrama para o ensino de línguas. Segundo Nofri (2010), por meio do uso de técnicas teatrais no ensino de LE, o Glottodrama tem, entre os seus objetivos, o desenvolvimento da habilidade de produção oral dos aprendizes de maneira que essa produção seja mais semelhante à comunicação que acontece fora da sala de aula. A abordagem adotada para a análise dos dados do corpus deste estudo fundamenta-se nas teorias de aquisição-aprendizagem de línguas, que visam à construção da competência comunicativa do aprendiz; e nos estudos interacionistas, que consideram a aquisição da língua como resultado de uma abordagem didática baseada na aprendizagem colaborativa. A partir da análise das sequências dialógicas, percebemos que, enquanto trabalhavam em grupo, para realizar as atividades didáticas para a teatralização de um texto, no plano metalinguístico, os estudantes assumiram papéis sociais distintos, de acordo com as próprias competências comunicativas (FERRONI; BIRELLO, 2013; CAMPS, 2005), e realizaram movimentos de auto e heterocorreções (DE PIETRO, MATTHEY e PY, 1989) para negociarem a compreensão do input e a melhora do output (SWAIN, 1985, 2005). No plano metacomunicativo (CILIBERTI, 2016; BATESON, 1972), os estudantes optaram pela interação criativa, em que prevaleceu o uso da LE de forma autêntica. Conclui-se que esse contexto de aprendizagem favoreceu a utilização de recursos participativos nas atividades comunicativas de forma semelhante a contextos naturais; aumentou a motivação e a integração social. Além disso, o uso funcional da LE forneceu aos estudantes a oportunidade de desenvolvimento do próprio sistema linguístico. / This study refers to teaching Italian as a foreign language (from A2 to B2 levels of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (QCERL, 2001)) to Brazilian undergraduate students, whose mother tongue is Brazilian Portuguese and take their major in Italian Language and Literature at the University of São Paulo. Our aim is to analyze the participative resources, which indicate ways of collaboration and learning, taken by the students at their performance of didactic tasks that compose the steps of a course based on Glottodrama language teaching methodology. According to Nofri (2010), Glottodrama intends to develop students\' oral ability by bringing more authentic communicative environments to the foreign language class, using theatre techniques. The corpus analysis is based on theories of language learning and acquisition, which have the objective of constructing the learner\'s communicative competence; as well as we take into consideration interactive studies, for they see interaction as a mutually constructed communicative event, leading to language acquisition and learning. The analysis of the dialogic sequences points that, whilst students had group work in order to do the didactic tasks for the theatralization of a text, on a metalinguistic level, they took different social roles, according to their own communicative competences (FERRONI; BIRELLO, 2013; CAMPS, 2005), and they also performed moves of self and peer-correction (DE PIETRO, MATTHEY e PY, 1989) in order to negotiate input understanding and output improvement (Swain, 1985, 2005). On a metacommunicative level (CILIBERTI, 2016; BATESON, 1972), the students took creative interaction, and authentic foreign language use prevailed. Therefore we may conclude that this learning context benefitted the use of participative resources in communicative tasks, similarly to natural contexts, and it also improved motivation and social integration. Nevertheless, the functional use of the foreign language has provided students with and opportunity of developing their own linguistic system.

The Storyline method requires learners to create a fictive world and take on the role of characters in a story which they develop themselves. The story, co-created with the teacher, is based around a topic in the curriculum. In the course of the story, key questions based on curriculum-mandated aims are asked by the teacher in order to engage the learners in tasks during which learning occurs. Although Storyline has been used for many years in the classroom, its applicability to the foreign language classroom has only been researched recently and not extensively. By establishing a simulated ‘real world’ and providing students with ownership of their learning, students can use and improve their language skills, developing intercultural communicative competence in a meaningful context. This action research case study investigated the impact of the Storyline method on the foreign language classroom in the context of teaching military linguist cadets at a Russian university. A fictive base of a United Nations military observation mission, invented by the students themselves, served as a meaningful context for learning. The aim of the study was to improve the effectiveness of teaching in terms of developing language skills and raising student motivation, in the context of teaching English as a foreign language to military linguist cadets. The study found that the student response was positive, with improvements in motivation and satisfaction with the teaching and learning process. Moreover, students also showed improvements in terms of English language skills. It was also discovered that Storyline could benefit from adaption to include form-focused instruction for teaching grammar points. Additionally, explicit explanations of certain Storyline activities, in particular art work, might be beneficial when working with military linguist cadets. Ultimately Storyline was found to be an effective foreign language teaching method for military linguist cadets in Russia and has potential for use in other foreign language teaching for specific purposes contexts owing to its capacity for making language learning more relevant to the real life contexts in which professionals find themselves.

