Explorando o potencial da linguística cognitiva para o ensino-aprendizagem da preposição in em aulas de inglês como língua estrangeira

Abstract

As professionals in education, we acknowledge about the importance of a good teaching methodology for language teaching in general, and perhaps especially for the teaching-learning of English prepositions, the element of language that tends to be regarded by traditional approaches as idiosyncratic, arbitrary, of difficult semantic characterization, whose multiple meanings do not have any relationship with one another. Thus, we believe that the theoretical foundations that guide the teaching practice and the methodology used to the teaching of this element of the language can significantly influence the results achieved with a group of students. In this context, this work aimed at exploring the potential of Cognitive Linguistics (CL) to the teaching-learning process of preposition in, in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classes, seeking (i) to make the semantic description of preposition in, in the light of the theoretical perspective adopted, the CL and (ii) to propose teaching-learning activities of this lexical item for adult learners from the given description. This study methodology was based on reflections that turn to two complementary areas: (i) Language and (ii) Language-Teaching. In the language domain, we made the description and analysis of the semantics of prepositions in the light of CL, theory chosen to guide this research, since it appears to be the most appropriate theoretical framework to achieve the objective of this thesis. The LC offers a different way of thinking and explaining the prepositions, seeking to show that the multiple meanings that a preposition like in has are actually interrelated and can be explained in a motivated and systematic way within the theoretical paradigm. From the CL perspective, it becomes possible to describe the polysemy of complex structures like prepositions through network structures and, accordingly, the synchronic polysemy network (BLANK, 2003; GEERAERTS, 2006), because it has freer characteristics, it is more flexible and multidimensional, proved ideal as a way of representing a complex category like in. In the language-teaching domain of this study, we elaborated proposals of activities for the teaching-learning of the semantics of the preposition in, in English as a foreign language classes for adults of an intermediate level of proficiency, taking into account the assumptions of the CL, both regarding to how the theory explains the prepositions and the essencial notions and principles that it offers for thinking language teaching, besides the description and analysis of the preposition in performed in the language domais of this work. From our knowledge of how prepositions are seen and 8 explained by the CL and the benefits that we believe that this theoretical framework can bring to the teaching of numerous phenomena in a foreign language, we realized that the learners can be given opportunities to develop strategies and mechanisms to facilitate their learning of prepositions, providing them with knowledge of the meanings of prepositions that is more logical and related, which approximates to their experiences with this lexical item of the language, besides providing more enjoyable and enriching experiences with the English language.