A gerência adequada de recursos e serviços de Tecnologia da Informação (TI) se tornou imperativa para o sucesso de organizações modernas. A Biblioteca de Infraestrutura de Tecnologia da Informação (Information Technology Infrastructure Library, ITIL) representa, nesse contexto, o framework mais popular para ajudar a alcançar esse fim. Para lidar com mudanças em TI, a ITIL define o processo de gerência de mudanças (change management), cujo principal objetivo é garantir que métodos e procedimentos padronizados são utilizados para o tratamento imediato e eficiente dessas mudanças. Para alcançar esse objetivo, é fundamental reutilizar a experiência adquirida com mudanças passadas no projeto de requisições futuras. A ITIL sugere o uso de modelos de mudanças (change models) como uma forma para permitir o reuso de tal experiência em mudanças recorrentes e similares. A criação de modelos de mudanças pode ser concretizada considerando duas abordagens distintas. Em uma abordagem top-down, operadores de TI podem projetar os modelos manualmente, com base no conhecimento adquirido no passado. Em uma perspectiva alternativa, bottom-up, esses modelos poderiam ser extraídos a partir de traços de mudanças passadas obtidos com orquestradores de mudanças. Na prática, no entanto, mudanças tem sido geralmente descritas e documentadas de forma ad hoc, devido `a falta de mecanismos adequados para apoiar o projeto das mesmas. Isso impede que o conhecimento adquirido na especificação, planejamento e condução de mudanças passadas seja reutilizado em requisições futuras. Para abordar esse problema, nesta dissertação são propostos (i ) o conceito de templates de mudança como um mecanismo para formalizar, preservar, e (re)usar conhecimento na especificação de mudanças recorrentes e similares, (ii ) um algoritmo para o refinamento automatizado de planos de mudanças em workflows executáveis, (iii ) um mecanismo para extrair templates de mudanças a partir de traços de execuções passadas, e (iv) uma solução fim-a-fim, apoiada por um sistema real, para permitir o planejamento e implantação de mudanças em TI. Para provar conceito e viabilidade técnica da solução proposta, foi realizada uma implementação prototípica de um sistema de gerência de mudanças chamado ChangeLedge, o qual foi utilizado para conduzir uma série de experimentos considerando mudanças típicas em TI. Os resultados alcançados indicam a efetividade da solução e eficiência do sistema, o qual é capaz de gerar planos de mudança executáveis e corretos em um período de tempo substancialmente menor que o que seria gasto por um operador humano experiente, e de extrair templates que descrevem com acurácia mudanças passadas executadas na organização. / Proper management of Information Technology (IT) resources and services has become imperative for the success of modern organizations. The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) represents, in this context, the most widely accepted framework to help achieve this end. In order to deal with IT changes, ITIL defines the change management process, whose main goal is to ensure that standardized methods and procedures are used for the efficient and prompt handling of these changes. To meet this goal, it is of paramount importance reusing the experience acquired from previous changes in the design of subsequent ones. ITIL suggests the use of change models as a mean of enabling the reuse of such experience across recorrent, similar changes. The creation of change models can be done considering two distinct approaches. In a top-down approach, IT operators may manually design models based on the knowledge owned/acquired in the past. In contrast, in a bottom-up perspective, these models could be discovered from past execution traces gathered from IT provisioning tools. In practice, however, changes have been usually described and documented in an ad hoc fashion, due to the lack of proper mechanisms to both support the change design process. This hampers knowledge acquired when specifying, planning, and carrying out previous changes to be reused in subsequent requests. To address this problem, in this thesis we propose (i ) the concept of change templates as a mechanism to formalize, preserve, and (re)use knowledge in the specification of (recurrent and similar) IT changes, (ii ) an algorithm for the automated refinement of change plans into actionable workflows, (iii ) a mechanism to discover change templates from traces of past changes, and (iv) an end-to-end solution, supported by a real system, to allow planning and implementation of IT changes to be designed and executed. To prove concept and technical feasibility of the proposed solution, we have developed a prototypical implementation of a change management system called ChangeLedge and used it to carry out a set of experiments, considering typical IT changes. The results obtained indicate the effectiveness of the solution and efficiency of the system, which is able to generate accurate and actionable change plans in substantially less time than would be spent by a skilled human operator, and to extract templates that accurately describe IT change procedures previously executed in the organization.

