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 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.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how a group of Chinese students made meaning of their collaborative learning experiences as they engaged in creating a supportive dialogical environment in an Intensive English Reading class. The class utilized dialogue as inquiry along with activities that facilitated communication to approach the learning process. These activities included: pre-class writing, in-class presentations, after-class reflections, and small group online discussions. Students and teacher engaged one another in questioning and responding that implemented a process of reflective dialogue about texts and knowledge of language. Thirty sophomore English major students participated in this study, ten of whom were randomly selected for final participation. Data sources consisted of transcriptions from phenomenological interviews, student weekly and final written reflections, and researcher’s field notes. Analysis of these data yielded four themes: relationship, confidence, engagement, and change. That the four themes overlap suggests that they mutually reinforce one another to make students’ learning experiences collaborative. Results indicate that creating a socially, affectively, and pedagogically-supported dialogical environment promotes students’ communication with others as well as creative and reflective doing and thinking. The results have implications for foreign language teachers, educators, and researchers interested in performing action research in their practice.

Esta investigação teve como objetivos: (a) verificar o grau de êxito da compreensão do discurso oral docente de aprendizes de língua inglesa de nível de proficiência B2, conforme classificação sugerida pelo Quadro Comum Europeu; e (b) identificar as percepções de professores e alunos de cursos desse mesmo nível a respeito de como deve ser a enunciação oral docente, com vistas à promoção efetiva do desenvolvimento da habilidade de compreensão oral dos aprendizes. A finalidade deste estudo foi a de comparar a percepção dos dois grupos, bem como contrastar essas opiniões com a finalidade didática da enunciação. Tomamos por base a hipótese geral de que a maioria dos professores e alunos de nível B2 de proficiência acredita que a enunciação oral docente deva ser apresentada de forma a facilitar a compreensão do aprendiz e que isso promove o desenvolvimento da habilidade de compreensão oral por parte deste último. Os dados foram coletados por meio de: (1) um questionário de verificação da compreensão oral, aplicado aos alunos logo após a audição da gravação do discurso de um professor; (2) questionários aplicados a professores e alunos sobre suas percepções quanto a diferentes aspectos da enunciação oral docente, tais como velocidade de fala, frequência de uso de léxico e estruturas sintáticas não familiares ao aluno, uso da língua materna e entonação. A análise e discussão dos dados foram realizadas à luz da teoria sociointeracionista, de Vygotsky, do conceito de aprendizagem significativa, de Ausubel, e das teorias enunciativas de Benveniste e Bakhtin. Os dados apontam para o fato de, tanto alunos quanto professores, acreditarem que o discurso docente deva ser apresentado de forma a facilitar a compreensão oral discente e que essa crença reflita-se na prática do professor; também indicam que a maioria dos professores não parece relacionar a forma como o discurso oral docente é proferido à possibilidade de isso auxiliar no desenvolvimento da habilidade de compreensão discente. / Submitted by Marcelo Teixeira (mvteixeira@ucs.br) on 2014-06-06T16:11:48Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Lisiane Ott Schulz.pdf: 2671427 bytes, checksum: dc667f01070365826f0b130398763df7 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-06T16:11:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Lisiane Ott Schulz.pdf: 2671427 bytes, checksum: dc667f01070365826f0b130398763df7 (MD5) / The purposes of this investigation were: (a) to verify how effective was students’ understanding of a teacher’s speech considering the B2 English proficiency level (according to the classification suggested in the Common European Framework document) and (b) to identify teachers’ and students’ perceptions on how a teacher’s classroom speech should be delivered so as to help B2 students improve their listening comprehension skills in an effective way. Based on these data, teachers’ and students’ perceptions were compared. Furthermore, a contrastive analysis between their beliefs and the didactics purpose of the teacher’s speech was also carried out. The general hypothesis that drove this study is that most teachers and most B2 proficiency level students believe that a teacher’s speech should be delivered so as to facilitate students’ understanding and that this helps students improve their listening comprehension skills. The data were collected through (1) a listening comprehension questionnaire given to students right after they listened to the recording of a teacher’s speech and (2) survey questionnaires that investigated the subjects’ perceptions regarding different features of teachers’ speech such as speech rate, use of unfamiliar words, expressions and syntactic structures, use of mother tongue and intonation. The data was analyzed from a Vygotskian perspective, from Ausubel’s meaningful learning concept and from Benveniste’s and Bakhtin’s views of language. As the data analysis showed, most students and teachers believe that the teacher’s speech should be delivered in such a way as to facilitate students’ understanding. It also revealed that these beliefs were reflected in the teacher’s classroom practice. Moreover, the results suggested that most teachers do not seem to correlate the way a teacher’s speech is delivered to the possibility of this helping improve students’ listening comprehension skill.

