Questões de Concursos

Text 6

The sociolinguistics of English as Lingua Franca (EFL) pronunciation.

As far as sociolinguistics is concerned, the first task is to problematise the notion of standard accent. Essentially there is no such thing as a ‘standard’ accent, merely prestige accents, primarily RP and General American English (GA), stigmatised accents both native and (more often) non-native (see Lippi-Green, 1997; Bonfiglio, 2002), and a range of variously tolerated regional and social accents between the two extremes. The so-called BritishEnglish standard accent (RP) is claimed nowadays to be used by a mere fraction of British Native Speakers (NSs), possibly only three per cent in its unmodified form (see Trudgill, 2002: 171). The vast majority of NSs of English speak with regionallyand/or socially-modified accents, whether tolerated or stigmatised. Clearly, then, the RP accent cannot be ‘standard’ in the sense of being a widely-used norm. Instead, ‘standard’ refers accent-wise to a level of pronunciation assumed by many to be better in some way than the others, and is thus standard only in the sense of a level of excellence to be aspired to. Excellence, however, is not something that can be measured linguistically: it is not intrinsic to an accent, but merely reflects the value judgements of the elitist group who habitually use it or would if they could.

It should be a matter for teachers and their learners to decide whether they wish to subscribe to the (linguistically-unsound) belief in the superiority of RP. In some communication contexts an RP accent will undoubtedly provide them with a social advantage. This is more likely to be the case if learners intend to use their English to communicate and blend in largely with NSs, especially if the communication will take place in NS countries. Even here, though, their awareness should be raised to the fact that the majority of NSs with whom they communicate will not have an RP accent. At the most, it will probably be regionallymodified RP. On the other hand, having been apprised of the facts of sociolinguistic variation, learners may prefer to project their own (L2) regional and social identity through their accent. In this case their goal is more likely to be an accent that retains a clear trace of their L1, provided that it does not threaten the intelligibility of their pronunciation in their target (probably ELF) communication contexts.

JENKINS, J. Teaching Pronunciation for English as a Lingua Franca: A Sociopolitical Perspective. In GNUTZMANN, C.; INTEMANN, F. (Org.) The Globalization of English and the English Language Classroom. Oxford: OUP, 2005. p. 145-158.

Read the text and answer the question.

What is a consumer society?

A consumer is a person who buys things, and a consumer society is a society that encourages people to buy and use goods. Some people think that a consumer society provides people with better lives. People in consumer societies tend to live more comfortably. They eat a wider variety of food. They go to restaurants more often. They also buy a lot of products, maybe more than they need. Products such as TVs, cell phones, and computers used to be luxuries. Today people can buy these things more easily than ever before. The market for these goods is growing faster all the time. Consumer societies encourage people to buy bigger and better products. For example, “smarter” phones come out every year. In a consumer society, people are often buying newer and more advanced products. This creates a lot of waste. Nowadays, many people are thinking more seriously about the effects of consumer societies on the environment, and they are trying to become more responsible consumers. (https://www.eltngl.com/assets/downloads/grex_pro 0000000538/grex2_su8.pdf).

Read the excerpt to answer the question.

“JACK: We must get married at once. There is no time to be lost.

GWENDOLEN: Married, Mr. Worthing?

JACK: Well... surely. You know that I love you, and you let me to believe, Miss Fairfax, that you were not absolutely indifferent to me.

GWENDOLEN: I adore you. But you haven't proposed to me yet. Nothing has been said at all about marriage. The subject has not even been touched on.

JACK: Well... may I propose to you now?

GWENDOLEN: I think it would be an admirable opportunity. And to spare you any possible disappointment, Mr. Worthing, I think it only fair to tell you quite frankly beforehand that I am fully determined to accept you.”

Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

Read Text I and answer the fourteen questions that follow it

Text I The “literacy turn” in education: reexamining

what it means to be literate

In response to the phenomena of mass migration and the emergence of digital communications media that defined the last decade of the 20th century, the New London Group (NLG) called for a broader view of literacy and literacy teaching in its 1996 manifesto, A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures. The group argued that literacy pedagogy in education must (1) reflect the increasing cultural and linguistic diversity of the contemporary globalized world, and (2) account for the new kinds of texts and textual engagement that have emerged in the wake of new information and multimedia technologies. In order to better capture the plurality of discourses, languages, and media, they proposed the term ‘multiliteracies’.

