A linguagem dos aplicativos à luz da semiótica na aprendizagem ubíqua em aulas de inglês.

Abstract

A smartphone or a tablet allows us to spread up the borders of the school and dissolve the concrete walls of the classroom. It has been in this environment that had arisen the necessity to analyze and come up with improvements related to the language of the applications related to language teaching, once the applications could have been widely benefited by the semiotic resources (SR). The research problem has aimed to answer the question: how does the Compositional Analysis (CA) about the multimodality of signs help us to identify facilitator semiotic resources for ubiquitous learning of English in small screen devices? For such, there have been used the premises of Kress, Leeuwen, Eco, Peirce, Mayer among others. Therefore, during the survey of the state of the art, it was observed the necessity to design a pedagogical app which supports the intended research. The objective of this study has been to analyse semiotic resources which intensify the interest, motivation and engagement of ubiquitous learning of English through pedagogical apps used in small screen mobile devices. We have searched to list potential semiotic resources to be investigated to the purpose of teaching and learning English with the help of small screen devices. In addition, the objects of the study have also been selected among the aforementioned semiotic resources and it has been examined throughout the use of an app made up of two different versions of semiotic modes if there were or not contributions to English teaching. After that, a list of guidelines has been prepared to be followed, with a view to app production based on an evaluation of the aforementioned application. The study has been characterised as an applied research and it has been mainly qualitative. The study counted on the participation of 12 students of the Philosophy Major who were taking the Instrumental English class at The Catholic University of Pernambuco (UNICAP). Two versions with different semioses were presented in the application named The Maze: a word hunt, which is a product of the study. Version A: considering the selected semiotic resources complying with the Compositional Analisis (CA) in The Grammar of Visual Design (GVD). Version B: not taking into account the selected semiotic resources complying with the CA in The GVD. By the end, the subjects indicated that, among the semiosis which were studied in still and moving images, the SR related to angle, plane, diagonal lines, neutral background, eye direction, framework, above all spatial arrangement, salience and framing intensify the interest, motivation and engagement in learning. The result has given support to the designing of the guidelines to be followed with a view to app production in order to help the teaching of English.