Questões para Concursos

The paper reflects on the role of technology in English language teaching (ELT) methodologies and on the impact of globalization and internationalization in education in general and in the ELT in particular. The study is based on the assumption that access to information and technology is necessary to build social capital (WARSCHAUER, 2003) and that this access requires some English knowledge and digital literacy (FINARDI; PREBIANCA; MOMM, 2013). Departing from a bibliographic review on the use of ELT methodologies and the role of technologies in these methodologies, the study proposes that both the resistance to and the uncritical use of technologies and methodologies may bring negative consequences to the development of English language proficiency and social development in Brazil. The study concludes that in the post-method (BROWN, 2002; KUMARAVADIVELO, 2003) and information era (LEVY, 1999) technologies have a relevant and crucial role that should be critically considered in ELT methodologies. The study also suggests that the informed use of technologies and methodologies, allied with the teaching of English as an international language are essential to leverage the development and the internationalization of education in Brazil in a critical way in relation to the effects of globalization. (FINARDI, Kyria Rebecca; PORCINO, Maria Carolina. 2014. Adaptado)

Read the text to answer question: Today, many of the pedagogical springs and rivers of the last few decades are appropriately captured in the term Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), now a catch phrase for language teachers. CLT is an eclectic blend of the contributions of previous methods into the best of what a teacher can provide in authentic uses of the second language in the classroom. Indeed, the single greatest challenge in the profession is to move significantly beyond the teaching of rules, patterns, definitions, and other knowledge “about” language to the point that we are teaching our students to communicate genuinely, spontaneously, and meaningfully in the second language. A significant difference between current language teaching practices and those of, say, a half a century ago, is the absence of proclaimed “orthodoxies” and “best” methods. We are well aware that methods, as they were conceived of 40 or 50 years ago or so, are too narrow and too constrictive to apply to a wide range of learners in an enormous number of situational contexts. There are no instant recipes. No quick and easy method is guaranteed to provide success. As Bell (2003), Brown (2001), Kumaravadivelu (2001), and others have appropriately shown, pedagogical trends in language teaching now spur us to develop a principled basis—sometimes called an approach (Richards & Rodgers, 2001)—upon which teachers can choose particular designs and techniques for teaching a foreign language in a specific context. Every learner is unique. Every teacher is unique. Every learner-teacher relationship is unique, and every context is unique. Your task as a teacher is to understand the properties of those relationships and contexts. (BROWN, H. Douglas. Principles of language learning and teaching. 5. ed. Londres: Longman, 2006)

Read the text to answer question. All teachers, whether at the start of their careers or after some years of teaching, need to be able to try out new activities and techniques. It is important to be open to such new ideas and take them into the classroom. But such experimentation will be of little use unless we can then evaluate these activities. Were they successful? Did the students enjoy them? Did they learn anything from them? How could the activities be changed to make them more effective next time? One way of getting feedback is to ask students simple questions such as ‘Did you like that exercise? Did you find it useful?’ and see what they say. But not all students will discuss topics like this openly in class. It may be better to ask them to write their answers down and hand them in. Another way of getting reactions to new techniques is to invite a colleague into the classroom and ask him or her to observe what happens and make suggestions afterwards. The lesson could also be videoed. In general, it is a good idea to get students’ reactions to lessons, and their aspirations about them, clearly stated. Many teachers encourage students to say what they feel about the lessons and how they think the course is going. The simplest way to do this is to ask students once every fortnight, for example, to write down two things they want more of and two things they want less of. The answers you get may prove a fruitful place to start a discussion, and you will then be able to modify what happens in class, if you think it appropriate, in the light of your students’ feelings. Such modifications will greatly enhance the teacher’s ability to manage the class. Good teacher managers also need to assess how well their students are progressing. This can be done through a variety of measures including homework assignments, speaking activities where the teacher scores the participation of each student, and frequent small progress tests. Good teachers keep a record of their students’ achievements so that they are always aware of how they are getting on. Only if teachers keep such kinds of progress records can they begin to see when teaching and learning has or has not been successful. (Harmer, Jeremy. How to teach English. Londres: Longman, 1998)