Esta investigação teve como objetivos: (a) verificar o grau de êxito da compreensão do discurso oral docente de aprendizes de língua inglesa de nível de proficiência B2, conforme classificação sugerida pelo Quadro Comum Europeu; e (b) identificar as percepções de professores e alunos de cursos desse mesmo nível a respeito de como deve ser a enunciação oral docente, com vistas à promoção efetiva do desenvolvimento da habilidade de compreensão oral dos aprendizes. A finalidade deste estudo foi a de comparar a percepção dos dois grupos, bem como contrastar essas opiniões com a finalidade didática da enunciação. Tomamos por base a hipótese geral de que a maioria dos professores e alunos de nível B2 de proficiência acredita que a enunciação oral docente deva ser apresentada de forma a facilitar a compreensão do aprendiz e que isso promove o desenvolvimento da habilidade de compreensão oral por parte deste último. Os dados foram coletados por meio de: (1) um questionário de verificação da compreensão oral, aplicado aos alunos logo após a audição da gravação do discurso de um professor; (2) questionários aplicados a professores e alunos sobre suas percepções quanto a diferentes aspectos da enunciação oral docente, tais como velocidade de fala, frequência de uso de léxico e estruturas sintáticas não familiares ao aluno, uso da língua materna e entonação. A análise e discussão dos dados foram realizadas à luz da teoria sociointeracionista, de Vygotsky, do conceito de aprendizagem significativa, de Ausubel, e das teorias enunciativas de Benveniste e Bakhtin. Os dados apontam para o fato de, tanto alunos quanto professores, acreditarem que o discurso docente deva ser apresentado de forma a facilitar a compreensão oral discente e que essa crença reflita-se na prática do professor; também indicam que a maioria dos professores não parece relacionar a forma como o discurso oral docente é proferido à possibilidade de isso auxiliar no desenvolvimento da habilidade de compreensão discente. / The purposes of this investigation were: (a) to verify how effective was students’ understanding of a teacher’s speech considering the B2 English proficiency level (according to the classification suggested in the Common European Framework document) and (b) to identify teachers’ and students’ perceptions on how a teacher’s classroom speech should be delivered so as to help B2 students improve their listening comprehension skills in an effective way. Based on these data, teachers’ and students’ perceptions were compared. Furthermore, a contrastive analysis between their beliefs and the didactics purpose of the teacher’s speech was also carried out. The general hypothesis that drove this study is that most teachers and most B2 proficiency level students believe that a teacher’s speech should be delivered so as to facilitate students’ understanding and that this helps students improve their listening comprehension skills. The data were collected through (1) a listening comprehension questionnaire given to students right after they listened to the recording of a teacher’s speech and (2) survey questionnaires that investigated the subjects’ perceptions regarding different features of teachers’ speech such as speech rate, use of unfamiliar words, expressions and syntactic structures, use of mother tongue and intonation. The data was analyzed from a Vygotskian perspective, from Ausubel’s meaningful learning concept and from Benveniste’s and Bakhtin’s views of language. As the data analysis showed, most students and teachers believe that the teacher’s speech should be delivered in such a way as to facilitate students’ understanding. It also revealed that these beliefs were reflected in the teacher’s classroom practice. Moreover, the results suggested that most teachers do not seem to correlate the way a teacher’s speech is delivered to the possibility of this helping improve students’ listening comprehension skill.

In recent years, Facebook has become a tool for practicing English. Language educators have been trying to integrate the social context of a community of practice into formal teaching, as a complement to classroom-based learning. However, social media platforms are used independently outside of the school context. For example, many English-language learners use the application Facebook Groups to choose a community of practice that shares the same purpose of language learning. With the aim of contributing to the understanding of English-language learners’ independent use of Facebook, this paper seeks to explore their online practices through non-participant observation and a qualitative analysis of the content shared and commented on the group wall. 858 posts (and related comments) shared by the members of an English language-learning group, open to the public, were analysed with the purpose of finding out which aspects of foreign language learning seem to be particularly relevant for the group and which of the four basic language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) are they trying to develop. Another important aspect is whether the interactions in the group are conducted in English as expected. The results show that reading skills tend to be promoted to a greater extent than the other skills. It was then observed that the group members use the English language consistently, with very few exceptions. In general, therefore, this study shows that the Facebook Groups contribution to learning English through participation in an English-language learning community such as the one observed here is rather limited and unbalanced.