Despite the evolution of the private investment promotion regime in relation to investment projects under private initiatives, there are many shortcomings in its regulation, especially at the evaluation stage, which creates serious disincentives for attracting private investors. One of these defects derives from its consideration as requests of graces and of how the Administration understands this type of petitions. Having this problem in mind, we propose a rereading of the nature of private initiatives to ensure that decisions taken by the Public Administration in this regard are subject to a true control of legality. / A pesar de la evolución del régimen de promoción de la inversión privada con relación a los proyectos de inversión bajo la óptica de iniciativas privadas persisten muchos defectos en su regulación, sobre todo en la etapa de evaluación, lo cual genera serios desincentivos para la captación de inversionistas privados. Uno de esos defectos deriva de su consideración como peticiones de gracias y de cómo la Administración entiende este tipo de peticiones. Teniendo dicha problemática en la mira, proponemos una relectura de la naturaleza de las iniciativas privadas que asegure que las decisiones que al respecto tome la Administración Pública sean objeto de un verdadero control de legalidad.

A gerência adequada de recursos e serviços de Tecnologia da Informação (TI) se tornou imperativa para o sucesso de organizações modernas. A Biblioteca de Infraestrutura de Tecnologia da Informação (Information Technology Infrastructure Library, ITIL) representa, nesse contexto, o framework mais popular para ajudar a alcançar esse fim. Para lidar com mudanças em TI, a ITIL define o processo de gerência de mudanças (change management), cujo principal objetivo é garantir que métodos e procedimentos padronizados são utilizados para o tratamento imediato e eficiente dessas mudanças. Para alcançar esse objetivo, é fundamental reutilizar a experiência adquirida com mudanças passadas no projeto de requisições futuras. A ITIL sugere o uso de modelos de mudanças (change models) como uma forma para permitir o reuso de tal experiência em mudanças recorrentes e similares. A criação de modelos de mudanças pode ser concretizada considerando duas abordagens distintas. Em uma abordagem top-down, operadores de TI podem projetar os modelos manualmente, com base no conhecimento adquirido no passado. Em uma perspectiva alternativa, bottom-up, esses modelos poderiam ser extraídos a partir de traços de mudanças passadas obtidos com orquestradores de mudanças. Na prática, no entanto, mudanças tem sido geralmente descritas e documentadas de forma ad hoc, devido `a falta de mecanismos adequados para apoiar o projeto das mesmas. Isso impede que o conhecimento adquirido na especificação, planejamento e condução de mudanças passadas seja reutilizado em requisições futuras. Para abordar esse problema, nesta dissertação são propostos (i ) o conceito de templates de mudança como um mecanismo para formalizar, preservar, e (re)usar conhecimento na especificação de mudanças recorrentes e similares, (ii ) um algoritmo para o refinamento automatizado de planos de mudanças em workflows executáveis, (iii ) um mecanismo para extrair templates de mudanças a partir de traços de execuções passadas, e (iv) uma solução fim-a-fim, apoiada por um sistema real, para permitir o planejamento e implantação de mudanças em TI. Para provar conceito e viabilidade técnica da solução proposta, foi realizada uma implementação prototípica de um sistema de gerência de mudanças chamado ChangeLedge, o qual foi utilizado para conduzir uma série de experimentos considerando mudanças típicas em TI. Os resultados alcançados indicam a efetividade da solução e eficiência do sistema, o qual é capaz de gerar planos de mudança executáveis e corretos em um período de tempo substancialmente menor que o que seria gasto por um operador humano experiente, e de extrair templates que descrevem com acurácia mudanças passadas executadas na organização. / Proper management of Information Technology (IT) resources and services has become imperative for the success of modern organizations. The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) represents, in this context, the most widely accepted framework to help achieve this end. In order to deal with IT changes, ITIL defines the change management process, whose main goal is to ensure that standardized methods and procedures are used for the efficient and prompt handling of these changes. To meet this goal, it is of paramount importance reusing the experience acquired from previous changes in the design of subsequent ones. ITIL suggests the use of change models as a mean of enabling the reuse of such experience across recorrent, similar changes. The creation of change models can