Questões de Concursos

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Building on the professional consensus that no method could claim supremacy, Prabhu (1990) asks why there is no best method. He suggests that there are three possible explanations: (1) different methods are best for different teaching / learning circumstances; (2) all methods have some truth or validity; and (3) the whole notion of what is a good or a bad method is irrelevant. Prabhu argues for the third possibility and concludes that we need to rethink what is “best” such that classroom teachers and applied linguists can develop shared pedagogical perceptions of what real-world classroom teaching is.

H.D. Brown (2002), in his critique of methods, adds the following two observations: (1) so-called designer methods seem distinctive at the initial stage of learning but soon come to look like any other learner centered approach; and (2) it has proven impossible to empirically (i.e., quantitatively) demonstrate the superiority of one method over another. Brown (2002) concludes that classroom teachers do best when they ground their pedagogy in “well-established principles of language teaching and learning” (p.17).

So what are these well-established principles that teachers should apply in the post methods era? One of the early concrete proposals comes from Kamaravadivelu (1994), who offers a framework consisting of 10 macro strategies, some of which are summarized below:

– Maximize learning opportunities. The teacher’s job is not to transmit knowledge but to create and manage as many learning opportunities as possible.

– Facilitate negotiated interaction. Learners should initiate classroom talk (not just respond to the teacher’s prompts) by asking for clarification, by confirming, by reacting, and so on, as part of teacher-student and student-student interaction.

– Activate intuitive heuristics. Teachers should provide enough data for learners to infer underlying grammatical rules, since it is impossible to explicitly teach all rules of the L2.

– Integrate language skills. The separation of listening, reading, speaking, and writing is artificial. As in the real-world, learners should integrate skills: conversation (listening and speaking), note-taking (listening and writing), self-study (reading and writing), and so on.

– Raise cultural consciousness. Teachers should allow learners to become sources of cultural information so that knowledge about the culture of the L2 and of other cultures (especially those represented by the students) becomes part of classroom communication.

– Ensure social relevance: acknowledge that language learning has social, political, economic, and educational dimensions that shape the motivation to learn the L2, determine the uses to which the L2 will be put, and define the skills and proficiency level needed in the L2.

(Celce-Murcia, M. 2001. Adaptado)

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It happens that the publication of this edition of the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary comes 250 years after the appearance of the first comprehensive dictionary of the English language, compiled by Samuel Johnson. Much has changed since then. The English that Johnson described in 1755 was relatively well defined, still essentially the national property of the British. Since then, it has dispersed and diversified, has been adopted and adapted as an international means of communication by communities all over the globe. English is now the name given to an immensely diverse variety of different usages. This obviously poses a problem of selection for the dictionary maker: which words are to be included in a dictionary, and thus granted recognition as more centrally or essentially English than the words that are left out?

Johnson did not have to deal with such diversity, but he too was exercised with this question. In his Plan of an English Dictionary, published in 1747, he considers which words it is proper to include in his dictionary; whether ‘terms of particular professions’, for example, were eligible, particularly since many of them had been derived from other languages. ‘Of such words,’ he says, ‘all are not equally to be considered as parts of our language, for some of them are naturalized and incorporated, but others still continue aliens...’. Which words are deemed to be sufficiently naturalized or incorporated to count as ‘parts of our language’, ‘real’ or proper English, and thus worthy of inclusion in a dictionary of the language, remains, of course, a controversial matter. Interestingly enough, even for Johnson the status of a word in the language was not the only, nor indeed the most important consideration. For being alien did not itself disqualify words from inclusion; in a remark which has considerable current resonance he adds: ‘some seem necessary to be retained, because the purchaser of the dictionary will expect to find them’. And, crucially, the expectations that people have of a dictionary are based on what they want to use it for. What Johnson says of his own dictionary would apply very aptly to The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (OALD): ‘The value of a work must be estimated by its use: It is not enough that a dictionary delights the critic, unless at the same time it instructs the learner...’.

(Widdowson, H. Hornby, A.S. 2010. Adaptado)

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Building on the professional consensus that no method could claim supremacy, Prabhu (1990) asks why there is no best method. He suggests that there are three possible explanations: (1) different methods are best for different teaching / learning circumstances; (2) all methods have some truth or validity; and (3) the whole notion of what is a good or a bad method is irrelevant. Prabhu argues for the third possibility and concludes that we need to rethink what is “best” such that classroom teachers and applied linguists can develop shared pedagogical perceptions of what real-world classroom teaching is.

