How to promote the pragmatic awareness and avoid the fossilization phenomenon through a role play activity in English as a foreign language classes

Many people, even after spending a lifetime studying a foreign language are prone to get stuck in a certain grammatical domain no matter the efforts made and the amount of the target language input offered in the classroom. Unfortunately, the great majority who pursuits their dreams to be the closest possible to a native like speaker, the lack of ability to analyze and synthesize linguistic elements makes them persist in the same errors, establishing a phenomenon known as Fossilization in their learning process. In fact, Fossilization can occur in all learning process levels: phonological, grammatical, lexical and pragmatic and the errors made seem to be similar from individual to individual. In an attempt to avoid this Fossilization process concerning the pragmatically ability to communicate, this article aims to present a suggestion of a role-play activity involving strategies to enhance pragmatic awareness related to politeness theory.

M-learning and the EFL classroom

Technology is definitely ubiquitous. It is what keeps us constantly connected to different people on a daily basis. Since the advent of smartphones, technology has also changed the way we perform many of our everyday tasks, including the ones at the school local context. It also reinvented the way teenagers learn and behave in the classroom, EFL institutions included. This article, then, aims to present and discuss the role of mobile learning in the teaching of English-speaking skills and the concept of Bring Your Own Device. Additionally, based on the concept of Partnering Pedagogy (PRENSKY, 2012), it suggests a lesson plan for regular school pre-teens to show how teachers can give the first step toward the implementation of mobile devices in their educational practices. The lesson, which can be applied either to online or face-to-face contexts, showed how teenage students become more willing to participate in speaking activities. Finally, the text brings to light some reflection on the integration of mobile technologies in EFL learning practices, emphasizing the essence of delivering high quality learning lessons rather than giving central importance to technology per se.

Analysis on the use of politeness strategies in a scene of The Crown

This article aims to analyze the positive and negative politeness strategies speakers employ to avoid threatening the addresses’ face in the series The Crown (2017) in season 02, episode 08 entitled Dear Mrs. Kennedy. The analysis is held in light of the Politeness Theory by Brown and Levinson (1987, first published in 1978). It could be observed through a qualitative analysis that when there is a relation of power between the speaker and the hearer, the speaker tends to use bald on record expressions, whereas when the speaker is the subordinate, he/she tends to utter negative strategies and hedges to mitigate the threat to the hearer’s face.

Promoting the Pedagogical Use of Pictograms

This article reports on the findings of a qualitative research project, in which an instrumental case study with five in-service English teachers graduated from Universidad Nacional (UNA), Costa Rica was carried out. Hence, a hybrid continuing education workshop was designed and conducted, which was focused on promoting the pedagogical use of pictograms in the design of materials for teaching English. As the main product of the workshop, the participants created and used a teaching material which included pictograms. Among the main results obtained in the research project, the students’ facility, motivation, and speed to communicate their ideas in English by using pictograms stood out.

Exploring Conversational Implicatures in the American Sitcom Seinfeld

Since learners must know how to use language in different contexts, sitcoms could help with pragmatic competence development because they display contextualized lifelike language. Could identifying conversational implicatures in a sitcom help develop metalinguistic awareness of implicatures? In addition, are there conversational implicatures in the sitcom Seinfeld that present the potential to help develop pragmatic competence? This article illustrates conversational implicatures through Seinfeld episodes and discusses how identifying implicatures could develop metapragmatic awareness. The method was a descriptive research of the qualitative type. Ten segments from the American sitcom Seinfeld were analyzed based on their conversational implicature occurrence. The implicatures present in the segments are discernible and may help develop pragmatic competence if explicitly taught to learners. Further studies could focus on quantitative research in EFL classrooms on the potential benefits of using sitcoms to develop metalinguistic awareness.

O lugar da tradução no ensino-aprendizagem de inglês do século XXI

Em que pese as críticas que podem ser feitas ao uso da tradução no ensino-aprendizagem de inglês, ela ainda é muito usada, de diferentes formas. Considerando as controvérsias desse tema, essa é uma pesquisa bibliográfica que tem o objetivo de entender o lugar da tradução no processo de ensino-aprendizagem de língua inglesa do século XXI. Para além dos livros e trabalhos científicos, também buscou-se olhar para a Base Nacional Comum Curricular (BNCC), já que esse é o documento normativo mais recente para a elaboração de currículos e de propostas pedagógicas no Brasil. A tradução como método apresenta fragilidades, considerando que a capacidade dos métodos de serem suficientes frente aos diversos desafios que se impõem vem sendo questionada, esse, o mais antigo, pode ser visto como uma herança que já não faz mais sentido. Já como recurso, se verificou que a tradução se situa melhor. Podendo colaborar para o aprendizado da língua inglesa, para o desenvolvimento de percepções linguísticas, e da consciência que envolve diversos aspectos tanto da língua inglesa, quanto da língua materna, desde que seja pensada como um recurso significativo, atual, contextualizado e que leve em conta as particularidades e necessidades dos alunos.

