linguistica-aplicada-ensino-ingles-joverns-adultos.pdf

Lingustica Aplicada ao Ensino do Ingls para Jovens e AdultosRosa Maria Neves da Silva

Montes Claros/MG - 2012

Rosa Maria Neves da Silva

Lingustica Aplicada ao Ensino do Ingls

para Jovens e Adultos

- EDITORA UNIMONTES - 2012Universidade Estadual de Montes Claros

REITORJoo dos Reis Canela

VICE-REITORAMaria Ivete Soares de Almeida

DIRETOR DE DOCUMENTAO E INFORMAESHuagner Cardoso da Silva

EDITORA UNIMONTESConselho EditorialProf. Silvio Guimares Medicina. Unimontes.Prof. Herclio Mertelli Odontologia. Unimontes.Prof. Humberto Guido Filosofia. UFU.Prof Maria Geralda Almeida. UFGProf. Luis Jobim UERJ.Prof. Manuel Sarmento Minho Portugal.Prof. Fernando Verd Pascoal. Valencia Espanha.Prof. Antnio Alvimar Souza - UnimontesProf. Fernando Lolas Stepke. Univ. Chile.Prof. Jos Geraldo de Freitas Drumond Unimontes.Prof Rita de Cssia Silva Dionsio. Letras Unimontes.Prof Maisa Tavares de Souza Leite. Enfermagem Unimontes.Prof Siomara A. Silva Educao Fsica. UFOP.

REVISO LINGUSTICAngela Heloiza BuxtonArlete Ribeiro NepomucenoAurinete Barbosa TiagoCarla Roselma Athayde Moraes

Luci Kikuchi VelosoMaria Cristina Ruas de Abreu MaiaMaria Lda Clementino MarquesUbiratan da Silva Meireles

REVISO TCNICAAdmilson Eustquio PratesCludia de Jesus MaiaJosiane Santos BrantKaren Trres Corra Lafet de AlmeidaKthia Silva GomesMarcos Henrique de Oliveira

DESIGN EDITORIAL E CONTROLE DE PRODUO DE CONTEDOAndria Santos DiasCamilla Maria Silva RodriguesClsio Robert Almeida CaldeiraFernando Guilherme Veloso QueirozFrancielly Sousa e SilvaHugo Daniel Duarte SilvaMarcos Aurlio de Almeida e MaiaMagda Lima de OlivieraSanzio Mendona HenriquesTatiane Fernandes PinheiroTtylla Ap. Pimenta FariaVincius Antnio Alencar BatistaWendell Brito MineiroZilmar Santos Cardoso

CATALOGADO PELA DIRETORIA DE DOCUMENTAO E INFORMAES (DDI) - UNIMONTESDados Internacionais de Catalogao na Publicao (CIP)

EDITORA UNIMONTESCampus Universitrio Professor Darcy Ribeiro

s/n - Vila Mauricia - Montes Claros (MG)Caixa Postal: 126 - CEP: 39.401-089 - Telefone: (38) 3229-8214

www.unimontes.br / [email protected]

Este livro ou parte dele no pode ser reproduzido por qualquer meio sem autorizao escrita do Editor.

Chefe do Departamento de Cincias BiolgicasGuilherme Victor Nippes Pereira

Chefe do Departamento de Cincias SociaisMaria da Luz Alves Ferreira

Chefe do Departamento de GeocinciasGuilherme Augusto Guimares Oliveira

Chefe do Departamento de HistriaDonizette Lima do Nascimento

Chefe do Departamento de Comunicao e LetrasAna Cristina Santos Peixoto

Chefe do Departamento de EducaoAndra Lafet de Melo Franco

Coordenadora do Curso a Distncia de Artes VisuaisMaria Elvira Curty Romero Christoff

Coordenador do Curso a Distncia de Cincias BiolgicasAfrnio Farias de Melo Junior

Coordenadora do Curso a Distncia de Cincias SociaisCludia Regina Santos de Almeida

Coordenadora do Curso a Distncia de GeografiaJanete Aparecida Gomes Zuba

Coordenadora do Curso a Distncia de HistriaJonice dos Reis Procpio

Coordenadora do Curso a Distncia de Letras/EspanholOrlanda Miranda Santos

Coordenadora do Curso a Distncia de Letras/InglsHejaine de Oliveira Fonseca

Coordenadora do Curso a Distncia de Letras/PortugusAna Cristina Santos Peixoto

Coordenadora do Curso a Distncia de PedagogiaMaria Narduce da Silva

Ministro da EducaoAloizio Mercadante

Presidente Geral da CAPESJorge Almeida Guimares

Diretor de Educao a Distncia da CAPESJoo Carlos Teatini de Souza Clmaco

Governador do Estado de Minas GeraisAntnio Augusto Junho Anastasia

Vice-Governador do Estado de Minas GeraisAlberto Pinto Coelho Jnior

Secretrio de Estado de Cincia, Tecnologia e Ensino SuperiorNrcio Rodrigues

Reitor da Universidade Estadual de Montes Claros - UnimontesJoo dos Reis Canela

Vice-Reitora da UnimontesMaria Ivete Soares de Almeida

Pr-Reitora de EnsinoAnete Marlia Pereira

Diretor do Centro de Educao a DistnciaJnio Marques Dias

Coordenadora da UAB/UnimontesMaria ngela Lopes Dumont Macedo

Coordenadora Adjunta da UAB/UnimontesBetnia Maria Arajo Passos

Diretor do Centro de Cincias Humanas - CCHAntnio Wagner Veloso Rocha

Diretora do Centro de Cincias Biolgicas da Sade - CCBSMaria das Mercs Borem Correa Machado

Diretor do Centro de Cincias Sociais Aplicadas - CCSAPaulo Cesar Mendes Barbosa

Chefe do Departamento de ArtesMaristela Cardoso Freitas

Autor

Rosa Maria Neves da Silva MA in Linguistics and Specialization in TEFL (Ball State University, USA) as a Fulbright Grantee; Specialization in ESP (University of Lancaster, England);

Teaching License in Portuguese and English (FUPAC, Barbacena, MG); Retired Associate Professor from UFMG; English Linguistics Teacher PREPES/

PUCMG; Visiting Professor of Portuguese and Brazilian Culture (Portland State University, USA); Publications: Glossrio Bilngue de Tecnologia e Negcios

(1998, Editora Nova Fronteira), Glossrio de Termos Parlamentares - bilngue (Assemblia Legislativa de Minas Gerais), Leitura de Textos em Ingls: uma

abordagem instrumental (co-author); Language Specialist for Undergraduate Courses Assessment at Conselho Estadual de Educao de Minas Gerais;

Professional Translator.

Sumrio

By way of presentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9

UNIT 1What is applied linguistics? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11

1.1 Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11

1.2 The Object of Teaching and Learning: Language. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21

UNIT 2What does it mean to learn a foreign language? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

2.1 The Learning Process: Core Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

2.2 Learning Styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

2.3 Learning Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26

2.4 Your new self . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28

UNIT 3What does it take to teach a foreign language? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29

3.1 Approaching Language Teaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29

3.2 Learning assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39

UNIT 4 How is the foregoing material applicable to the classroom? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41

4.1 Sample unit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41

4.2 General task . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .49

Learning Activities - AA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53

8

UAB/Unimontes - 8 Perodo

APPENDIX Annex 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55

Annex 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Annex 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .57

Annex 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .61

Annex 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .62

Annex 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

Annex 7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

9

Letras/Ingls - Lingustica Aplicada ao Ensino do Ingls para Jovens e Adultos

By way of presentationWelcome back to a new school term! During this term you will be introduced to a new

field of study, one which is of the utmost importance to yourself as an English learner and a prospective English Language Teacher: Applied Linguistics. Through the next units you will read about this subfield of Linguistics mainly as connected to foreign/second language teaching. The readings are complemented with a number of varied activities and practical examples aimed to combine theory and practice. In the 'clues', 'glossaries', and 'learn more' sections you will find additional explanation and guidelines, and the references offer you a selection of reliable, useful sources of material to expand your knowledge I am sure you will profit from every lesson and agree to the importance of this tool to your learning and teaching. I invite you to read and study and carefully complete all the activities proposed for each of the four units of this 90-hour course. Hope you enjoy this course. Happy learning!

