foreign languages teaching, education andthe new literacies studies: expanding views flávia...

FOREIGN LANGUAGES TEACHING, EDUCATION

ANDTHE NEW LITERACIES STUDIES:

EXPANDING VIEWSFlávia Rodrigues, Lídia das Chagas e Mariana ClímacoGroup 4

Introduction

These data have been analyzed generating interpretations that lead to reflections and a proposal of change in the focused teaching environments.

Both reflections and proposals are present in Orientações Curriculares para o Ensino Médio: Línguas Estrangeiras, published by MEC in 2006.

Introduction

Three theoretical conceptions are expanded:

1. The social changes observed in the last decades as a consequence of technological advances influencing language and discourse, as well as social communication;

2. The epistemological changes that constitue the dialectics in the advances of language, technology and communication;

3. The philosophy of education-pedagogy-practice dialectic relationship that comes together new literacies and multiliteracies.

Social and epistemological changes in the digital society

In the last decades, there have been undeniable social transformations. The social representations have visibly changed.

A comparison between advertisements of different decades would illustrate these differences with more clarity.


“The expanding, interventionary states of the nineteenth and twenty centuries used schools as a way of standardizing national languages. In the Old World this meant imposing national standards over dialect differences. In the New World, it meant assimilating immigrant indigenous peoples to the standardized “proper” language of the colonizer”, according to Cope and Kalantzis.


The authors observe that the threshold between the public and the private has gradually turned thinner, considering “the increasing invasion of private spaces by mass media culture, global commodity culture and communication and information networks”.

This invasion results in “culture narratives that are built up of interwoven narratives and commodities that cross television, toys, fast-food packaging, video games”, interfering in and recunstructing beliefs and life courses.


The society transforms itself with the presence of new technologies, new language and communication modes, and new interactions.

Cope and Kalantzis would again advert that “these new workplace discourses can be taken in two different ways – as opening new educational and social possibilities, or as new systms of mind control and exploitation”, leaving a challenging question for reflection: “how do we transform incrementally the achievable and apt outcomes of schooling?”


An additional aspect in relation to the focused changes themselves would be the understanding that they are not only social but also epistemological.

Moris criticizes this epistemology saying that it promotes reproductive education, instead of the development of a creative mind through the pedagogical action.


He explains that conventional epistemology concentrates on constructing knowledge according to the principles of reduction – knowledge is reduced or fragmented from the whole to the parts – and grading – learning is designed in a pre-established scale that starts from na easy bottom line that gradually advances to more complex levels of difficulty of the subject to be aprehended by students.


Researchers show that the new languages and technologies in the digital society introduce another way of knowledge construction.

They name it as “performance epistemology” and eplain it as “knowing how to proceed in the absence of existing models and exemplars”.


These auhtors call attention to the emerging practises in these interactions:

Bricolage

Collage

Montage

The changes in teaching and education

The society has been transforming languages, communication modalities, ways of communication, interaction, knowledge construction at the same time that it is dialectically transformed by them.

The search for knowledge uniformity and for a standard guidance in teaching should succumb to a diversity of pedagogical and curricular possibilities which appear to be more congruent with the described changes.


Besides school pedagogies, there is another pedagogy that is rather effective in the out-of-school living and experiences. It is dominated by Giroux as public pedagogy.

Giroux – cultural policy present in society within, for instance, television, programs, series, advertisings, choice of pictures in news building (power dynamic imbued with educative strength)


The diffusion of information by talk radio, computer screens, television, newspaper, internet and alternative media has counted on no sociopolitical and ethical concern, considering that although the photographic registers are implicated in history, their conditions of production have been suppressed making them invisible to the viewers.

It is observed that there has been much debate about what has been done in classroom pratices, contrasting with what is idealized for this same practice.


Saviani defends the necessity of apprehending the dialects within the philosophy efficacy and effectiveness.

The philosophy of education pedagogy – pratice relationship (Saviani).

New literacies and the teaching of foreign languages

Literacy is the basic teaching of reading and writing.

Several countries with low illiteracy rate were observed in order to identify the type of lettering used.

Through the observations made was possible to detect the functionally illiterate.

The functional illiterate is one who can read and write, but can not perform a reading society.


The reading includes the social interpretation of the text, the link with the knowledge of the reader's world, the perception of irony and sarcasm.

The technology enables easy access to all kinds of reading and always instigates a social reading.


According to Luke and Freebody it is possible to have access to a new kind of literacy. The social literacy is a multidisciplinary process which addresses several themes that can be applied to the interpretation of everyday life.

The biggest concern with teaching and learning of foreign languages also refers to the lack of infrastructure in some schools, participation sometimes inefficient, parents, teachers and students in knowledge construction.


Learning a foreign language must not only cling to the instrumental aspect, it is necessary to understand a little about the culture of the country which you are learning the language.

The question is to review how the foreign language is being taught, not enough to use archaic methods is necessary to incorporate issues of social teachings, so the students also learn about citizenship, ethics, foreign culture, etc.


There will always be students interested in learning a foreign language, but what should be changed and taken into consideration is that the method of teaching and learning should be more comprehensive and meaningful.

It is necessary to deconstruct the idea that learning a foreign language is limited only to linguistic and grammatical aspects and build a new communicative way of teaching and learning.

Final considerations

The exposition about social and epistemoogical changes as well as the new conceptions of language and education intends to explain the reason for the widely defend need for the foreing languages teaching reviewing – RENOVATE WAY OF DOING.

For implemented, it is requires much learning and maturing.

It is a knowledge that has been constructed and reconstrued.

Reference

MÓR, Walkyria Monte. Foreign Languages Teaching, Education and the New Literacies Studies: expanding views. Belo Horizonte, [s.n.]: 2009.

foreign languages teaching, education andthe new literacies studies: expanding views flávia...

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