Muito se escreveu sobre a integração entre ensino de língua e ensino de literatura e entre estudos lingüísticos e estudos literários. Entretanto, observa-se que a separação entre língua e literatura persiste, embora a literatura não seja pensável fora dos quadros da língua e a língua desenvolva suas máximas potencialidades na literatura. Muitos métodos de ensino de língua estrangeira recomendam que se comece a aquisição/aprendizagem de uma língua estrangeira com textos que utilizam a linguagem em função utilitária e que, mais tarde, se introduzam textos que se valem da função poética. Ao contrário, esta tese parte da hipótese de que um curso de língua pode sempre estar baseado em textos com função poética. Os textos não foram usados pretextualmente como fonte de estruturas gramaticais, pois a idéia que guiava a preparação do material didático utilizado nas aulas é que o aumento da capacidade de interpretar textos ocorre simultaneamente à aquisição das estruturas lingüísticas. Visando a pôr a prova essa convicção, duas turmas de alunos brasileiros da habilitação em Língua e Literatura Italiana de um curso de bacharelado em Letras foram acompanhados ao longo de todo um programa experimental de ensino com uma duração de três anos, em que língua e literatura foram estudadas conjuntamente a partir de textos literários analisados com base nos princípios da semiótica francesa. No percurso didático os alunos construíam uma relação cada vez mais autônoma com os textos, observando e analisando as estruturas organizadoras do sentido e a funcionalidade discursiva dos fatos gramaticais. No final de cada ciclo de aulas os discentes produziam análises escritas dos textos poéticos utilizados em sala de aula. Essas análises foram examinadas para verificar, por um lado, por meio dos critérios de fluência, precisão, complexidade e variação lexical, a competência lingüística; e, por outro, a competência discursiva, isto é, a capacidade de os alunos perceberem as relações no interior do texto e os efeitos de sentido que produzem. Os resultados mostraram a eficácia de um ensino que se baseia na análise de textos literários. De fato, registrou-se um desenvolvimento da interlíngua dos discentes que se manifestou por meio do aumento de todos os valores e também um aprimoramento da capacidade de análise que os levou a ser leitores e produtores de textos cada vez mais competentes. / A lot has been written on the integration between language and literature teaching, and between linguistic and literary studies. Nevertheless, we can observe that the separation between language and literature persists, although literature cannot be thought outside the structures of language and language develops in literature its highest potentialities. Many methodologies for foreign language teaching suggest that the acquisition/learning should begin with texts that use language with utilitarian function and, only later, texts with poetic function. This thesis hypothesis is, on the contrary, that a language course can be always based upon texts with poetic function. Therefore, texts have not been used as pre-text and as source of grammatical structures, since the idea that guided the preparation of the pedagogical material used during the lessons is that the growing of the capacity of interpreting texts takes place simultaneously with the acquisition of linguistic structures. In order to test this conviction, two groups of Brazilian students of Italian Language and Literature of a university course of Letters were followed along a whole experimental program with a duration of three years. In this course Italian language and literature were studied in an integrated way on the basis of literary texts analyses, accomplished with the principles of French semiotics. During the course the students built a more and more autonomous relation with the texts, observing and analyzing the structures which organize the meaning and the discursive functionality of the grammatical facts and, at the same time, took possession of the foreign language. At the end of every cycle of lessons the students produced their own analyses of the poetic texts used in the classroom. These analyses were examined in order to verify, at one side, the linguistic competence through the measures of fluency, accuracy, complexity and lexical variation; and, at the other, the discursive competence, that is, the capacity of the learners to notice relations in the interior of the text and the meaning effects that they produce. The results have showed the effectiveness of this way of teaching that bases upon the analyses of literary texts. It was registered a development of the interlanguage of the students shown through the increase of all the measures results, besides an improvement of the capacity in the text analyses which brought them to reach a growing proficiency as text readers and producers.