Submitted by Ronildo Prado (ronisp@ufscar.br) on 2017-08-21T18:09:02Z No. of bitstreams: 1 TeseOK.pdf: 6806967 bytes, checksum: dd7e68018dff62394f4772a21155cb98 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Ronildo Prado (ronisp@ufscar.br) on 2017-08-21T18:09:09Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 TeseOK.pdf: 6806967 bytes, checksum: dd7e68018dff62394f4772a21155cb98 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Ronildo Prado (ronisp@ufscar.br) on 2017-08-21T18:09:15Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 TeseOK.pdf: 6806967 bytes, checksum: dd7e68018dff62394f4772a21155cb98 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-08-21T18:09:23Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 TeseOK.pdf: 6806967 bytes, checksum: dd7e68018dff62394f4772a21155cb98 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-03-30 / Não recebi financiamento / After verifying a shortage of teacher qualification courses concerning the cultural contents approach conveyed by foreign language teaching and learning, we decided to design a project for teacher qualification course to deepen this subject. The extension course was outlined for foreign language teachers of Public Schools of São Paulo State, on Saturdays, with bimonthly meetings interpolated between online meetings by Moodle’s platform. Using this platform, an initial survey, a final presentation, a self-evaluation, and recordings (video and audio), we should collect data for this thesis. We intended to observe if the theoretical arguments, during the course, about cultural contents, would motivate the reflection of the participants in the course in relation to implicit cultural contents in textbooks, and practical approach of teachers/participants in foreign language classrooms of cultural contents throughout the textbook’s adaptation used by them. Besides that, for further work we outlined research questions. The theoretical foundation helped us for reflection and for discussion of the obtained data. Therefore, using a historical journey (LARAIA, 1986; AUGER, 2000, 2003; DURANTI, 1997), we observe the development of cultural concept that helped us to answer the first research question. And, we focused on the relevance of development of extension course (CANDAU, 1997; AUGER, 2005; IMBÉRNO, 2009), on intercultural education (AUGER, 2005), and on textbook adaptation (PRABHU, 1998; Tomlinson, 2012). These theories helped us to answer the second research question. We followed the interpretativist-qualitative research (MOITA LOPES, 1994) and the research-action. In general, we concluded that teacher’s awareness on cultural contents, developed on extension course, helped them for the adaptation and/or development of foreign language teaching materials in order to approach “cultural potentials”. The activities developed by the teachers motivated the students to research cultural contents, to engage in cultural reflections and to recognize (or not) the other culture. / A constatação da escassez de cursos de formação continuada de professores a respeito da temática da abordagem dos conteúdos culturais veiculados ao ensino-aprendizagem de língua estrangeira (LE) nos conduziu à criação de um projeto de um curso de extensão sobre esse tema. O curso de extensão foi delineado para professores de LE da rede pública do estado de São Paulo, aos sábados, com encontros presenciais quinzenais intercalados com encontros online via plataforma Moodle. Por meio dessa plataforma, do questionário inicial, do trabalho final, da autoavaliação e de gravações (vídeo e áudio), pudemos coletar dados para a presente tese. Objetivamos observar se a emersão teórica durante o curso, em torno dos conteúdos culturais, possibilitaria que os participantes refletissem sobre conceitos culturais implícitos em materiais didáticos e adaptassem esses materiais na sua abordagem prática dos conteúdos culturais em sala de aula de LE. Além disso, para um aprofundamento na análise dos dados gerados pelo curso, delineamos duas perguntas de pesquisa: 1.Como se apresentou a compreensão inicial dos participantes sobre o conceito de cultura? e 2. A partir de uma proposta de formação continuada focada na sensibilização cultural por meio da análise e da adaptação de atividades do material didático, observamos: a) Como os participantes abordaram (ou se abordaram) os potenciais culturais? e b) Como os participantes justificaram suas escolhas? A fundamentação teórica nos auxiliou para a reflexão e a discussão dos dados gerados. Mediante um percurso histórico (LARAIA,1986; AUGER, 2000, 2003; DURANTI, 1997), observamos o desenvolvimento do conceito de cultura que nos auxiliou a responder à primeira questão da pesquisa e apontou a importância da promoção de cursos de extensão (CANDAU, 1997; AUGER, 2005; IMBÉRNON, 2009), da didática intercultural (AUGER, 2005) e da adaptação de materiais didáticos (PRABHU,1998; Tomlinson, 2012), que nos auxiliaram a responder à segunda questão da pesquisa. Seguimos a metodologia de caráter qualitativo-interpretativista (MOITA LOPES, 1994) e pesquisa-ação. De modo geral, concluímos que a sensibilização dos professores/participantes às questões culturais no curso de extensão os auxiliou na adaptação e/ou desenvolvimento dos materiais de LE a fim de abordarem os “potenciais culturais”. As atividades desenvolvidas por eles motivaram os alunos a pesquisar os conteúdos culturais, a participar das reflexões e a se identificarem ou não com a outra cultura.