be done considering two distinct approaches. In a top-down approach, IT operators may manually design models based on the knowledge owned/acquired in the past. In contrast, in a bottom-up perspective, these models could be discovered from past execution traces gathered from IT provisioning tools. In practice, however, changes have been usually described and documented in an ad hoc fashion, due to the lack of proper mechanisms to both support the change design process. This hampers knowledge acquired when specifying, planning, and carrying out previous changes to be reused in subsequent requests. To address this problem, in this thesis we propose (i ) the concept of change templates as a mechanism to formalize, preserve, and (re)use knowledge in the specification of (recurrent and similar) IT changes, (ii ) an algorithm for the automated refinement of change plans into actionable workflows, (iii ) a mechanism to discover change templates from traces of past changes, and (iv) an end-to-end solution, supported by a real system, to allow planning and implementation of IT changes to be designed and executed. To prove concept and technical feasibility of the proposed solution, we have developed a prototypical implementation of a change management system called ChangeLedge and used it to carry out a set of experiments, considering typical IT changes. The results obtained indicate the effectiveness of the solution and efficiency of the system, which is able to generate accurate and actionable change plans in substantially less time than would be spent by a skilled human operator, and to extract templates that accurately describe IT change procedures previously executed in the organization.

This dissertation investigates the comprehension of indirect requests (IRs). Focusing on English and French, it proposes that IRs such as Can you + verbal phrase (for short, Can you VP?) achieve an optimal communicative efficiency because, while they entail extra processing costs, they match the expected level of politeness in many contexts. The approach taken combines Talmy’s force dynamic semantics with a traditional perspective in philosophy of language drawing on speech act theory. First, I sketch a theoretically viable and empirically plausible definition of directive speech acts, and provide a naturalistic explanation of why directives result in obligations for addressees. According to this definition, a directive speech act consists in a force exerted by a speaker towards an addressee’s performance of some action, with a prima facie obligation created for the addressee as a result. Consistently with this definition, I propose that imperative sentences are a convenient means to perform directives insofar as they encode a force dynamic pattern that is compatible with, but distinct from, the force exertion pattern that characterizes directives. I develop a similar analysis for You should/must VP declarative sentences. By contrast, I argue that, if interrogative sentences can be used in the performance of directives such as questioning, they do so by virtue of their incompleteness.To satisfactorily account for the variety of utterances that can be used as directives, I propose a typology based on the formal criterion of (in)directness and on the processing criterion of primariness/secondariness. Three factors are furthermore predicted to influence the processing of IRs: conventionality of means, degree of standardization, and degree of illocutionary force salience. This typology underpins an exhaustive review of experimental work on the comprehension of directives, in which I conclude that further investigation into the processing of IRs is necessary. In particular, the influence of these three factors on the processing, and, in particular, on the primariness/secondariness of IRs is left unexplored.In three eye-tracking experiments with native speakers of French, I put to the test four hypotheses. First, I hypothesize that the more an expression is standardized for the performance of IRs, the more likely it will be understood as an IR, and the more likely the IR will be primary rather than secondary. Second, because expressions such as Can you VP? used as IRs also have a direct interpretation, they should entail extra processing costs relative to their imperative and interrogative direct counterparts. Third, assuming they are direct, You must VP requests should be understood like imperatives requests, and they should not activate the assertive force. Fourth, the high degree of directive illocutionary force salience contributed by the adverb please should increase the likelihood of an IR interpretation and the likelihood that the IR will be primary. In Experiment 1, I show that IR interpretations tend to be more frequent for highly standardized IRs relative to their less