A língua inglesa na escola sob o ponto de vista de alunos e professores

Considerando o inglês como um idioma que tem assumido um papel cada vez mais importante no mundo globalizado em que vivemos, faz-se necessário avaliar de que forma essa língua tem sido vista e, consequentemente, ensinada nas escolas. Desse modo, o presente artigo analisa pontos de vista de alunos e professores sobre a língua inglesa, bem como implicações didático-metodológicas do ensino da língua em sala de aula, com base em entrevistas não dirigidas semiestruturadas com professores de inglês e com alunos do terceiro ano do ensino médio de duas escolas públicas estaduais do Vale do Taquari, no Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil. Os resultados apontam que a língua inglesa tem sido vista como uma língua franca global, possível de ser utilizada em diferentes contextos comunicativos como língua adicional, trazendo muitos benefícios aos falantes e, por conseguinte, fazendo com que o interesse por sua aprendizagem aumente. No entanto, constatou-se que a metodologia adotada nas escolas não proporciona o desenvolvimento das habilidades necessárias para que esse idioma seja colocado em uso, sendo esse um fator preponderante para a desmotivação dos estudantes, que não veem razão para estudar regras gramaticais de forma descontextualizada e repetitiva. Sinaliza -se, portanto, que o ensino de inglês na escola precisa estar voltado para o desenvolvimento de projetos baseados em tarefas que busquem proporcionar aos estudantes situações reais de uso da língua, através das quais seja possível o desenvolvimento de uma competência linguística voltada para o princípio da inteligibilidade.

“I just want to graduate!”

Motivating L2 students is challenging. Most learners are not interested in the language and must be reassured that learning a new language is beneficial and worth the effort (Krashen, 2015). L2 students are more likely to be successful when highly motivated (Schütz, 1998), which can be achieved with fun and engaging material. Games are one of the most motivating techniques when introduced properly (McCallum, 1980). They create a relaxed challenging atmosphere of healthy competition that increases students’ desire of self improvement and makes them forget the anxiety that is usually associated with language lessons (Schumann 1994; Constantinescu, 2012; Gozcu & Caganaga, 2016). The link between motivation and acquisition is positive especially when motivation is intrinsic (Tremblay & Gardner, 1995). However, getting students’ interest is more difficult when their motivation is instrumental. This is the case of Gardner-Webb University students, who are required to take a language course in order to graduate. Motivating these students is harder when the target is culture. Culture has been traditionally taught with old-fashioned teacher-centered activities, but new technologies enable the development of effective and stimulating material (Dema & Moeller, 2012). The present paper focuses on a series of technology-based games addressing culture. The activities were used to increase the motivation of American university students learning Spanish as a L2 at Gardner-Webb University (North Carolina). The experience was designed by a team of Fulbright fellows to be implemented in their Spanish labs as part of the celebration of two Cultural Weeks during the first semester.

Social activity and learning de-encapsulation under a multimodal approach in English Language Teaching

In order to attempt to bring language learning practices closer to students’ daily lives, studies regarding Social Activity (Liberali, 2009), under the Social Historical Activity Theory (Engestrom, 1999) have been gaining space in current research (Larré, 2018; Silva, 2017; Zanella, 2017). Accordingly, as an emerging necessity from the context here described and from our society in general, environmental education became necessary, along with interdisciplinary practices, as stated in Brazil’s official curriculum guidelines. In addition, in the 21st century, with the advances of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), the Pedagogy of Multiliteracies (Cope & Kalantzis, 2001) has become even more relevant in education, being it due to communication, social media, video, and images, for example. In light of this, the objective of this research paper is to analyze the outcome of an environmentally focused pedagogical intervention under a multimodal approach, developed during an internship program in a state school. After being in contact with planetary awareness in English language lessons, students customized ecobags alongside the Arts teacher, in an interdisciplinary way. Students’ productions were analyzed taking into account their multimodal choices when making meaning out of different semiotic modes, and to what extent learning de-encapsulation happened in this process. Results indicate that students were able to achieve synesthesia in their multimodal productions, combining linguistic, visual, spatial and gestural modes. Furthermore, learning de-encapsulation occurred as students made use of the environmental knowledge they acquired in English classes, not only by crossing boundaries inside the school, but also outside its walls.

Telecollaborative practice in Brazil

Telecollaboration refers to connecting geographically distant learners in intercultural contact via (a)synchronous communication tools. “Teletandem Brasil: Foreign Languages for All” (Telles, 2006) is a telecollaborative, pedagogical, and research project that has been the object of investigation of studies published under the formats of research articles, master’s theses, Ph.D. dissertations, books, and book chapters. This paper aims to present a descriptive map of peer-reviewed research articles on teletandem practice in Brazil. We selected articles that reported on empirical research from the Web of Science platform and the teletandembrasil.org website and, based on the EPPI reviewing system, analyzed 67 articles. We identified the following aspects of the articles: period of publication, language, research focus, and data analyzed. Our results indicate that (i) there has been a growing interest in the topic reflected in more published papers on teletandem; (ii) most articles are published in Portuguese and English; (iii) research on teletandem has focused on 11 different topics, the most popular ones being language learning and intercultural issues; and (iv) there is a diversity of data analyzed in the publications.