The objectives for this course are:

Provide the student with an insight into the scope, means and purposes of Applied Linguistics.

Provide the student with a discussion of the concepts of learning and teaching. Provide the student with an overview of major approaches and methods to foreign

language teaching. Provide the student with the opportunities to apply those concepts and teaching

approaches and methods. Provide the student with a discussion of language learning assessment. Provide the student with an actual sample a communicative lesson aiming to

demonstrate the applicability and usefulness of the Applied Linguistics concepts, teaching approaches and methods.

After completing the readings and activities proposed here, the student/prospective teacher is expected to

Have a better understanding of the concepts, scope, means and purposes of Applied Linguistics.

Have a better understanding of the impact of developing the various competencies involved in foreign language learning.

Have a better understanding of the implications of learning and teaching. Have a better understanding of the cultural implications of foreign language teaching and

learning. Be able to make better informed decisions concerning approaches, methods, activities,

procedures to adopt for their English classes. Have a better understanding of the communicative approach and its implications

advantages and disadvantages to teaching English as a foreign/second language. As a teacher, manage to design meaningful reading comprehension, speaking and writing

activities, or select such activities from reliable sources to meet the objectives of teenager and young adult foreign language learners.

As a teacher, manage to design appropriate, valid and timely assessment questions and activities compliant to the teaching methodology selected, the content and the objectives of the course.

The Author

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UNIT 1 What is applied linguistics?

1.1 BackgroundApplied Linguistics (term derived from the American language teaching program

developed during and after the Second World War and based on Leonard Bloomfields Outline Guide for the Practical Study of Foreign Languages (1942) has been defined in many ways, not always satisfying. The term applied implies a relation with some type of support theory, in this case, Theoretical Linguistics.

The Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language defines Applied Linguistics as linguistics applied to the study and improvement of language teaching and learning, language planning, intergroup communication, speech therapy and speech impairment management, communication systems, translation and interpretation and lexicology.

Despite the controversy arising from the various attempts to define Applied Linguistics, most studies in this field so far concentrate on language teaching and learning, including the learning process and learning results.

Applied linguistics is often said to be concerned with solving or at least ameliorating social problems involving language. The problems applied linguistics concerns itself with are likely to be: How can we teach languages better? How can we diagnose speech pathologies better? How can we improve the training of translators and interpreters? How can we write a valid language examination? How can we evaluate a school bilingual program? How can we determine the literacy levels of a whole population? How can we helpfully discuss the language of a text? (DAVIES & ELDER, 2004, p.1)

As you can see, Applied Linguistics accounts for a number of issues, all of them involving language, so to those questions I would add: How can foreign language users achieve proper interaction? What level of competence should we expect from foreign language learners? How does the choice of methodology impact actual language learning?

Applied linguistics is an area of work that deals with language use in professional settings, translation, speech pathology, literacy, and language education; and it is not merely the application of linguistic knowledge to such settings but is a semiautonomous and interdisciplinary domain of work that draws on but is not dependent on areas such as sociology, education, anthropology, cultural studies, and psychology. (PENNYCOOK,2001, s/p)

Pennycook somehow repeats Davies and Elder (2004) and other authors like Moita Lopes (1996) view of Applied Linguistics, and clearly stresses its interdisciplinary nature which renders it as not entirely autonomous, but combined to other fields of study.

As you go on reading and learning about this field of study, you will see that authors agree in one point, that is, that Applied Linguistics is an interdisciplinary field of investigation just as Pennycook had pointed - which offers the necessary theoretical and descriptive foundations for the investigation and solution of language-related problems, mainly those concerning language teaching and learning. It also tries to understand and explain how communication is actually carried out in real life, while identifying difficult contexts and challenging issues.

Particularly in Brazil, Applied Linguistics developed to include case studies on the language learning process, error analysis and foreign language reading aimed both at understanding the teaching/learning process and modifying the conditions of the language classroom to achieve the objectives proposed. To accomplish this task the teachers are expected to have some good knowledge of language theories and language teaching approaches as well so that they can develop extensive and in-depth research on the language learning process, foreign language learning and learning results in actual formal contexts, that is, the classroom.

CLUEAll cartoons and figures from the Web used in this textbook are copyright-free, allowed for free download and use.

TASK Read Chapter 1: Afinal, o que Lingustica Aplicada? In MOITA LOPES, L.P. da Oficina de Lingustica Aplicada: A natureza social e educacional dos processos de ensino/aprendizagem. Campinas, SP: Mercado das Letras, 1996. and CELANI, M.A.A. Afinal o que Lingustica Aplicada? In: PASCHOAL, M.S.Z. & CELANI, M.A.A. (org.) Lingustica Aplicada: da aplicao de lingustica lingustica transdisciplinar. So Paulo: EDUC.List the main points of agreement between those authors.

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Outside the field of language teaching and learning, Applied Linguistics is also concerned with problems of translation and interpretation; bilingualism and multilingualism; computer-mediated communication; conversation analysis; corpus linguistics; critical discourse analysis; discourse analysis and pragmatics; forensic linguistics; language assessment; language for special purposes; lexicography; literacy; multimodal communication; rhetoric and stylistics.

According to Brown, K. (2005), teaching is still a major concern of Applied Linguistics in various parts of the world, where applied linguists approach issues like speech pathologies and the levels of literacy of social groups, language processing and communicative differences between social/cultural groups.

Simply put, and for the purposes of this course, we will accept that Applied Linguistics is a subdivision of Linguistics which developed into an independent interdisciplinary field of science. It is of particular interest to language teachers in what concerns the implications of foreign/second language teaching and foreign/second language learning/acquisition and the solution of language-related problems in specific situations of the real world.

Some authors make a clear distinction between Applied Linguistics and Linguistics-Applied studies. Among those, Davies & Elder (2004) understand that Applied Linguistics engages in trying to explain social issues concerning the use of language, while the aim of Linguistics-Applied studies is more abstract to explain and test theories on language.

In this course we will not engage in theoretical discussions about what Applied Linguistics is or is not; on theoretical controversies arising from the viewpoints of different authors, but yet on what most directly interests you as a student and a prospective English teacher. From now on, that is how I intend to address you as a prospective English teacher, as you are taking a Curso de Letras. By the way, lets start by asking: How would you introduce yourself to an American, saying that you are um (a) aluno (a) do Curso de Letras? So, the next sections will offer you insights on the many aspects that I find useful for you to develop as a proficient learner and a teacher prepared to offer the best English teaching job when you start performing your classroom activities. My purpose is to make this course as much resourceful and helpful as possible for you to meet your needs and goals.

Let me remind you that learning to be a teacher depends equally, among others, on developing your knowledge of English syntax, phonology, morphology and semantics, and your understanding of the culture underlying the English language. Then remember to refer to the other textbooks provided for your course Anglo-American Culture, Morfologia da Lngua Inglesa, Fonologia da Lngua Inglesa, Introduo Lngustica, Gramtica da Lngua Inglesa - as they will be very helpful in many ways.

1.2 The Object of Teaching and Learning: Language

In this section you will learn about a number of core concepts which support the concerns of Applied Linguistics towards language teaching and learning, mainly foreign or second language teaching and learning. The first question proposed by Davies & Elder- How can we teach languages better? - as seen on page 07 above, somehow summarizes the focus of this discipline and triggers the descriptions you will find in the next section on language concepts.

Let us start with a discussion of what language is. Considering that language is the sole object of our work as teachers, the more we understand what it is, how it works, the easier it is for us to do our job. A classical and primary definition of language goes that language is a mental faculty which allows human beings to engage in linguistic behavior to acquire, produce and understand utterances; a learned symbolic, flexible communication system.

Language the linguistic code the most representative of the forms of communication, exclusive to human beings, is by nature chaotic in what it reveals the cultural, ethics, moral, social, religious, political and institutional standards of diverse human groups. Through language human beings express their emotions, feelings, viewpoints and share them with others. A language reflects the culture of a community, and yet this same culture mirrors the language of that community. This means that social life is permeated by language at every level, from the most common to the most complex and significant activities.