Within the NLG’s pedagogy of multiliteracies, language and other modes of communication are viewed as dynamic resources for meaning making that undergo constant changes in the dynamics of language use as learners attempt to achieve their own purposes. Within this broader view of literacy and literacy teaching, learners are no longer “users as decoders of language” but rather “designers of meaning.” Meaning is not viewed as something that resides in texts; rather, deriving meaning is considered an active and dynamic process in which learners combine and creatively apply both linguistic and other semiotic resources (e.g., visual, gesture, sound, etc.) with an awareness of “the sets of conventions connected with semiotic activity [...] in a given social space” (NLG, 1996, p. 74).

Grounded within the view that learning develops in social, cultural, and material contexts as a result of collaborative interactions, NLG argued that instantiating literacy-based teaching in classrooms calls on the complex integration and interaction of four pedagogical components that are neither hierarchical nor linear and can at times overlap: situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing, and transformed practice. […]

Although the NLG’s pedagogy of multiliteracies was conceived as a “statement of general principle” (1996, p. 89) for schools, the group’s call for educators to recognize the diversity and social situatedness of literacy has had a lasting impact on foreign language (FL) teaching and learning. The reception of the group’s work along with that of other scholars from critical pedagogy appeared at a time when the field was becoming less solidly anchored in theories of L2 acquisition and more interested in the social practice of FL education itself. In the section that follows, we describe the current state of FL literacy studies as it has developed in recent years, before finally turning to some very recent emerging trends that we are likely to see develop going forward.

(Adapted from: https://www.colorado.edu/center/altec/sites/default/files/ attachedfiles/moving_toward_multiliteracies_in_foreign_language_teaching.pdf)

Text 3

If you visit Japan, you might choose to travel around the country by shinkansen train. These high-speed trains connect the major cities of Japan. They are nicknamed “bullet trains” because they go very fast and have pointy noses like a bullet.

Bullet trains are a good way to travel for several reasons other than their speed. They are very punctual, often leaving on time to the second. They are also comfortable. All the seats face forward, and there is plenty of leg room. Most importantly, bullet trains are very safe. In their 35-year history, there have been only a few accidents and no deaths.

The only downside to bullet trains is that they are expensive. A ticket to travel to another city can cost almost as much as an airline ticket would. However, if you fly, you will land at an airport at the edge of a city. Train stations are usually right in the middle of a city. This means that it is often more convenient to take a bullet train instead of flying, because you will arrive exactly where you want to be.

Leia o texto para responder à questão.

In foreign language education, the teaching of culture remains a hotly debated issue. What is culture? What is its relation to language? Which and whose culture should be taught? What role should the learners’ culture play in the acquisition of knowledge of the target culture? How can we avoid essentializing cultures and teaching stereotypes? And how can we develop in the learners an intercultural competence that would shortchange neither their own culture nor the target culture, but would make them into cultural mediators in a globalized world? This paper explores these issues from the perspective of the large body of research done in Australia, Europe and the U.S. in the last twenty years. It links the study of culture to the study of discourse (see, e.g., Kramsch 1993, 1998, 2004) and to the concept of translingual and transcultural competence proposed by the Modern Language Association (e.g., Kramsch, 2010).

(https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1127430)

Read the text to answer question.

No one who speaks English has any difficulty understanding the meaning of a sentence like ‘It’s warm in here’. We all recognise that it is a comment on the temperature in some place or other. But why it is being said, and what the speaker wishes to convey by saying it, depends entirely on two things: the context in which it is said and what the speaker wants people to understand (...) The meaning of language depends on where it occurs within a larger stretch of discourse, and thus the relationship that the different language elements have with what comes before and after them. In other words, speakers and writers have to be able to operate with more than just words and grammar; they have to be able to string utterances together.

Our ability to function properly in conversation or writing depends not only on reacting to the context in which we are using the language, but also on the relationship between words and ideas in longer texts.

Words can also mean more than one thing, for example, ‘book’ (= something to read, to reserve, a list of bets, etc.), ‘beat’ (= to win, to hit, to mix, e.g. an egg, the ‘pulse’ of music/a heart) and ‘can’ (= ability, permission, probability – and a container made of metal). Notice that, in these examples, not only can the same form have many meanings, but it can also be different parts of speech.

With so many available meanings for words and grammatical forms, it is the context the word occurs in which determines which of these meanings is being referred to. If we say, ‘I beat him because I ran faster than he did’, ‘beat’ is likely to mean won rather than physically assaulted or mixed (though there is always the possibility of ambiguity, of course).

(Harmer, 1998. Adaptado)