standardized counterparts. I also demonstrate that interpreting the highly standardized Can you VP? and the less standardized Is it possible to VP? as IRs does not activate their “ability question” illocutionary meaning. The same finding holds, in Experiment 2, for the declaratives You can VP and It is possible to VP. The data of Experiment 2 indicate that, like imperative sentences, You must VP does not activate the assertive illocutionary force. Another finding of Experiment 1 is that Can you VP? and Is it possible to VP? can be understood as primary IRs, but these expressions nonetheless impose extra processing costs when they are interpreted as direct questions. In Experiment 3, I find that the high degree of directive force salience contributed by please increases the likelihood of an IR interpretation regardless of the degree of standardization of the expression. However, the presence of please has no significant influence on the processing of IRs.Turning to the production of directives, I address the issue of why speakers use IRs despite the extra processing costs entailed by these expressions. In a production task experiment where addressee status is manipulated, I test the hypothesis that Can you VP? IRs are used to trigger extra politeness effects absent in imperatives. A second hypothesis is that speakers should avoid imperatives and obligation declaratives such as You should/must VP because these request forms are directly compatible with force exertion at the pragmatic level. Rather, they should prefer indirect request forms such as ability interrogatives. Third, Can you VP? it should be more frequent than Is it possible to VP? in the data. A first important finding is that higher addressee status does not increase the frequency of Can you VP? interrogatives relative to other request forms. Instead of using Can you VP? more often when they address higher status people, speakers use specific politeness markers, which disconfirms the hypothesis that Can you VP? is used to convey extra politeness effects. The second hypothesis is confirmed, insofar as the data collected with this production task contain a vast majority of ability interrogatives, and imperatives and obligation declaratives are absent. Third, in line with the standardization hypothesis, Can you VP? occur much more often in the data than Is it possible to VP?. / Doctorat en Langues, lettres et traductologie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teaching should not only aim at providing learners with the linguistic resources to communicate in English, but also develop learners’ pragmatic competence in order for them to be able to use language efficiently and appropriately for different purposes. The present study examines what pragmatic input learners receive from two Swedish EFL textbook series regarding the speech act of request. The analysis was conducted by identifying all instances of requests and all metapragmatic information about the specific speech act. In addition, the present study also focused on finding exercises that provide learners with the opportunity to practice making requests. The findings show that the two examined EFL textbook series differ in terms of which directness levels are most frequently used, and both series lack explicit information about requests that may increase students' understanding of this speech act. Moreover, request exercises are few and practicing requests is rarely the main learning objective. Consequently, teachers will need to use supplemental material and exercises in order for learners to develop their pragmatic competence in the case of requests. / Engelskundervisning bör inte bara syfta till att ge elever de språkliga resurser som krävs för att kommunicera på engelska, utan även utveckla elevernas pragmatiska kompetens så att de lär sig att använda språket effektivt och lämpligt för olika ändamål. Det som undersöks i den här studien är i vilken utsträckning språkhandlingen uppmaning förekommer och lärs ut i två olika läromedel i engelska för högstadiet. Analysen utfördes genom att identifiera alla exempel av uppmaningar och all metapragmatisk information om den specifika språkhandlingen. Utöver detta fokuserade den här studien även på att hitta övningsuppgifter som ger eleverna möjlighet att öva på språkhandlingen uppmaning. Resultaten visar att de två läromedlen skiljer sig åt vad gäller fördelningen av direkta och indirekta uppmaningar. Dessutom saknar båda läromedlen explicit information som kan öka elevers förståelse för denna språkhandling. Övningsuppgifterna är få och fokuserar inte på att utveckla elevers förmåga att formulera uppmaningar i första hand. Följaktligen behöver lärare använda kompletterande material och övningsuppgifter för att elever ska kunna utveckla sin pragmatiska kompetens vid uppmaningar.

