Learning with life : conectando o ensino de inglês com o universo de alunos

Abstract

Studies that describe what public school teachers do or are doing in the classroom from the point of view of the actual teachers are still scarcely explored in the area of teaching and learning of foreign language in the Brazilian context. This dissertation has as an objective to relate and reflect about my experience as a teacher of English during an extracurricular course titled Learning with Life at a secondary public school. The course as elaborated and developed tried to take advantage of the knowledge of English of two students in the role of monitors to assist the teacher during planning and development of the class as well as working with the orality to improve communication in English as this has been one of the aspects most neglected at the school. Two theoretic assumptions provided the impetus for the development of the research: the concept of knowledge of funds of González, Moll e Amanti (2009) and the principle of listening to the student in Freire's perspective (FREIRE, 2002). Three questions oriented this ethnographic research in that the principal instruments were participant observation and semi-structured interviews: What did the actors (teachers and students) of the course Learning with Life do in the space of the classroom? What do these events mean for the actors engaged with them? How can the concept of funds of knowledge be explored to transform the relation between teacher and students of English? The results showed that the classroom practice distanced itself from the objective of the course that planned to connect the classroom with the universe of the students. The developed activities barely explored themes present in the real world of the students aimed at production of meanings. To the contrary, these activities emphasized excessive repetition of words and explanations of grammatical items. However, regarding the interaction and relationship between the actors, there was observed a bond of mutual understanding, trust and commitment engaging them in actions, activities and tasks that were invited to play.