Although foreign language instruction in mixed-age (M-A) is gaining popularity (Heizmann and Ries and Wicki 2015; Lau and Juby-Smith and Desbiens, 2017; Shahid Kazi and Moghal and Aziz 2018; Thurn 2011), the research is scarce. Drawing from multiple data sources, this study investigated to what extent do peer interactions among M-A and same-age (S-A) pairs aid L2 development and how students perceive their interactions. In this study, the same learners (N=24) aged between 10 and 12 interacted with the same and different age partners during common classroom lessons in two EFL classrooms. The results suggest that both S-A and M-A peer interactions aided L2 development. Although S-A pairs outperformed M-A pairs on the post-test, the results are not statistically significant. The analysis of students’ perceptions revealed that the majority of students prefer working in S-A to M-A pairs. In addition to age/proficiency differences, factors such as students’ relationships and perceptions of one’s own and partner’s proficiency greatly impact how they interact with one another.

Orientador: João Antonio Telles / Banca: Douglas Altamiro Consolo / Banca: Nelson Viana / Resumo: Nesta pesquisa objetivou-se estudar a formação inicial do professor de LE no contexto de laboratório de teletandem. Foca-se em quatro aspectos na graduação do professor de línguas: a orientação, a mediação, a reflexão e a aprendizagem em teletandem. Nesta pesquisa discute-se, através de um recurso tecnológico, o módulo Adobe® Acrobat® Connect™ Pro, a orientação, a mediação e a reflexão pelos alunos-professores de uma universidade estadual paulista, inseridos em um laboratório de teletandem. Neste laboratório, os alunos do curso de Letras, denominados aqui de alunos-orientadores, ministram sessões de orientação teórica e tecnológica para os alunos ingressantes no projeto Teletandem Brasil: língua estrangeira para todos, isto é, aqueles que ainda não iniciaram o seu processo de aprendizagem de língua estrangeira em teletandem. Assim, a pesquisa em questão constitui-se basicamente em três etapas: i) observação das sessões de orientação presenciais ministradas pelos alunos-orientadores no laboratório de teletandem; ii) leitura, reflexão e análise do diário-reflexivo dos alunos-orientadores acerca destas sessões de orientação teórica e iii) realização das sessões de mediação online com os alunos-orientadores pelo módulo Adobe® Acrobat® Connect™ Pro. O interesse no desenvolvimento da pesquisa surgiu pelas necessidades e inquietações na minha experiência como aluna do curso de Letras, isto é, como professora de língua estrangeira em formação inicial carente de maior orientação e reflexão da natureza que este novo contexto de ensino e aprendizagem de línguas em tandem permite oferecer. Desta forma, objetivou-se, especificamente investigar quais os possíveis impactos da experiência de orientação, dada pelo aluno de Letras, futuro professor de LE, no... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: This research study aimed at investigating the foreign language teacher‟s pre-service education in a teletandem‟s laboratory context. Specifically, it focuses on four aspects in the foreign language teacher‟s pre-service education: counseling, mediation, reflection and learning in teletandem. This study discusses, through a new technological resource, the Adobe® Acrobat® Connect™ Pro, the counseling, mediation and the reflection by the pre-service students from a state university in São Paulo state, inside a teletandem laboratory. In this laboratory, the undergraduate foreigner teachers, called at this study of counselor-students, provide theoretical and technological counseling sessions to the freshman students in the thematic project named Teletandem Brasil: língua estrangeira para todos, in other words, for those students who have not started their foreign language learning in teletandem process yet. Therefore, this research is basically constituted by three stages: i) observation of the face to face counseling sessions given by the counselor-students in the laboratory; ii) reading, reflection and analysis of the reflective diaries of the counselor-students about these face to face counseling sessions and iii) realization of the online mediation sessions with the counselor-students through the Adobe® Acrobat® Connect™ Pro. The interest to achieve this research arose by the needs and concerns within my experience as an undergraduate foreign language teacher, in other words, as a teacher in a pre-service education lacking more counseling and reflection of the nature that this new context of teaching and learning languages in-tandem can provide. Thus, the study aimed to investigate what are the possible impacts of the counseling sessions‟ experience, given by the... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Mestre