Syfte: På svenska småhusföretag kan kommunikationsbrister uppstå både internt och externt vilket kan leda till ett resultat som ej överensstämmer med kundens förväntningar. Detta beror på att luckor bildas i kommunikationen och en slags "visklek" uppstår. Det finns en modell vid namn GAP-modellen, vilken hjälper till att identifiera dessa luckor i organisationer. Målet med arbetet är att med hjälp av GAPmodellen ta fram ett arbetssätt för att förbättra hanteringen av kundönskemål hos småhustillverkare. Metod: För att besvara målet har litteraturstudie, intervjuer och en fokusgrupp utförts. Dessa har gjorts i samarbete med småhusföretaget Mjöbäcksvillan. Resultat: Ett antal förbättringsförslag har tagits fram för att förbättra Mjöbäcksvillans hantering av kundönskemål. Förbättringsförslagen kan sammanfattas till ”3 U” – utveckla huvudkontoret, utbilda säljarna och underlätta säljarens arbete. Konsekvenser: I arbetet har konkreta förbättringsförslag tagits fram för att undvika kommunikationsluckor på Mjöbäcksvillan. Dessa förbättringsförslag kan företaget använda sig av för att förbättra sin hantering av kundönskemål och därmed öka produktkvaliteten och kundnöjdheten. Begränsningar: Endast ett småhusföretag har undersökts, vilket leder till att resultatet ej är generaliserbart för alla företag i branschen. Dessutom valde företaget själva ut vilka kunder som skulle intervjuas, vilket kan leda till att endast de nöjdaste kunderna blev intervjuade. / Purpose: For Swedish house manufacturers, communication shortages can occur both internally and externally, which can lead to a result that does not match customer expectations. This is because gaps are formed in communication and a "whispering game" occurs. There is a model called "Gap Model of Service Quality" which helps identify these gaps in organisations. The aim of this report is to use the "Gap Model of Service Quality" to develop a way of working to improve the management of customer requests for house manufacturers. Method: To reach the aim, literature studies, interviews and a focus group have been conducted. These have been done in cooperation with the house manufacturer Mjöbäcksvillan. Findings: Several improvements have been developed to improve Mjöbäcksvillan´s management of customer requests. The improvement proposals can be summed up to: develop the headquarters, educate the sellers and facilitate the seller´s work. Implications: In the report, concrete improvement proposals have been developed to avoid communication gaps at Mjöbäcksvillan. These improvements can be used by the company to improve its customer demand management, thereby increasing product quality and customer satisfaction. Limitations: Only one house manufacturer has been investigated, which means that the result is not generalizable for all companies in the trade. In addition, the company itself selected which customers would be interviewed, which could result in only the most satisfied customers being interviewed.

This thesis presents how unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can successfully assist in search and rescue (SAR) operations using wireless localization. The zone-grid to partition to capture/detect WiFi probe requests follows the concepts found in Search Theory Method. The UAV has attached a sensor, e.g., WiFi sniffer, to capture/detect the WiFi probes from victims or lost people’s smartphones. Applying the Random-Forest based machine learning algorithm, an estimation of the user's location is determined with a 81.8% accuracy. UAV technology has shown limitations in the navigational performance and limited flight time. Procedures to optimize these limitations are presented. Additionally, how the UAV is maneuvered during flight is analyzed, considering different SAR flight patterns and Li-Po battery consumption rates of the UAV. Results show that controlling the UAV by remote-controll detected the most probes, but it is less power efficient compared to control it autonomously.