CLUE The following

abbreviations are largely found in

the literature and very useful to you:

ESL(English as a second language),ESOL

(English for speakers of other languages),

andEFL(English as a foreign language)all refer to the use

or study of English by speakers of other

languages.

More recently, this new abbreviation has been added to the list

above: EIL (English as International

Language), identifying English as an intercultural,

multicultural, intervarietal form of

language that allows wider communication between nations and region inside nations,

and is the language currently used for

science, technology and international trade.

ELT(English language teaching),

TESL(teaching English as a second

language),TESOL(teaching

English to speakers of other

languages), andTEFL (teaching English as a foreign

language)

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Among the various fields of human knowledge, the linguistic code stands as the most important carrier of information, the most forceful social/political interaction tool, the most effective means for the disclosure of technology and science advancements, the core tool in education. Without language you would not have the literature or theater you enjoy so much. The linguistic code combines linguistic items organized in three levels: semantic, syntactic and phonological, and which is used by human beings only.

Here is how some authors define language:G. Trager (1949) states that a language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used by specific

social groups to interact according to their particular culture. The arbitrariness of language, as Trager states, stands for the belief that there is no natural reason why a particular sign should be attached to a particular concept. For example, there is no natural reason for an r (the letter) to be attached to the sound /r/, as in rat. Linguistic signs are imposed on real life sounds and concepts: a real ball could have been identified by any other word but ball. A baby who is about to start speaking would call a ball apple or shoe if all the people around him would always refer to the ball as apple or shoe. There is no logical reason for the round object used in soccer games, the ball, to have been assigned the word ball to name it.

This reminds us of Shakespeares Whats in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet which has been interpreted as indicating that the names of things do not really matter; what matters is what things are; names are merely arbitrary.

Michael Haliday (1973) views language as a source of open-ended options for linguistic behavior that are available to the individual as a member of the society. He says that the cultural context creates an environment for the selection of such options, and defines those options. Finally, the context of situation provides the conditions for the speakers choice among those options. Halliday clearly indicates the functional and creative nature of language an open-ended set of options. Comprising extensive vocabulary and rules of grammar combined, a language allows the user to as much creative and productive as he wants and needs. Although limited by a close set of rules, any language allows the user to make an infinite number of combinations of words to express feelings, emotions, perceptions, ideas, and talk about everything they want to. The more you know about a language, the more vocabulary you have, the more creative and productive you can be.

Sapir (1921) acknowledges language is a purely human and non-instinctive; a tool for communication that makes use of voluntarily produced symbols. Purely human reminds you that only human beings can make use of language; animals are out. Forget about parrots. They cannot be linguistically creative, they do not increase their language production by themselves. All they do is repeat a small number of frozen words or short phrases they hear. Sapir also acknowledged language as being a product that is mainly cultural or social, and which as such is to be understood.

Saussure (1916) stresses the social nature of language made possible from a typically human faculty, that is, our inherent ability to produce and creatively combine a set of meaningful sounds, hold a grammatical system existing in everyones mind and in the minds of groups of individuals. As he puts it, this human faculty only makes sense as a tool shared by a group of people, for it would be of no use for the individual alone. Here we find a most valuable argument for our understanding of the importance of learning and teaching a language.

Language is not an abstract construction of the learned, or of dictionary-makers, but is something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground. (WALT WHITMAN, 1892, p. 4)

I would summarize by saying that language is as much a part of human beings as are their mind, heart and soul, a tool both for self expression and communication.

It is also interesting to learn about some specific types or typical forms of language. Let us go back to our own Brazilian history and think about those large vessels navigating the ocean from Africa, filled with hundreds of African slaves from different regions, speaking different languages. Those slaves had to stay together for months inside those ships. How could they communicate? Under those conditions, human beings start creating some kind of hybrid language by combining a limited amount of vocabulary and grammar derived from the various languages around them. Initially a mumbo jumbo an unintelligible mix of vocabulary and grammar -, this strange combination develops into a code called pidgin allowing those people to communicate to some extent. Supposing that the same group of people finally settle in a community, such pidgin may, over the generations, develop into a creole, then the native language of that community. In general, creoles include traces of languages like Spanish, French,

GLOSSARYCORPUS LINGUISTICS: The study of language based on real world samples from which a set of rules on that particular language is derived. Before the computer was available to linguists, researchers used to interview a group of pre-selected people to collect language samples; the interviews were recorded on tape. The advent of the computer allowed for a larger, automated collection of real life samples.

INTERDISCIPLINARY: What is said of: 1. a discipline which combines concepts, approaches and views from other two or more fields of study; 2. Research using methods and insights from various established fields of study.LINGUISTICS - Linguistics is the science of human language.LEXICOGRAPHY: Editing or making of dictionaries; the principles and practices guiding dictionary making. LITERACY: Ability to read and write about printed material coherently and critically.STYLISTICS: The study of the use of language style elements, like metaphors in specific contexts; the study and interpretation of texts from a linguistic perspective.

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English or Portuguese colonial European languages combined with vocabulary and grammar of the colonized people. Most creoles have now disappeared, but some survive, for example, in the Caribbean and Western Africa. Inthe island nation ofHaiti, a French-African pidgin became the creole language.

As a foreign language speaker you are not expected to produce a mumbo jumbo type of language or discourse, or else you will not make yourself understood, and as a teacher, you will have to provide your students with some coherent language.

Finally, let us have a quick look at dialects. A dialect is a variant of a language. Within your broader language community, that is, your country, you find a variety of regional speeches marked by the diversity of vocabulary, that is words that are typical of a specific area, or words that are attached different meanings depending on the region they are used. Dialects of this type are called regional dialects. Dialectal boundaries called isoglosses (fronteiras dialetais) - do not match political or geographic boundaries. Therefore, do not expect to find differences in the pronunciation of the r in porta only because you have crossed the border between So Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, for example. Isoglosses function somehow like the sound waves you see here: the changes in language move slowly across geographic borders.

LEARN MORE Foreign language

is understood as language learned in

a community that has another mother

tongue, and therefore is not used for everyday

conversation by the learners outside the

classroom, e.g., English learned in Brazil.

Second language is the language learned

by immigrants while living in a foreign

country, where that language is used in

everyday life, e.g., English learned in the US by Brazilians living

there.

For a broader understanding of

Corpus Linguistics, you should refer to

this article by Daniel Krieger: Corpus

Linguistics: What It Is and How It Can Be

Applied to Teaching, at http://iteslj.org/ The Internet TESL Journal,

Vol. IX, No. 3, March 2003.

And for a better understanding of what

Applied Linguistics is about, read

http://www.filologia.org.br/revista/40suple/

introdao_a_linguistica%20.pdf

where you find this article in Portuguese:

Introduo Lingustica Aplicada e sua utilidade para

as pesquisas em sala de aula de lngua

estrangeira, by Doris de Almeida Soares.

On Error Analysis, refer to Contribution of Error

Analysis to Foreign Language Teaching, by

Vacide ERDOAN, at*http://efd.mersin.edu.

tr/dergi/meuefd_2005_ 001_002/pdf/

meuefd_2005_001_ 002_0261-0270

_erdogan.pdf

Figure 01: Sound waves Source: Targethd.net, disponvel em

http://targethd.net/2009/03/19/gadgets--fita-adesiva-sonora-voce-conhecia-isso/.

Acesso em: 02 abr. 2012.

Additionally, social dialects identify the linguistic status of speakers within a society. In our own communities, we are aware of forms that are considered better or worse, words and grammar forms that are used only by educated people, people who speak the standard form of the language, people who did not receive much language education, people whose pronunciation is typical of certain social groups. In the United States, particularly in Charleston, South Carolina, r-less speech, that is, not pronouncing the r in words like bear and court is associated with aristocratic, high-status groups, therefore a mark of linguistic prestige; in New York City, however, the same r-less speech is typical of working-class, low-status people.