Esta dissertação de mestrado trata do ensino do italiano como língua estrangeira (LE) a universitários brasileiros cuja língua materna (LM) é o português brasileiro. Esses estudantes estão inscritos no curso de graduação em Língua e Literatura Italiana da Universidade de São Paulo e, no que concerne à aprendizagem da LE, estão nos níveis A2-B2 do Quadro Comum Europeu de Referência para as Línguas (QCERL, 2001). O objetivo da pesquisa é analisar os recursos participativos, indicadores das formas de colaboração e aprendizagem, empregados pelos estudantes na realização de atividades didáticas que compõem as fases de um curso baseado na metodologia Glottodrama para o ensino de línguas. Segundo Nofri (2010), por meio do uso de técnicas teatrais no ensino de LE, o Glottodrama tem, entre os seus objetivos, o desenvolvimento da habilidade de produção oral dos aprendizes de maneira que essa produção seja mais semelhante à comunicação que acontece fora da sala de aula. A abordagem adotada para a análise dos dados do corpus deste estudo fundamenta-se nas teorias de aquisição-aprendizagem de línguas, que visam à construção da competência comunicativa do aprendiz; e nos estudos interacionistas, que consideram a aquisição da língua como resultado de uma abordagem didática baseada na aprendizagem colaborativa. A partir da análise das sequências dialógicas, percebemos que, enquanto trabalhavam em grupo, para realizar as atividades didáticas para a teatralização de um texto, no plano metalinguístico, os estudantes assumiram papéis sociais distintos, de acordo com as próprias competências comunicativas (FERRONI; BIRELLO, 2013; CAMPS, 2005), e realizaram movimentos de auto e heterocorreções (DE PIETRO, MATTHEY e PY, 1989) para negociarem a compreensão do input e a melhora do output (SWAIN, 1985, 2005). No plano metacomunicativo (CILIBERTI, 2016; BATESON, 1972), os estudantes optaram pela interação criativa, em que prevaleceu o uso da LE de forma autêntica. Conclui-se que esse contexto de aprendizagem favoreceu a utilização de recursos participativos nas atividades comunicativas de forma semelhante a contextos naturais; aumentou a motivação e a integração social. Além disso, o uso funcional da LE forneceu aos estudantes a oportunidade de desenvolvimento do próprio sistema linguístico. / This study refers to teaching Italian as a foreign language (from A2 to B2 levels of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (QCERL, 2001)) to Brazilian undergraduate students, whose mother tongue is Brazilian Portuguese and take their major in Italian Language and Literature at the University of São Paulo. Our aim is to analyze the participative resources, which indicate ways of collaboration and learning, taken by the students at their performance of didactic tasks that compose the steps of a course based on Glottodrama language teaching methodology. According to Nofri (2010), Glottodrama intends to develop students\' oral ability by bringing more authentic communicative environments to the foreign language class, using theatre techniques. The corpus analysis is based on theories of language learning and acquisition, which have the objective of constructing the learner\'s communicative competence; as well as we take into consideration interactive studies, for they see interaction as a mutually constructed communicative event, leading to language acquisition and learning. The analysis of the dialogic sequences points that, whilst students had group work in order to do the didactic tasks for the theatralization of a text, on a metalinguistic level, they took different social roles, according to their own communicative competences (FERRONI; BIRELLO, 2013; CAMPS, 2005), and they also performed moves of self and peer-correction (DE PIETRO, MATTHEY e PY, 1989) in order to negotiate input understanding and output improvement (Swain, 1985, 2005). On a metacommunicative level (CILIBERTI, 2016; BATESON, 1972), the students took creative interaction, and authentic foreign language use prevailed. Therefore we may conclude that this learning context benefitted the use of participative resources in communicative tasks, similarly to natural contexts, and it also improved motivation and social integration. Nevertheless, the functional use of the foreign language has provided students with and opportunity of developing their own linguistic system.