The increasing popularity of Internet bandwidth-intensive applications prompts us to consider followingproblem: How to compute efficient collective communication schemes on large-scale platform?The issue of designing a collective communication in the context of a large scale distributed networkis a difficult and a multi-level problem. A lot of solutions have been extensively studied andproposed. But a new, comprehensive and systematic approach is required, that combines networkmodels and algorithmic design of solutions.In this work we advocate the use of models that are able to capture real-life network behavior,but also are simple enough that a mathematical analysis of their properties and the design of optimalalgorithms is achievable.First, we consider the problem of the measuring available bandwidth for a given point-topointconnection. We discuss how to obtain reliable datasets of bandwidth measurements usingPlanetLab platform, and we provide our own datasets together with the distributed software usedto obtain it. While those datasets are not a part of our model per se, they are necessary whenevaluating the performance of various network algorithms. Such datasets are common for latencyrelatedproblems, but very rare when dealing with bandwidth-related ones.Then, we advocate for a model that tries to accurately capture the capabilities of a network,named LastMile model. This model assumes that essentially the congestion happens at the edgesconnecting machines to the wide Internet. It has a natural consequence in a bandwidth predictionalgorithm based on this model. Using datasets described earlier, we prove that this algorithm is ableto predict with an accuracy comparable to best known network prediction algorithm (DistributedMatrix Factorization) available bandwidth between two given nodes. While we were unable toimprove upon DMF algorithm in the field of point-to-point prediction, we show that our algorithmhas a clear advantage coming from its simplicity, i.e. it naturally extends to the network predictionsunder congestion scenario (multiple connections sharing a bandwidth over a single link). We areactually able to show, using PlanetLab datasets, that LastMile prediction is better in such scenarios.In the third chapter, we propose new algorithms for solving the large scale broadcast problem.We assume that the network is modeled by the LastMile model. We show that under thisassumption, we are able to provide algorithms with provable, strong approximation ratios. Takingadvantage of the simplicity and elasticity of the model, we can even extend it, so that it captures theidea of connectivity artifacts, in our case firewalls preventing some nodes to communicate directlybetween each other. In the extended case we are also able to provide approximation algorithmswith provable performance.The chapters 1 to 3 form three successful steps of our program to develop from scratch amathematical network communication model, prove it experimentally, and show that it can beapplied to develop algorithms solving hard problems related to design of communication schemesin networks.In the chapter 4 we show how under different network cost models, using some simplifyingassumptions on the structure of network and queries, one can design very efficient communicationschemes using simple combinatorial techniques. This work is complementary to the previous chapter in the sense that previously when designing communication schemes, we assumed atomicityof connections, i.e. that we have no control over routing of simple connections. In chapter 4 weshow how to solve the problem of an efficient routing of network request, given that we know thetopology of the network. It shows the importance of instantiating the parameters and the structureof the network in the context of designing efficient communication schemes.

Thesis (MPhil )--University of Stellenbosch, 2011. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study investigates the differences in the communication styles of siSwati and American English speakers. Specifically, it investigates the realization patterns of the speech acts of request and greeting in siSwati, by native and non-native speakers of siSwati. It also investigates how these same speech acts are realised by the non-native speakers of siSwati in their first language, English. The participants were 10 Swazis and 10 American Peace Corps volunteers living in Swaziland, Southern Africa at the time this study was conducted. The data were collected by means of a questionnaire followed up with a semi-structured interview. The data were analysed using the framework of the Cross-cultural Speech Act Realization Project as developed by Blum- Kulka (1989). Common trends were noted in the realization of the two speech acts by native speakers and non-native speakers and conclusions were made based on the similarities and differences observed. Overall, the results suggest (i) that there are marked differences in the way in which American English speakers and Swazi people perform and interpret greetings and requests, and (ii) that such differences emanate from the different cultural orientation of the two groups of people. Since such differences sometimes lead to misunderstandings, there is evident need to make people aware of cultural differences in order for understanding and tolerance to prevail in cross-cultural interactions. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie studie ondersoek die verskille in die kommunikasiestyle van sprekers van siSwati en Amerikaanse Engels. Dit beskou spesifiek die realiseringspatrone van die taalhandelinge versoek en groet in siSwati, deur moedertaal- en nie-moedertaalsprekers van siSwati, en in Engels. Die deelnemers was 10 Swazis en 10 Amerikaanse Vredekorps-vrywilligers woonagtig in Swaziland, Suid-Afrika, ten tye van die studie. Die data is ingesamel deur middel van 'n vraelys wat opgevolg is deur 'n semi-gestruktureerde onderhoud. Die data is geanaliseervolgens die raamwerk van die Kruiskulturele Spraakhandeling-realiseringsprojek, soos voorgestel deur Blum-Kulka (1989). Algemene tendense is opgemerk in die realisering van die twee spraakhandelinge deur moedertaalsprekers en nie-moedertaalsprekers en afleidings is gemaak op grond van die waargenome verskille en ooreenkomste. Oor die algemeen dui die resultate op (i) duidelike verskille tussen die wyses waarop sprekers van Amerikaanse Engels en Swazis versoeke en groethandelinge uitvoer en interpreteer, en (ii) die verskillende kulturele oriënterings van die twee groepe as oorsprong van hierdie tipe verskille. Aangesien laasgenoemde dikwels aanleiding gee tot misverstand, is dit duidelik noodsaaklik dat mense bewus gemaak word van kulturele verskille ten einde begrip en verdraagsaamheid te laat hoogty vier tydens kruiskulturele interaksie.