1.2.1 Competencies

The quotes above include such terms like society, culture, context of situation, communication. In any foreign language setting language learning has one and only purpose: enable the individuals to dive into a new culture and interact in contexts of situation which may also be entirely new. To do so, language users have to develop their communicative competence, or how language is used by members of a speech community to accomplish their social interactional purposes. The diagram below shows elements comprising communicative competence as viewed by Canale and Swain (1980).

According to Hymes (1972), communicative competence requires the speaker to have proper control of the following interacting systems:

grammatical - what is provided by the rules of the language psycholinguistic whatever feasible through human information processing psycho-cultural - the social meaning or value of a given utterance probabilistic - what actually occurs during the interaction

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In sum, to make it easier for you to understand it, you can say that communicative competence involves the Whs of communication: when to engage in a conversation, speak, what to say or talk about, whom to talk to, when, where, in what manner, or how to say something or be silent.

For proper interaction in contexts of situation which may be entirely new, the foreign language speaker must develop their grammatical competence, cultural competence, sociolinguistic competence, strategic competence all together contributing to what is called communicative competence. It is the task of foreign language teachers to give their students opportunities to develop these multiple competencies aimed to prepare them to properly use their most important human communication tool. Let us then learn more about such competencies.

One day an English grammar teacher was looking ill.A student asked, Whats the matter?Tense, answered the teacher, describing how he felt.The student paused, then continued, What was the matter? What has been the matter?

What might have been the matter... ?This joke, at this point used as merely motivational, is a good example of how simple

language, easy words put together may create interesting forms of misunderstanding.

TASK: Identify what caused the misunderstanding in the previous conversation.

Grammatical competence involves the identification of the set of rules which governs a persons understanding of what is and is not correct and acceptable in the language they speak. It therefore implies

mastering the morphology, the vocabulary and the mechanics of pronunciation (letters, syllables words), intonation and stress of a language, e.g.,

____________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________

recognizing a verb in a sentence and a subject independent of the syntactic configurations in which they occur, e.g.,

____________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________

LEARN MOREThis paper on Diversidade e Unidade: A Aventura Lingustica do Portugus, by Rosa Virgnia Mattos e Silva, provides a very interesting analysis of language variance. I highly recommend its reading as knowledge of our own language is a valuable support for our learning of a foreign language. It is available at http://cvc.instituto-camoes.pt/hlp/biblioteca/diversidade.pdf .Another reading I do recommend is this book by Henriette Walter, A aventura das lnguas no ocidente, Mandarim, 1997, where you will find useful, curious, interesting and sometimes funny information about languages like Portuguese, French, Italian, Spanish, Danish, German, English, and others.

TASK 1Research and list 10 examples of pronunciation or use of Portuguese vocabulary representative of different social groups in your community. 2. Then refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_vocabularies_of_American_English read the page and select 10 examples from the various regional words and comment on them.

Figure 02: Model of communicative competence by Canale and SwainSource: CANALE and SWAIN (1980).

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using proper agreement of two or more items: they agree if they are both marked for the same grammatical distinction, e.g.,

____________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________

telling which of a set of non-adjacent words in a sentence go together and which do not, e.g., ____________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________

identifying reference in a sentence, that is, what a specific word refers to, e.g., ____________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________

identifying how one sentence relates to another semantically (e.g. different words or arrangement, same meaning) or syntactically (e.g. different words, same structure), e.g.,

____________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________

TASK - 1The previous marked items are all followed by e.g., but no actual examples were provided. Your task is to

provide two English examples for each of the five implications above.

TASK 2Identify and correct the grammar error in the cartoon (Figure 3) by providing two different forms of

asking the same thing. 2. What cultural aspects are shown in the cartoon?

Sociolinguistic competence, as the name implies, involves knowledge of the social context, roles of the interlocutors, functions of the interactions in which the language is used as well as the information shared in such interactions. It also involves recognizing instances of code switching, that is, the concurrent use of more than one language variety (formal/informal register) in conversation.

Formal English is used in official documents, books, news reports, articles, business letters or official speeches while informal English is used in everyday conversations and in personal letters. Despite this definition, it is not always easy for foreigners to identify formal from informal language. Reading different types of texts, watching movies attentively, watching interviews with different types of people and news reports on TV are tools the teacher may recommend so that the language learner can observe and retain various levels of register, which, in fact range from informal to semi-informal and formal, as you can see in this example taken from http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/608/02/.

Formal (Written to an unknown audience): I am applying for the receptionist position advertised in the local paper. I am an excellent candidate for the job because of my significant secretarial experience, good language skills, and sense of organization.

Semi-formal (Written to a well-known individual): I am applying for the receptionist position that is currently open in the company. As you are aware, I have worked

Figure 03: What snapping can do!

Source: The Funny Times. Disponvel em

http://pewari.may.be/2011/03/21/when-

-english-teachers-snap/. Acesso em: 02 abr. 2012.

17


as a temporary employee with your company in this position before. As such, I not only have experience and knowledge of this position, but also already understand the companys needs and requirements for this job.

Informal (Incorrect):Hi! I read in the paper that yall were looking for a receptionist. I think that I am good for that job because Ive done stuff like it in the past, am good with words, and am incredibly well organized.

Many authors agree that the language user shows discourse competence if he approaches language with both coherence and cohesion in a large repertoire of structures and discourse markers to express ideas, show relationships of time, and indicate cause, contrast and emphasis (SCARCELLA & OXFORD, 1992, p. 207).

According to H.P. Grice (1975), conversation is based on a cooperative principle by which the interlocutors share specific goals and have already agreed ways of achieving them. This agreement seems to be implicit in natural development of the conversation, and any successful dialogue would depend on the interlocutors including these four elements: Quantity - say neither too little or too much than needed Relation make sure what is said is relevant to the conversation Manner - be clear and coherent; avoid ambiguities and obscurities Quality use enough evidence to support what you say and avoid whatever may be felt as

false, unimportant for the purpose of the conversation.

TASKIdentify which of these utterances are formal and which are informal.1. I feel real good. I feel really good.

2. As the final price of ten dollars was reasonable, I decided to accept it.

It was, like, ten bucks, so I said okay.

3. You can find out all about the survey in chapter 10.

Details of the survey are to be found in chapter 10.

The number of infected patients is increasing.

4. The number of infected patients is going up.

TASK

Both the cartoon on the figure 5 and the text are good examples of language and discourse misuse, filled with obscurities, ambiguities, incoherence. Of course, it takes some language and cultural knowledge for the reader to identify the various types of misuse in those authentic texts, which native speakers do easily.

1. Pick up the grammar error in Lulas text and find what is obscure or ambiguous in the text.

2. Pick up five examples of misuse in Bushs text, including incoherence.

Figure 04:Talking balloons Source: Disponvel em http://www.stcare.com/serendipity/exercise.html. Acesso em: 02 abr. 2012.

Figure 05: Making progress Fonte: www.simontaylor.com.br.


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Can the English language survive after Bush? Here is a collection of George Bushs quotes:

The vast majority of our imports come from outside the country. If we dont succeed, we run the risk of failure. One word sums up probably the responsibility of any Governor, and that one word is to be

prepared . I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments inthe future. The future will be better tomorrow. We have a firm commitment to NATO, we are a part of NATO. We have a firm commitment

to Europe. We are a part ofEurope. Public speaking is very easy. A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls. We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur. For NASA, space is still a high priority. Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children. It isnt pollution thats harming the environment. Its the impurities in our air and water that

are doing it. Its time for the human race to enter the solar system.

(Email running on the Internet)

According to Canale and Swain (1980), strategic competence comprises a number of verbal and non-verbal communication strategies that the speaker uses to offset his insufficient competence or common performance variables. This means the various ways a speaker handles language vocabulary, forms, or varieties to express his feelings, emotions, personal traits to achieve his communicative goals. Choosing to be more or less emphatic, use formal or informal language, polite expressions, metaphors, slang, gestures or facial expressions, pauses, all these are strategic means of achieving communication.

For Duquette et al (1988) strategic competence is the ability to use communication strategies to keep the communication channel open maintaining the interaction between the interlocutors and the conversation according to the speakers intentions. Their definition assumes that the speaker sets a communicative goal and modifies what they say depending on what they intend to say.