In response to the dearth of research on culture awareness instruction prior to foreign language instruction, the objective of this study was to explore the effects of culture awareness lessons on learner attitudes and beliefs in second-semester university students of French. As a treatment, the experimental group received lessons on culture awareness prior to traditional French classroom instruction; the control group did not. Culture awareness lessons addressed terms such as perspective, culture, interpretation, and stereotypes. Lessons also included worksheets consisting of open-ended questions designed to capture students' responses to the aforementioned topics of discussion. Data collection methods consisted of pre- and post-surveys that included Likert-scale questions and reflections that incorporated open-ended questions designed to capture student attitudes and beliefs. Reflections included general questions on attitudes toward the French as well as cultural practice-specific questions. Qualitative analysis revealed that students from the experimental group showed greater appreciation for culture as an important component of foreign language instruction as well as higher response rates vis-à -vis intercultural understanding. Statistical analysis of the Likert-scale questions also showed significance among questions addressing greater understanding of cultural differences and increased perceived similarity between American and French cultures among the experimental group. However, the experimental group also showed a decrease in student predilection for studying and talking about culture. In general, the study reveals that the explicit teaching of culture awareness prior to traditional foreign language instruction, in conjunction with the opportunity students had to reflect and express their thoughts, has a positive effect on student attitudes.

Language is a reflection of society, so knowing about a language also means knowing about a culture. Therefore, many types of literature have been used as a language education tool representing culture. This thesis proposed folktales as an effective material of not only introducing culture but also learning language. Since folktales are old stories that have passed from generation to generation for a long time, values and morals of a culture are naturally presented in the context of the stories. Furthermore, folktales could enhance students' reading comprehension because the story lines, phrases, and words in a story are used repeatedly. Due to this repeated use of language, students could learn expressions and vocabulary more effectively. This study examined the relationship between using Korean folktales in a foreign language class and learners' reading comprehension and cultural understanding. The participants were the students of Korean 201 at BYU. The experimental group had folktale courses once in every week for 10 weeks while they received usual language class from Monday to Thursday, whereas the control group received usual language class every day. The Test in Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK) was administered for observing the students' enhancement in reading proficiency, and the Likert-scale surveys were given for observing their enhancement in cultural understanding. In addition to the quantitative data, qualitative data was gathered from the oral interviews of the experimental group. The interview questions were about their experiences and attitudes towards the use of folktales in Korean class. The results of the study showed that there was no significant difference between the two groups due to the many limitations of the present study, but the participants' interviews revealed that the students felt the use of folktales in language class helped to enhance their reading comprehension and cultural understanding, and they had positive attitudes toward to using folktales.

In the field of world language education, it has long been affirmed that language and culture are inseparable. It has also often been asked how teaching language and culture in an inseparable way is to be accomplished. One solution that has been proposed is ethnographic interviews. Other studies have demonstrated that interviewing native cultural informants is beneficial for language students. This study examined whether such interviews are also beneficial to the native informants. The participants in this project, sixteen native speakers of Spanish, were each interviewed three times by a pair of Spanish students who employed ethnographic techniques as a part of the interview process. The native speakers answered two brief questionnaires, one before and one after the interviews, and many of them participated in one-on-one interviews with me, the primary researcher, to follow-up on their answers to those questionnaires and their experiences with the interviews. I found that the participants perceived the project as beneficial in multiple areas including, but not limited to, the chance it gave them to talk about their culture, the interest they perceived in their culture and their viewpoints, and the opportunity it gave them to confirm, modify, or strengthen conclusions they had made from previous cultural experience. A small percentage of the native speakers either did not understand or appreciate the ethnographic techniques that were employed. However, after initial interviews, I gave the students of Spanish feedback on how to better make use of those techniques in order to improve the students' and native speakers' experiences with the interviews and a large majority of the native speakers observed how the subsequent interviews improved. Therefore, similar projects might benefit from making use of this information. Specifically, it might be useful to explain ethnographic techniques not just to interviewers, but also to interviewees, so that both groups might better understand and appreciate the purpose of those techniques. It might also be useful to give feedback to those who use ethnographic techniques to interview native culture informants.