O presente trabalho, fundamentado a partir da Análise da Conversa Etnometodológica (LODER; JUNG, 2008), tem como objetivos 1) descrever os momentos de ensaio, apresentação e fechamento da atividade pedagógica de encenar em grupos, segundo a concepção da abordagem de ensino por tarefas (conforme NUNAN, 1999), e 2) descrever momentos em que os participantes estejam se orientando para a construção de aprendizagem (ABELEDO, 2008) por meio da análise de seqüências de pedidos e ofertas de ajuda (BULLA, 2007). Os dados consistem em uma hora de registros audiovisuais de uma aula de inglês como língua estrangeira em uma escola de línguas. Foram registradas 6 ocorrências de pedidos de ajuda e 3 ocorrências de ofertas de ajuda. A análise de tais ocorrências permitiu observar que, para realizarem a atividade pedagógica de encenar em grupos, os participantes precisaram trabalhar interacionalmente a fim de instaurar a realidade ficcional e mantê-la. Assim, participantes demonstraram não estar simplesmente treinando para que um dia fizessem uma discussão familiar, mas sim estar construindo tal discussão aqui-e-agora. Foi possível descrever a atividade pedagógica de encenar em grupos como constituída em um momento de instruções (em que uma participante dividia os demais em grupos e distribuía os papéis a serem encenados por cada um), dois momentos de prática distintos (o de ensaio, em que os participantes produzem pedidos de ajuda como ações preferidas e ofertas de ajuda como ações despreferidas, e o de apresentação, em que os participantes produzem pedidos e ofertas de ajuda como ações despreferidas e produzem exibições de competência lingüística) e um momento de fechamento (em que os participantes discutem as ações construídas no momento da apresentação da encenação, além de produzirem exibições de competências e avaliações a respeito do desempenho no momento das apresentações). Assim, realizar a atividade pedagógica de encenar em grupos propicia a construção e a manutenção de diversas realidades dentro da sala de aula e a categorização (SCHGLOFF, 2007) dos participantes em categorias além das de aprendiz/professor. / This research is grounded on Ethnomethodological Conversation Analysis (LODER; JUNG, 2008) and is aimed at 1) describing the rehearsal, presentation and accountability (NUNAN, 1999) of the pedagogical activity of role-playing, and 2) describing moments in which participants orient to the construction of learning (ABELEDO, 2008). These objectives are achieved through the analysis of sequences of offers and requests for help (BULLA, 2007). The data consists of about one hour of video recorded interactions in one English class in a language center. I collected 6 sequences of requests for help and 3 sequences of offers of help. The analysis of such sequences enables the observation that, while performing the roleplaying pedagogical activity, participants produce interactional work to establish and maintain a fictional reality. Participants demonstrate that they are not only practicing the use of language for a further use in a different context; they are indeed using language in order to build and maintain a context here-and-now. We can describe the pedagogical activity of roleplaying as organized in a moment of instructions (in which one participant divided the others in groups and distributed the roles to be played), two different moments of practice (the rehearsal, in which participants produce requests for help as preferred actions and offers of help as dispreferred actions, and the presentation, in which participants produce offers and requests for help as dispreferred actions and produce exhibitions of linguistic competence) and an accountability (in which participants discuss the actions built during the presentation of the play, besides producing exhibitions of competence and assessments of the performance of the participants who produced the presentation of the plays). So, the pedagogical activity of role-playing is an opportunity for learners to build and maintain different realities in classroom and produce different actions and activate categories (SCHGLOFF, 2007) beyond learner/teachers.