All this is certainly not new to you, as any speaker, in any language, including yourself when speaking Portuguese, uses similar strategies. In fact, some strategic strategies are to some extent international. What is important here is to remember that when teaching, you have to make this clear to your students so that they use them appropriately when conversing in English.

GLOSSARYCOHERENCE: The quality or state of

cohering, especially a logical, orderly, and aesthetically

consistent relationship of parts; logical or

natural connection or consistency (www.

thefreedictionary.com).COHESION: Proper use

of linguistic elements to make a discourse

semantically coherent.

Figure 06: Following cultural standards

Source: http://pt.dreamstime.com/foto-

-de-stock-royalty-free-exe-cutivos-na-reuni-ampatil-

deo-do-globo-do-mundo--nos-e-u--image5255005.


19


Cultural competence or cross-cultural awareness involves understanding the life and institutions, beliefs and values, everyday attitudes and feelings of the foreign society as expressed by language and by paralinguistic features like dressing, gestures, facial expressions, stance and movements. According to Tomalin and Stempleski (1996), for the purposes of communication, cultural competence summarizes as having:

awareness of ones own culturally-induced behavior; awareness of the culturally-induced behavior of others; ability to explain ones own cultural standpoint.

Foreign language teachers must be aware of the fact that teaching a language is teaching a culture; values and presuppositions about the nature of life, about what is good and bad in it, which are implicit in any normal use of a language; crosscultural communication requires crosscultural understanding.

Let me remind you that another important aspect to remember is that the language is generally accompanied by non-linguistic, or paralinguistic elements, that is, gestures, movements, gestures, facial expressions which may be very different from those used in the learners native language. In fact, the type and amount of those paralinguistic elements vary from culture to culture, and you must be careful when using them with a foreign language. As a teacher, remember that teaching communicatively requires observing such aspects as well.

Still another type of competence that would very much help foreign language users interact in a cross-cultural environment is pragmatic competence, that is, the ability to perceive and understand speakers intended meaning, which many times is difficult when we use our own native language. Metaphors, irony, ambiguities, puns (trocadilhos), neologisms, all these just add to the difficulty in conversation, mainly for foreign speakers. It is the task of the language teacher to find ways to minimize such difficulty by exposing the learner to as much real life language as possible. You will read more about pragmatics in the next section.

Enjoy an interesting example of total miscommunication in this fictional conversation between State Secretary Condolezza Rice and President George Bush in the Oval Office White House.

Hu is on First?

George: Condi! Nice to see you. Whats happening?Condi: Sir, I have the report here about the new leader of China.George: Great. Lay it on me.Condi: Hu is the new leader of China.George: Thats what I want to know.Condi: Thats what Im telling you.George: Thats what Im asking you. Who is the new leader of China?Condi: Yes.George: I mean the fellows name.Condi: Hu.George: The guy in China.Condi: Hu.George: The new leader of ChinaCondi: Hu.George: The Chinaman!Condi: Hu is leading China.George: Now whaddya asking me for?Condi: Im telling you Hu is leading China.George: Well, Im asking you. Who is leading China?Condi: Thats the mans name.George: Thats whos name?Condi: Yes.George: Will you or will you not tell me the name of the new leader of China?Condi: Yes, sir.

20


George: Yassir? Yassir Arafat is in China? I thought he was in the Middle East.Condi: Thats correct.George: Then who is in China?Condi: Yes, sir.George: Yassir is in China?Condi: No, sir.George: Then who is?Condi: Yes, sir.George: Yassir?Condi: No, sir.George: Look, Condi. I need to know the name of the new leader of China. Get me the SecretaryGeneral of the U.N. on the phone.Condi: Kofi?George: No, thanks.Condi: You want Kofi?George: No.Condi: You dont want Kofi.George: No. But now that you mention it, I could use a glass of milk. And then get me the U.N.Condi: Yes, sir.George: Not Ya ssir! The guy at the U.N.Condi: Kofi?George: Milk! Will you please make the call?Condi: And call who?George: Who is the guy at the U.N?Condi: Hu is the guy in China.George: Will you stay out of China?!Condi: Yes, sir.George: And stay out of the Middle East! Just get me the guy at the U.N.Condi: Kofi.George: All right! With cream and two sugars. Now get on the phone.(Condi picks up the phone.) Condi: Rice, here.George: Rice? Good idea. And a couple of egg rolls, too. Maybe weshould send some to the guy in China. And the Middle East. Can you get Chinese food in the Middle East?

Source: Email circulating on the Internet

In the cartoon (FIG. 07) and in the text you have just read you may find interesting examples taken from an English-speaking culture, namely, the American culture. Observe how one simple cartoon offers a good amount of cultural information, and is therefore a rich source of teaching material, starting from reading and understanding the text.

Figure 07: Culture tips Source: The Funny Times.

Disponvel em http://www.funnytimes.com/.


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I bet that after learning about those concepts you are now asking yourself: Can language teachers help the students develop all those types of competence? Is one type of competence more important than another? Should the teacher give priority to one or more competences in relation to the others? How does the choice of methodology impact the development of those competencies? What level of competence should be expected from the learner?

You will find the answers by yourself after reading all the material selected for this course and completing the activities proposed. Questions are good to make you think!

ReferencesBLOOMFILED, Leonard. Outline Guide for the Practical Study of Foreign Languages, 1942.

BROWN, K. (Editor) Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. 2. ed. Oxford: Elsevier, 2005.

DAVIES, Alan & ELDER, Catherine ( Editors). The Handbook of Applied Linguistics, Blackwell Publishing, 2004.

DUQUETTE, L. La crativit dans les pratiques communicatives in A. M. Boucher, A. M. Duplantine, R. Leblanc, Pdagogie de la communication dans lenseignement dune language trangere. Bruxelles: De Boeck-Wesmael, 1988.

GRICE, H.P. Logic and conversation In Cole, P. & Morgan, J. (eds.) Syntax and Semantics, Volume 3. New York: Academic Press. pp. 41-58, 1975.

HALLIDAY, M.A.K. Language as Social Semiotic: The Social Interpretation of Language and Meaning. London, Edward Arnold, 1978.

HYMES, D.H. On Communicative Competence In: J.B. Pride and J. Holmes (eds) Sociolinguistics. Selected Readings. Harmondsworth: Penguin, pp. 269-293.(Part 2),1972.

KRIEGER, Daniel Corpus Linguistics: What it is and how it can be applied to teaching, available at The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. IX, No. 3, March 2003.

SAPIR, Edward Sapir Language.New York: Harcourt Brace, p.8, 1921.

SELINKER, L. Interlanguage. International Review of Applied Linguistics, 10, 209-241, 1972.

TRAGER, G. The Field of Linguistics.Norman, OK: Battenberg Press. 1949.

TASK 1 Read the text contained in the cartoon above. Identify the cultural aspects and the language items used to indicate them. How do those aspects compare to the Brazilian culture?

2. Refer to http://www.fujishima-h.ed.jp/teacher/materials/American%20Gestures.pdf - American Gestures: A Lesson for Elementary Students.

Read it carefully then make a list of the gestures commonly used by Americans and compare them with the gestures used in Brazil, if any, for the same contexts.

LEARN MOREFor a more detailed understanding of the role of culture in foreign language teaching and learning refer to the textbook on Anglo American Culture, by Helena Maria Gramiscelli Magalhes, 2011.

GLOSSARY UTTERANCE - (enunciado) - A string of words produced on a particular event of oral interaction; a complete unit of speech in conversation, in general bounded by silence.

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UNIT 2 What does it mean to learn a foreign language?

Figure 08: The joy of learning Source: Sangrea.net. Dis-ponvel em http://inglesie-sollosgrandes.blogspot.com.br/2010_06_01_ar-chive.html. Acesso em: 02 abr. 2012.

