Aspectos culturais no ensino de inglês como língua estrangeira: a série didática e a prática de uma professora

Abstract

This study has been developed in the field of Applied Linguistics, more specifically in language and school practices. It is a work of qualitative approach that discusses how the teaching of culture is being developed in English as foreign language in a regular and private school of Porto Alegre. The research involves the analysis of a textbook, called Sistema Positivo de Ensino of the second year of high school, as well as the work and perceptions from an inservice teacher who works with this material. For theoretical support we rely on sociocultural theory principles, in the attempt to understand the process of teaching and learning foreign languages, especially for conceiving the role of social and cultural environment as essential to cognitive development, as well as the role of interaction as the main resource for the development of cognitive abilities. We also rely on considerations of culture, teaching and learning of a foreign language and textbook analysis, based on Kramsch (1998, 2004) and Hall (2002). From the methodological point of view, the data were generated through the analysis of the textbook, classroom observations, semi-structured interview and the teacher’s reports, recorded in audio and later transcribed. The results show that only the activities proposed in the sections Before you read and Taking it Beyond of the textbook were the main sociocultural mediators to bring the discussion of language and culture. Moreover, it was found that the practice in the classroom offered very few opportunities to focus on culture, being concentrated on the transfer of information in the mother tongue and formal aspects of language, without considering language use in social interaction, working with culture in a superficial way.