H.D. Brown (2002), in his critique of methods, adds the following two observations: (1) so-called designer methods seem distinctive at the initial stage of learning but soon come to look like any other learner centered approach; and (2) it has proven impossible to empirically (i.e., quantitatively) demonstrate the superiority of one method over another. Brown (2002) concludes that classroom teachers do best when they ground their pedagogy in “well-established principles of language teaching and learning” (p.17).

So what are these well-established principles that teachers should apply in the post methods era? One of the early concrete proposals comes from Kamaravadivelu (1994), who offers a framework consisting of 10 macro strategies, some of which are summarized below:

– Maximize learning opportunities. The teacher’s job is not to transmit knowledge but to create and manage as many learning opportunities as possible.

– Facilitate negotiated interaction. Learners should initiate classroom talk (not just respond to the teacher’s prompts) by asking for clarification, by confirming, by reacting, and so on, as part of teacher-student and student-student interaction.

– Activate intuitive heuristics. Teachers should provide enough data for learners to infer underlying grammatical rules, since it is impossible to explicitly teach all rules of the L2.

– Integrate language skills. The separation of listening, reading, speaking, and writing is artificial. As in the real-world, learners should integrate skills: conversation (listening and speaking), note-taking (listening and writing), self-study (reading and writing), and so on.

– Raise cultural consciousness. Teachers should allow learners to become sources of cultural information so that knowledge about the culture of the L2 and of other cultures (especially those represented by the students) becomes part of classroom communication.

– Ensure social relevance: acknowledge that language learning has social, political, economic, and educational dimensions that shape the motivation to learn the L2, determine the uses to which the L2 will be put, and define the skills and proficiency level needed in the L2.

(Celce-Murcia, M. 2001. Adaptado)

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Education in a language which is not the first language of the learner is as old as education itself. As individuals from different language groups have lived together, some have been educated in an additional language. This is as true of Ancient Rome as it is of the increasingly multilingual societies being created through mobility and globalization in the 21th century.

Two thousand years ago, provision of an educational curriculum in an additional language happened as the Roman Empire expanded and absorbed Greek territory, language and culture. Families in Rome educated their children in Greek to ensure that they would have access to not only the language, but also the social and professional opportunities it would provide for them in their future lives, including living in Greek-speaking educational communities. This historical experience has been replicated across the world through the centuries, and is now particularly true of the global uptake of English language learning.

Researchers and educators have sought new practices in education that will suit the demands of the present day. Globalization and the forces of economic and social convergence have had a significant impact on who learns which language, at what stage in their development, and in which way. The driving forces for language learning differ according to country and region, but they share the objective of wanting to achieve the best possible results in the shortest time. This need has often dovetailed with the need to adapt content-teaching methodologies so as to raise overall levels of proficiency.

(COYLE, Do; HOOD, Philip; MARSH, David. 2010. Adaptado)

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This study reviews the findings of earlier translanguaging research in Saudi Arabia. Notably, Saudi Arabia is striving to adjust to the multilingual immigrant workforce on its soil, while encouraging a larger role for its people on other soils. In this changed paradigm, strengthening the Saudis’ English communicative proficiency is an emergent need. To make pertinent pedagogical recommendations on the use of translanguaging in language learning, the study gathered data using a questionnaire administered to 72 participants from King Faisal University. All participants were given fictitious names in order to protect their anonymity. Findings revealed that the Saudi EFL students strongly support the use of translanguaging in the EFL classrooms, but they are worried that it may not bring their proficiency to the desirable standard. They, thus, showed greater faith in the conventional language learning approach, viz., using only English in the EFL classes. The study concluded that learners‟ exposure to translanguaging is apparently not adequate for them to fully appreciate its benefits, and teachers who, so far, strictly keep to the English-only approach, too need to be oriented and trained in its use.

(Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 18(Special Issue 1),

556-568; 2022. Adaptado)

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A language function is a purpose you wish to achieve when you say or write something. If you say ‘I invite you’, you are performing the function of inviting. Of course you could also say ‘D’you want to come to the cinema?’ to make an invitation. There are many ways of inviting, apologising, agreeing, giving advice, asking for information etc.

If our students want to express themselves in speaking or writing, they need to know to perform these functions – in other words, how to use grammar and vocabulary to express certain meanings/ purposes.

(Jeremy Harmer. How to teach English, 1998. Adaptado)

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A language function is a purpose you wish to achieve when you say or write something. If you say ‘I invite you’, you are performing the function of inviting. Of course you could also say ‘D’you want to come to the cinema?’ to make an invitation. There are many ways of inviting, apologising, agreeing, giving advice, asking for information etc.

If our students want to express themselves in speaking or writing, they need to know to perform these functions – in other words, how to use grammar and vocabulary to express certain meanings/ purposes.

(Jeremy Harmer. How to teach English, 1998. Adaptado)