2.1 The Learning Process: Core Concepts

A first distinction you must learn is the one between learning and acquisition. In the context of language learning, learning is understood as the conscious, formal process developed in the classroom which includes grammar explanation, memorization of rules and vocabulary, activities, tasks, and

exercises involving the four skills, and testing. Acquisition is the informal, unconscious, out-of-class process that involves the actual exposure to language in real life environments: English as a second language is acquired by Brazilians who have not attended English classes in Brazil and move to an

24


English speaking country where they do not take English classes. However, you are going to see in the material supplied for this course that some authors do not apply this distinction and use both acquisition and learning

interchangeably. In fact, this is quite the case for other linguistic terms: selecting language terms or statements to describe language itself is sometimes difficult.

The language learning/acquisition process basically implies going through the stages of: retrieval of information. processing of information. transfer or encoding of information.

In doing so, the foreign/second language learner develops some kind of intermediate, self-contained, specific form of language, termed interlanguage, as proposed by Larry Selinker (1972). This interlanguage creates a language system with grammar rules and vocabulary that, in general, do not belong to either his native language or the foreign/second language being learned. What is created is then some kind of third language marked by mechanisms of transfer or interference (negative transfer), overgeneralization, simplification, avoidance, overuse and fossilization. These mechanisms are all learning strategies that the learner uses in an attempt to master the rules of the new language.

Transfer occurs when a rule of the native language is successfully used in the foreign language, that is, it is acceptable and also correct in that language, e.g., verb agreement, like in Ele gosta (not Ele gosto)* He likes (not He like). Interference (negative transfer) occurs when the student selects a rule from his native language which does not apply to the foreign language, therefore producing an ungrammatical sentence, e.g., * I like of oranges. Interference also occurs when the learner uses the so called false friends, that is, false cognates, words like advocate or actual, for example, which he erroneously believes to mean *advogado or *atual, for their graphic or phonological similarity with Portuguese words. The Hu is on First? gives you a good example of phonological interference leading to a lot of misunderstanding. Overgeneralization is the broad application of a specific rule of the foreign language itself in situations in which a native speaker would not, e.g., use plural suffix s for all nouns, irrespective of exceptions in English. Simplification implies keeping general, simple forms of language, like the adjectives good and nice, instead of more specific which are applied in multiple contexts; or child-like speech, somehow indicating that the speaker has not yet mastered proper target forms. Avoidance

may occur in the form of structures removed from the learners interlanguage when he does not feel able to master them, or as a pragmatic, communicative strategy. In this case, it may happen because the speaker finds that a specific word or sentence is too difficult to use in certain circumstances or it is too formal, or too informal for the context of situation. Overuse indicates the recurrent, repetitive use of some language forms instead of other for fear of making errors when trying newly learned forms. You yourself as a foreign language user certainly tend to use words like nice and good in a number of contexts. They are easy and seem to fit well in those contexts, for example, when answering questions like How was your trip? However, you can show better proficiency if you use more specific terms, like comfortable, profitable, pleasant, satisfying, etc. When in doubt as to the adequacy of these words to answer that question, you avoid using them in favour of nice/good.

Concerning the process of foreign learning, Selinker (1972) developed the concept of fossilization, a mechanism by which the learner seems to stop improving his interlanguage and some rules, structures, strategies and words are kept frozen in that interlanguage no matter the amount of instruction the learner receives. The language fossilized can originate from either the native language or the foreign language, including errors or only correct forms.

All in all, as a prospective English language teacher, you must be aware that any or all of those mechanisms will be present in the students interlanguage during the process of learning, no matter which approach and method is adopted to teaching. It is the task of the teacher to identify them and help the student minimize the errors/mistakes and maximize their positive results. An error occurs when the language user has not yet mastered a rule, or because he has not yet been taught that rule, therefore not being competent to use it accordingly. An error has to do with competence, that is, the

LEARN MOREMetalanguageis the

language statements or language symbols used to

describe language itself, that is, use English senten-ces or symbols to describe

the grammar, syntax, semantics and phonology

of the English language.

25


more competent the language user is the fewer errors he will make. A mistake occurs notwithstanding the level of competence of the speaker and is due to non linguistic factors, like tiredness, distraction, etc. This means that the speaker is competent enough to correct his own mistake. A mistake has to do with performance, that is, with the actual use of language.

As far as the actual use of language is concerned, Pragmatics is the sub-field of Linguistics which develops the study of language in use by observing how the context of situation, the social and the cultural context contribute as well to meaning in conversation. Pragmatics investigates the implications of language interaction and studies how the transmission of meaning depends

not only on the linguistic competence of the interlocutors, but also on a number of other factors besides the above mentioned contexts, like the manner, place and time of the utterance, the status of the interlocutors and the understanding of the speakers intended meaning, as well as the causes of miscommunication.

In the Appendix to this textbook you find this excerpt attached as Annex 1 - When Yes means No or Maybe-- Avoiding Cross-Cultural Misunderstandings in Global Business - which is an example of what may occur in a cross-cultural interaction and provides some advice on how to avoid cross-cultural misunderstandings, in this case, in the critical context of global business.

2.2 Learning Styles

In this next section we will describe a set of learning styles and language learning concepts which run across teaching approaches and methodologies, together with a discussion of said approaches and methodologies. We will start by defining learning in general.

Learning is a natural ability of human beings, who are driven by curiosity, by an internal drive to seek knowledge through

experiencing the surrounding world. It may occur consciously or unconsciously. Sight, hearing, touch smell and taste are the tools human beings use to grasp concrete information; our abstract ability allows us to use our imagination, our intellect and our intuition to identify hidden meanings, discover subtle implications in messages, develop imaginative contexts and grasp novel ideas. Our mind then organizes the

Figure 09: The knot Source: Cartoon by Bill Browning, from his we-bpage:http://www.mnispi.org/cartoon/2001/index.htm. Acesso em: 02 abr. 2012.

26


information randomly, spontaneously sometimes, and orderly, in a linear sequence otherwise. This type of learning is also termed informal learning, somehow synonymous to acquisition, or learning by natural exposition to the real world.

Formal learning, on the other hand, results from the implementation of knowledge, skills or practices offered by school instruction or study, which add to our behavior, attitudes, viewpoints. In the language classroom, the learning that arises from explanations, exercises, tests, drills, case studies, guided and free activities involving the English grammar, semantics, phonology and related culture. In this type of setting, particularly in your language classroom, you can identify a variety of learning styles. In Figure 09 you find a student who is self-identified as Abstract-Sequential. What does that mean? This type of learner is research-oriented, logical, systematic, usually viewed as a nerd. Abstract learners tend to acquire information through observation, thinking and analysis while concrete learners demand doing, feeling, acting, therefore having some kind of direct experience with the information provided.

As a teacher, the more you identify your students learning style the easier it is for you to find the right activities to propose to them. Among your students you will find, for instance, active learners, those who enjoy teamwork, retain and understand information more quickly by discussing or applying it, and reflective learners, who like to work alone while thinking about the information provided in class. These learners exercise their receptive skills (listen and read) as a tool to learn, contrary to active learners who feel they have to be more productive, that is use their productive skills (speak and write) to learn.

Sensing learners are distinct from intuitive learners; they enjoy learning facts rules of grammar, and feel safe following well-established rules. Intuitive learners, on the other hand, prefer to discover possibilities

and relationships, for example, learning grammar from intuition, by observing varied occurrences in texts.

Other types of learners include visual learners, those who learn better and faster from what they see pictures and diagrams are helpful, written texts help them memorize graphic forms; verbal learners are satisfied with spoken explanations and written texts for comprehension; active learners, those who make sense of an experience through the immediate application of the new information; reflective learners, who have to think and reflect about the information received to make sense out of it.

Are you really aware of the type of learner that you are?

What are the implications of understanding these various learning styles for your own learning and later for your teaching?

Here it is: Identifying individual learning styles

facilitate your own learning and your work as a teacher;

No one teaching method will effectively reach all learners;

Different learning styles require different teaching strategies.

Both as a learner and a teacher, one thing that you must keep in mind is that every person can learn one way or another and that what is sometimes felt as unlearning is only a human learning strategy, a mental, unconscious process, some form of selecting, discarding unwanted, unnecessary, unimportant information that all of us go through to organize information in our mind. Also as an English learner you may have felt sometimes that the pace of your learning seems to have slowed down, that you do not understand or remember some aspects of language as easily as you used to. This is only a natural part of the learning process. You are not unlearning.

