APRENDENDO INGLÊS A DISTÂNCIA: UMA ANÁLISE DE PRÁTICAS DE SPEAKING NA LICENCIATURA EM LETRAS PELA UFC VIRTUAL

Abstract

Learning how to speak English might be challenging in a distance education program, due to its necessity of methodological adaptations to those who teach, as well as to the autonomy necessary to those who learn. This work aimed at investigating how the Virtual University Institute (UFC Virtual), connected to the Federal University of Ceara in partnership with The Open University of Brazil (UAB), enables licentiate degree students to learn how to speak English. The corpus of this research is the English Language – Oral Production and Oral Comprehension course, offered during the third term of the undergraduate program, between March and May 2018. In this qualitative study, we develop a participant observation, accessing the website Solar, a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), in order to analyze which resources were available for students to chat between them and with their tutor. We verify which type of interactions were offered in the platform: synchronous (communication in real time); asynchronous (learning opportunities that can be accessed at any time); or multi-synchronous (combining the two forms of delivery). We exam, as well, the scripts provided during the speaking tasks, aiming at identifying if the students would practice authentic conversations, or if they would repeat previous formulated phrases. The results show that the learners did not have opportunities to communicate in real time at a distance English learning environment from Solar, nor to receive corrections or synchronic feedback from the tutor. We also confirm that the scripted tasks could allow the students to not engage in spontaneous dialogues.