This thesis arises out of a critique of the way language is decontextualized and presented from a reductively linguistic viewpoint in foreign language instruction. In particular, it focuses on the weaknesses of the broad approach known as Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and highlights the disparity between its theoretical assumptions and practical applications. With this in mind, the thesis identifies and explores three foundational premises that should be considered as part of an attempt to design a theoretically coherent framework for foreign language instruction. By applying three sets of principles based on these premises, the thesis goes on to outline such a framework. After providing a background to the study, the first consideration is the nature of cultural and communicative performance. The study turns to sociological concepts regarding cultural organization and production, in order to better conceptualize how 'culture' can be understood in the context of foreign language learning. The second part of this area focuses on meaning and communication in order to undermine current treatments of 'language' in foreign language pedagogy. The second area of interest is that of learning and thus considers a number of theories of how people learn. The focus here is on learning-in-general rather than learning languages specifically. What emerges from this are a number of principles that should be borne in mind when creating conditions favorable to language learning. Finally, one largely overlooked area in foreign language learning and applied linguistics more broadly, is how the field of foreign language pedagogy constructs and legitimizes its practices, as well as suppresses its foundational theoretical assumptions in its activities (including research, methodology and teaching). A chapter is therefore devoted to this issue, and a set of principles is formulated in order to ensure that the design of any instructional framework is honest and ethical. Thus furnished with the triangulation of principles, an attempt is made to outline how a learner-focused, ethical pedagogical framework that stresses culture might look. This thesis is theoretical in nature and relies on arguments and positions from diverse and less commonly considered academic fields in foreign language instruction. Its main theoretical inspiration comes from concepts and claims generally considered 'poststructural' or 'postmodern'. However, there is no exclusive devotion to any particular author or theory. It is hoped that this thesis can make a genuine, if not controversial, contribution to the field of foreign language teaching by initiating a dialogue concerning the (lack of) philosophical and epistemological reflexivity in the field.

This study describes an interview survey of college instructors of foreign and programming languages as well as a content analysis of textbooks from these fields. Seven interviews were conducted with instructors in Romance Languages and Computer Science at five colleges in central North Carolina. The purpose of the interviews was to determine how instructors of foreign and programming languages view their teaching methodology and how this relates to the textbooks they choose. Based on the information gathered at the interviews and a subsequent content analysis of six textbooks, this study explored the possibilities that exchanging teaching ideas between foreign and programming language texts might afford if these were applied creatively across these two curricula.

<p>Abstract:</p><p>The aim with this study is to discuss teachers’ individual views and thoughts regarding working with pupils with reading problems in foreign language learning. The study is based on qualitative research and includes interviews with four working teachers at the upper secondary level at one school. The main focus is to illustrate strategies expressed by the teachers involved in this study concerning pupils and reading problems in foreign language learning. Some of the earlier studies done regarding this subject emphasize motivation as a good strategy to use in school in order to pay more attention to pupils and encourage them to do better. Furthermore, teachers should work with literature in a new way, thus making use of the new technology available such as computers and projectors. New technology would make education more appealing and allow pupils to be involved with literature in a new way, familiar to the pupils’ daily life activities.</p><p>This study is done accordingly to the approach of two theories, namely phenomenography and reader-response theory. This study does not aim to show any right or wrong strategies from the teachers, it only assumes to show their own thoughts and views regarding this issue. Hopefully this study would help and bring new ideas to forthcoming teachers about reading disabilities and teaching strategies.</p>