2.3 Learning DifficultiesThe 1960s and early 1970s witnessed

the development of Contrastive Analysis, a systematic study aimed to identify structural differences and similarities between a native and a foreign language. The idea behind the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis was

to explain why some structures are more difficult than others to learn. Following the Behaviorist belief prevailing at the time, that language learning depended basically on habit formation, it seemed logical to conclude that when a foreign structure or sound is

TASK Refer to ANNEX 2 -

Motivating Learners: Understanding

Language Acquisition. Read it and produce a brief summary of the

main points of the text. This task allows you to exercise your listening

comprehension and your writing skills.

27


similar to the native structure or sound it is easier to master. On the other hand, diverse structures or sounds are harder to acquire. This position was defended by Robert Lado in his Linguistics Across Cultures (1957, p.21): Those elements which are similar to [the learners] native language will be simple for him, and those elements that are different will be difficult. Following this statement, teachers would create their lesson plans accordingly, proposing specific teaching strategies and tasks for those areas considered more difficult, being able to preview possible learners errors. However, it was soon clear that many errors could not be anticipated and that it was not entirely true that differences between languages were the sole responsible for learning difficulties. Anyway, Contrastive Analysis, together with error analysis, provided a valuable tool for subsequent proposals, like

the Audio-Lingual method. In the Brazilian educational environment

it is still easy to find teachers who believe some English structures are definitely difficult to all learners, for example, phrasal verbs, prepositions and the present perfect tense. Teachers must remember that generalizations of this type are dangerous and not real. Moreover, many times those supposed difficulties are determined a priori, reflecting the teachers own difficulty to deal with such items or find an appropriate teaching strategy.

Learning difficulties are individual: what is difficult to one learner may be easy to another: learning difficulties depend on a number of factors and vary greatly from learner to learner, from individual abilities to the teaching methodology applied. Therefore, learning difficulties must be addressed on an individual basis.

2.4 Your new self While you are mastering a foreign

language you are building a new self rebuilding your identity, giving a new significance to yourself as an individual by engaging in a new cultural environment, however preserving your native identity. To incorporate this new self, you have to retrain your ears to receive, perceive and produce new sounds as close as possible to the foreign sounds being learned (listening/speaking), graphic combinations (read and write) and discourse strategies. A foreign language learner has to be prepared to perform multiple roles in different linguistic and cultural settings and actually use that new self. Exercising the foreign language promotes the alignment between native and foreign concepts, ethics, habits, discipline while developing the intellectual abilities of the language user.

So, when you are learning a language you are acquiring a new linguistic skill, while growing, advancing as a social being. You have this extraordinary chance to navigate across the richness of the diverse worlds of peoples dialects, idiolects the speech of the individual - and registers language levels of formality. You are sharing another culture, trying to see the world through a different linguistic experience, finding similarities in the expected differences. In the end you will find that learning a foreign language gives you an opportunity to see that such differences and similarities only contribute

to the overall quality of the individuals. As a learner and prospective language teacher you can profit from the knowledge of your own native language and culture to compare and contrast its strategies to those of the foreign language and culture, and further your own (and later your students) understanding and tolerance, that is, appreciation of diversity and the ability to live and let others live according to their principles. In conclusion, you now see that learning a language is more than merely mastering grammatical structures, memorizing vocabulary, or training pronunciation. None of these alone will make you properly use a foreign language.

In the Brazilian context, for the purposes established in the Parmetros Curriculares Nacionais de Lngua Estrangeira and the Contedo Bsico Comum de Lngua Estrangeira do Ensino Fundamental do 6 ao 9 Ano, foreign language learning means to provide the learner with a chance to sharpen his curiosity, develop his critical perception of his social environment, exercise critical reasoning, get rid of bias, realize that whatever perverted view the language user may have of other cultures, languages, races or people is only the result of prejudice, discrimination, and should not be encouraged. There are similarities and differences between languages, as there are similarities and differences between cultures. There is no one culture better than another.

Finally, there is this question which you

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may have many times asked yourself: Why learn languages? The answer for yourself is the same you should have for your students, who most certainly must be convinced and motivated to learn. First, let us remember that the ability to learn languages is not limited by economic background, ethnic background, nationality, gender, race, religion, or age. Despite the individual differences concerning abilities and strengths, everyone can develop language ability to some degree. Learning another language not only adds to your general knowledge, but also expands

upon the knowledge and understanding you have of your native language and culture. Learning another language is not only learning new grammar concepts, memorizing a new vocabulary and different sounds, but it provides you with insights into other cultures, helps create a more positive attitude towards differences and have a better understanding of the difficulties faced by people who have to move out of their countries. In the world of today, learning another language prepares you to find more professional opportunities, expand your social and cultural life activities.

ReferencesMINAS GERAIS. Contedo Bsico Comum de Lngua Estrangeira do Ensino Fundamental do 6 ao 9 Ano. Belo Horizonte: 2008.

LADO, Robert Linguistics Across Cultures. University of Michigan Press: Ann Arbor. 1957.

BRASIL. Mistrio da Educao. Parmetros Curriculares Nacionais de Lngua Estrangeira. Braslia: 1998.

SELINKER, L. Interlanguage. International Review of Applied Linguistics, 10, 209-241. 1972.

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UNIT 3 What does it take to teach a foreign language?

3.1 Approaching Language Teaching

Now that you have improved your knowledge of what learning is all about, of learning styles and of the creation of that new self when you learn a foreign language, let us move to the front of the classroom and talk about teaching.

Language teaching can be approached in many ways, both explicitly and implicitly. The most common, traditional mode that you know is the explicit mode of teaching, which includes explanations about how the language works, direct teaching of concepts, academic language and reading comprehension strategies as well as memorization of rules and forms. In this case, the content and messages of sentences and utterances is given second place. This teaching tends to be structural in nature.

Implicit teaching, on the other hand, is made by guiding the learner to identify grammar patterns in samples of authentic use while keeping a focus on the message/content. Some of the advantages of the

implicit teaching include the immediate applicability of grammar patterns to real life contexts, therefore being more communicative and creative than explicit teaching based on grammar explanation and structural exercises. However, a combination of both explicit and implicit teaching seems to be a positive tool for the teacher.

Implicit teaching can be performed through activities that demand observation and identification applied to a number of situations. Let us remember that this type of teaching is especially valuable for intuitive learners, who will profit the most from them. In this type of teaching, learners are exposed to demonstrations of language in use little with no grammar explanation, as used in

Figure 10: Regular classroom, regular class Source: http://srhabay.wi-kispaces. com/15 +CLAS-SROOM +COMMANDS. Acesso em: 02 abr. 2012.

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traditional methods. The activities have an immediate applicability to the learners lives or cultural backgrounds; they are usually motivational and the learner has more possibility of self-correction of mistakes.

Anyway, whatever type of teaching you choose should include cooperative strategies for the learners to share, compare and discuss their results. This is particularly important as learners with different learning styles can profit from a proper combination of these styles.

What this also means is that the teacher has the options of emphasizing either of the learners productive skills, that is, speaking or writing, or their receptive skills listening and reading. The foreign language itself can be approached from its structure, grammar, vocabulary, or as a tool for communication. The techniques, or types of activities proposed to teaching will vary according to the approach chosen. Considering the needs of the Brazilian learners in general, the Parmetros Curriculares Nacionais de Lngua Estrangeira and the Contedo Bsico Comum de Lngua Estrangeira do Ensino Fundamental do 6 ao 9 Ano defined the teaching objectives for our children, teenagers and young adults in formal education in terms of a communicative approach. What this means is that the syllabus must stress the social nature of language to empower the learner as a social actor. Therefore, the teaching material, including textbooks, learning and evaluation activities

must be adequately selected so as to provide the learner with the necessary tools to develop their communicative competence.