Made available in DSpace on 2014-07-29T16:29:29Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Luciane Guimaraes.pdf: 1021991 bytes, checksum: 3f8d62185a853edf4ab8eca21e84fd1b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-04-30 / The purpose of this study was to develop a collaborative research with the two teachers of English one of them being the researcher herself of a public university in the state of Goiás aiming at their professional development by means of reflective sessions about theoretical texts and about their own practices. This professional development, needless to say, is of great importance once the university is responsible for the education of the teachers that work in the city and in the neighboring towns. Nevertheless, this is a collaborative study that, differently from the majority, focuses on its difficulties as from the very beginning it was detected impediments to the collaboration between the participants and difficulties in promoting changes in the practical and theoretical conceptions of the participant teacher. Thus, as soon as these difficulties in terms of collaboration were identified, this work was restructured and its main objective became the analysis of the difficulties in the collaborative research by means of the following objectives: a) analyze the professional identity of the participant; b) analyze the professional identity of the researcher and the relationship established between the participant and the researcher; and c) examine the consequences of the reflective sessions in terms of change in the teaching practice. As theoretical background, three pillars of scientific knowledge gave support to the present research: a) studies of identity according to the cultural theory, and also the concept of identity according to the perspective of applied linguistics; b) the hierarchical relationship between the scientific knowledge and the practical knowledge of the teacher; c) Reflective teaching and the process of teacher change. The analysis of the data evidenced that the profile of the participant teacher as well as the profile of the researcher and the relationship established between them were aspects that inhibited the collaboration between both participants. The lack of collaboration between them, in turn, had as a consequence the failure in the promotion of changes and professional development of the participant teacher. As a result, this study demonstrates that collaboration in investigation contexts where there is clear asymmetry regarding authority and/or to official knowledge represents a difficult challenge to surpass. Besides that, the difficulty in collaboration can, in many cases, undermine the main objective of the reflective approach, which is the promotion of professional development and emancipatory pedagogical practice. / O objetivo deste estudo foi desenvolver uma pesquisa colaborativa com as duas professoras de inglês uma das quais a própria pesquisadora de uma universidade estadual do interior de Goiás, visando ao desenvolvimento profissional de ambas por meio de sessões reflexivas sobre textos teóricos e sobre suas práticas pedagógicas, desenvolvimento esse de grande relevância para a universidade, já que esta forma os professores de inglês que atuam na cidade e nas regiões circunvizinhas. Todavia, este é um estudo colaborativo no processo reflexivo que, diferentemente dos demais, enfoca seus entraves, visto que logo no início da pesquisa evidenciaram-se dificuldades na colaboração entre as participantes e também na promoção de mudanças na prática e nas concepções teóricas da participante. Assim, ao se identificarem as dificuldades em relação à colaboração, este trabalho foi reestruturado e o objetivo principal passou a ser a análise das dificuldades da pesquisa colaborativa por meio dos seguintes objetivos: a) analisar a identidade profissional da professora participante; b) analisar o perfil profissional da pesquisadora e a relação pesquisadora participante que se estabeleceu durante a instalação da pesquisa; e c) examinar as consequências das sessões reflexivas em termos de mudança da prática docente. Como aporte teórico, três pilares do conhecimento científico sustentaram a presente pesquisa: a) os estudos identitários na perspectiva dos estudos culturais e da linguística aplicada; b) a relação hierárquica entre o conhecimento acadêmico e o conhecimento prático do professor em sala de aula; c) o ensino reflexivo e o processo de mudança do professor. A análise dos dados evidenciou que tanto o perfil da participante quanto o meu perfil como pesquisadora e a relação que se estabeleceu entre nós foram aspectos que dificultaram a colaboração. A ausência de colaboração entre ambas, por sua vez, teve como consequência a dificuldade de promover mudanças na prática e o desenvolvimento profissional da participante. Destarte, este estudo demonstrou que o caráter colaborativo em contextos de investigação marcados por relações assimétricas em relação à autoridade e/ou ao conhecimento tido como oficial é um desafio difícil de ser superado. Além disso, esse entrave na colaboração muitas vezes compromete o objetivo principal da abordagem reflexiva, que é a promoção do desenvolvimento profissional com vistas a uma prática pedagógica emancipatória.