Abstract
This qualitative research was done in a class of English Oral Practice 2 in an undergraduate English teacher education course in Brazil. Grounded on the conception of language as practice, the first author of this article developed a problematizing pedagogy focusing on race/racism and language as space of power. Resorting to class activities (a question of a written test, an oral test, and a feedback session) and the professor’s diary, we analyzed the students’ accounts about the course and the meanings they constructed about language. Their accounts indicate that, when evaluating the course, most of them highlighted the relevance of content, showing that they started conceptualizing language beyond form. Their accounts also suggest they were not using language, but making it.
Highlights
One of the most traditional views about language and language learning can be found in the play Pygmallion, by Bernard Shaw (2013)
The professor of phonetics Henry Higgins makes a bet that he could pass of a Cockney lower girl, Eliza Doolittle, as a duchess merely by teaching her to speak and behave properly
It seems very anachronistic to think about phonetics training, but we keep wondering if this experiment is so markedly diferent from what foreign language teachers are still doing in classes when we address linguistic aspects, moments which are very frequent in many language teaching contexts nowadays
Summary
One of the most traditional views about language and language learning can be found in the play Pygmallion, by Bernard Shaw (2013). Harris has been working on the development of an integrational approach to signs and semiological systems, and to all human communication, since the 1980s According to him, this approach involves looking at current educational practice, together with the whole history of linguistic thought from Plato down to the present day, in a perspective that difers radically from the orthodox view presented by traditional authorities. 235) rejects scholars’ proposals such as lingua franca English as a common dialect that speakers of World Englishes can use to facilitate communication among each other and suggests that we “move towards radical pluralism, whereby speakers of all local varieties can negotiate their diferences for efective communication” He argues that these diferences should be negotiated by means of pragmatic strategies such as codeswitching, speech accommodation, interpersonal strategies (repair, rephrasing, clariication, gestures, etc.), and attitudinal resources (patience, tolerance, humility, etc.) to negotiate diferences. Detailed information about the nine female and four male participants is shown in the following chart: Chart 1: Information about the participants
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