Although the terms approach and method are sometimes used interchangeably, there is a basic distinction between approaches and methods. A method is fixed teaching system comprising a set of stages, orderly organized, including activities, procedures, techniques and practices; a plan for the presentation of the language material to be learned. Approaches are said to be teaching philosophies, which are interpreted and applied in different ways - the methods in the classroom. Since the beginning of the last century a number of methods were proposed for foreign language teaching, including, among others, Grammar Translation Method; Cognitive Approach; Audio-Lingual Method; Direct Method; Presentation, Practice, Production (PPP); The Silent Way; Suggestopedia; Total Physical Response (TPR); Community Language Learning (CLL); Total Immersion Technique; Task-based Learning; The Lexical Approach; English for Specific Purposes (ESP). From this list you can see that the words approach and method are used interchangeably, as some authors believe that that term method should be avoided in favor of the term approach.

These methods/approaches can be classified in three main categories, or types: (a) structural, (b) functional and (c) interactive methods.

3.1.1 The Structural Approach

Structural approaches to foreign language teaching give first priority to exploring and mastering the grammatical and phonological patterns of the language. Most of the so-called traditional methods focused on sentence structure giving first priority to particular grammatical points, grammatical functions, like subject and predicate, word order and the memorization of word lists. Activities in general included repetition and memorization. The best known purely structural method, developed on an oral approach, is the Audio-Lingual method characterized by the use of the

foreign language itself never the learners mother tongue - to explain the grammar and new words of the target language, drills and memorization of sentence structures to create some kind of conditioning, so that the student could finally overcome their native language habits and acquire new habits to use those structures naturally,

The Audio-Lingual method innovated when an audio-visual lab was added to the teaching practice as its most important tool. The Audio-Lingual method was a milestone in the history of foreign language teaching.

3.1.1.1 The Audio-Lingual Method

The Audio-Lingual Method, an oral-based approach, drills students in the use

of grammatical sentence patterns and is supported by a strong theoretical base in

LEARN MOREAn important

distinction must be made between

grammatical/syntactic functions subject,

predicate, object and complement

- and communicative functions - apologize,

describe, invite, reason, comment, criticize and

a number of others.

TASKInstead of referring you to the Internet, I attached this text

about the Audio Lingual Method to this

textbook as ANNEX 3 so that you do not run the risk of having it deleted

from the Web. The complete, detailed

text is available at http://faculty.ksu.

edu.sa/fallay/Pages/ChapterFourTheAudio-

LingualMethod.aspx

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linguistics and psychology. The assumption behind this method is that the understanding and retention of sentence patterns by the learners occurs through conditioning, responding to stimuli, and that learners could form new habits after overcoming the habits of their native language.

The method makes use of drills of various types: repetition drill, chain, substitution, addition, expansion, transformation, completion, translation, sentence formation, replacement, question and answer. Practice, mainly understood as repetition, is intensive and extensive.

3.1.2 The Communicative Approach

Interaction is a basic feature of teaching and learning. Any regular class demands asking and answering questions, receiving and returning tasks, discussions, etc. This interaction is intensified and extended in the so called Communicative Approach to foreign language teaching. The Communicative Approach draws on Michael Hallidays (1973) account of language as being functional. Language strategies are then a tool to the realization of communicative functions, like getting things done, informing, inviting, convincing, reasoning, requesting, etc. The approach also includes the constructivist conception of learning as experimental response to real world events and as a socially mediated process.

Within the communicative approach to foreign language teaching: language is viewed mainly as a tool to

communication; classroom activities develop around

authentic, meaningful communication; fluency is essential to communication; communication requires the integration

of various language skills; actual communication demands

creativity based on the testing of hypotheses;

trial and error is a part of language learning;

actual language learning requires contextualization;

culture cannot be dissociated from language;

practice is essential; competence is built through use; language has to be adequate to the social

context.

Being an umbrella term, the communicative approach typically encompasses a number of trends, methods, practices, procedures, activities, all of them with a view to prepare the learner to use language effectively in the real world. The approach acknowledges the social-interactional nature of language, its role as an intervening tool for social relations, a mirror for an underlying culture.

By now you have already mastered a number of concepts and may be wondering which methods, practices, activities to adopt for your teaching. The Parmetros Curriculares Nacionais (PCN) lngua estrangeira (1998), clearly stress the communicative scope of foreign language teaching in the Brazilian context. Under the provisions of the PCN, our schools must then adopt methods/trends that provide the learner with activities, procedures, tasks to allow them to develop their productive and receptive skills accordingly, therefore being prepared for perform his role in the society.

To meet the provisions of the PCN for the Brazilian schools the foreign language learner is expected to be able to understand the social-interactional nature of language, identify and apply simple culture-specific patterns in conversation; develop appropriate pronunciation and intonation; reapply grammar forms and vocabulary to appropriate contexts; identify and apply the levels of language register formal, semi-formal and informal; infer word and sentence meanings; understand the general and specific meanings of written texts; create simple meaningful chunks; produce short, coherent texts.

3.1.2.1 Functional Approaches

Contrary to the proposal of the structural methods, functional approaches

include methods proposing that structures must be presented and mastered in those

LEARN MORE Go to ANNEX 3 and read about the Audio Lingual Method for features and scope, then suppose you teach in a school where the audio lingual is the method to be used in your English classes. Create a set of drills based on the description of typical Audio-Lingual Method drills.

GLOSSARY DRILL: A drill is defined as a learning exercise aimed at perfecting facility and skill, especially by regular practice.

LEARN MORECONSTRUCTIVIST LEARNING - Learning is viewed as an active, contextualized process of constructing knowledge based on personal experiences and hypotheses of the environment, and on the previous knowledge and experiences of the learner. This view of learning was supported by a number of works by Vygotsky and Piaget, among which I suggest that you read, if you are interested in those theories, PIAGET, Jean. A Linguagem e o Pensamento na Criana. Trad. Manuel Campos. Rio de Janeiro: Fundo de Cultura, 1959; VYGOTSKY, Lev Pensamento e linguagem. So Paulo: Martins Fontes, 1987.

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situations in which they could be used. It emphasizes the processes of learning or receiving knowledge, memorizing knowledge by repetition and start practicing it when such knowledge becomes a personal skill and habit. To achieve this, students learn vocabulary and practice reading skills.

Learning is then viewed as habit formation, where mistakes are to be avoided; language skills are presented orally first; word meanings are learned in context, both linguistic and cultural; oral practice is emphasized.

3.1.2.1.1 The notional-functional approach

Developed in Europe in the early 1970s, this approach focused on semantic and performance criteria: (a) notions, like quantity, manner, time and place, and emotions, and (b) communicative functions, like apologize, describe, invite, reason, comment, criticize. The procedures do not provide for grammar and vocabulary explanation and

memorization of rules, therefore relying on the assumption that the student has already mastered those aspects of the language. Teaching materials in general did not include a list of functions or notions. Anyway, the concept underlying the proposal was useful and valuable for the subsequent communicative trends in teaching.

3.1.2.2 Interactive Methods

Language teaching methods tend to be more and more interactive, leading the learner to be more active, therefore focusing on the development of both the productive

and receptive skills and allowing the learner to be more creative instead of merely repetitive. Below are some examples of how some major interactive methods work.

3.1.2.2.1 Strategic Interaction: focus on speaking

For Di Pietro (1987), human conversation always involves a turning point after a first stage when phatic, expected, meaningless utterances used are meant to establish a mood of sociability. That turning point then triggers the actual intended conversation, filled with surprises. An easy example is when you meet a friend in the street. You exchange

greetings this is expected, and whatever you say is accepted as greeting. Then you may hear something like Did you hear that my husband was awarded a prize for his latest urban development project? At this point what Di Pietro says is that language teachers fail when they prepare their students only to memorize greetings, phatic expressions

LEARN MOREPHATIC EXPRESSIONS

are those expressions used to establish a

mood of sociability, introduce some

conversation while not actually

communicating information or ideas.

When you meet someone and say

How are you?, for example, you do

not really want the other person to give you any information

about him or her, but simply to have it as

an introduction to a conversation, or merely

a general form of greeting.

Figure 11: (Em)Phatic talking!

Source: http://www.brainstuck.com/tag/

beard/. Acesso em: 02 abr. 2012.

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Letras/Ingls - Lingustica Aplicad

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