Leia o texto para responder à questão. If styles are general characteristics that differentiate one individual from another, then strategies are those specific “attacks” that we make on a given problem, and that vary considerably within each individual. They are the momentby-moment techniques that we employ to solve “problems” posed by second language input and output. Chamot (2005, p. 112) defines strategies quite broadly as “procedures that facilitate a learning task. Strategies are most often conscious and goal driven.” As our knowledge of second language acquisition increased markedly during the 1970s, teachers and researchers came to realize that no single research finding and no single method of language teaching would usher in an era of universal success in teaching a second language. We saw that certain learners seemed to be successful regardless of methods or techniques of teaching. We began to see the importance of individual variation in language learning. Certain people appeared to be endowed with abilities to succeed; others lacked those abilities. This observation led Rubin (1975) and Stern (1975) to describe “good” language learners in terms of personal traits, styles, and strategies. Rubin (Rubin & Thompson, 1982) later summarized fourteen such characteristics. Among other abilities, good language learners tend to: 1. Find their own way, taking charge of their learning 2. Be creative and develop a “feel” for the language by experimenting with its grammar and words 3. Make their own opportunities for practice in using the language inside and outside the classroom 4. Learn to live with uncertainty by continuing to talk or listen without understanding every word 5. Use linguistic knowledge, including knowledge of their first language, in learning a second language 6. Use contextual cues to help them in comprehension 7. Learn to make intelligent guesses 8. Learn chunks of language as wholes and formalized routines to help them perform “beyond their competence” 9. Learn different styles of speech and writing and learn to vary their language according to the formality of the situation. (, H.Douglas Brown. Principles of language learning and teaching . 5th ed. Longman, 2000. Adaptado) Confidencial até o momento da aplicação.

Leia o texto a seguir para responder à questão: Foreign language pronunciation instruction in a communicative language teaching context: amounts, practices and beliefs The aim of this research was to examine three important components of foreign language pronunciation instruction and the connections between them: amount, actual practices, and teachers’ beliefs. The data consisted of 45 video-recorded lessons in French-as-a-foreign-language in six secondary schools in Norway and semistructured interviews conducted with the same teachers whose instruction was previously video-recorded. The video-recorded lessons were analysed for amount and actual practices of pronunciation instruction and the interviews were analysed for teachers’ background in and beliefs about phonetics and pronunciation pedagogy. Results indicated that: (1) on average, pronunciation instruction accounted for a very small part of the teaching time (less than 2%); (2) despite the emphasis on segmentals and suprasegmentals in pronunciation teaching literature, explicit teaching of segmental and suprasegmental features of speech was rare in the recorded material; (3) there is a need for more training in and knowledge of phonetics and pronunciation pedagogy. These findings might be used to address concerns regarding the role of pronunciation instruction in foreign language teaching and to define factors that may account for the difficulty of making pronunciation instruction an integral part of language teaching. (Altijana Brkan, Eva Thue Vold. https://www.uv.uio.no. Adaptado)

Read the text to answer question: CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) is an approach which is neither language learning nor subject learning, but an amalgam of both and is linked to the processes of convergence – the fusion of elements which may have been previously fragmented, such as subjects in the curriculum. This is where CLIL is groundbreaking. To give a parallel example common in recent times, we can take studies on the environment. A seminal publication on the subject in the 1960s later led to a need to educate young people in schools so as to both inform and, perhaps more crucially, influence behavior. Topics relating to the environment could already be found in chemistry, economics, geography, physics, and even psychology. Yet, as climate change became increasingly worrying, education responded with the introduction of a new subject: “Environmental studies”. In order to structure this new subject, teachers of different disciplines would have needed to climb out of their respective mindsets grounded in physics, chemistry, geography, psychology and so on, to explore ways of building an integrated curriculum, and to develop alternative methodologies by which to implement it. Climate change is a global and local phenomenon, so the increasing availability in some countries of information and communication technologies during the 1990s provided tools by which to make some of these methodologies operational. If we return to languages and CLIL, we have a similar situation. The late 1990s meant that educational insight was firmly set on achieving a high degree of language awareness. Appropriate methodologies were to be used to attain the best possible results in a way which accommodated diverse learning styles. (D. Coyle, P. Hood, D. Marsh. CLIL: content language integrated learning . Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2010.)

Read the text by Brown to answer question. The question of whether or not to distinguish between native and nonnative speakers in the teaching profession has grown into a common and productive topic of research in the last decade. For many decades the English language teaching profession assumed that native English-speaking teachers, by virtue of their superior model of oral production, comprised the ideal English language teacher. Then, Medgyes (1994), among others, showed in his research that nonnative English speaking teachers offered as many if not more inherent advantages. Other authors concur by noting not only that multiple varieties of English are now considered legitimate and acceptable, but also that teachers who have actually gone through the process of learning English possess distinct advantages over native speakers. As we move into a new paradigm in which the concepts of native and nonnative “speaker” become less relevant, it is perhaps more appropriate to think in terms of the proficiency level of a user of a language. Speaking is one of four skills and may not deserve in all contexts to be elevated to the sole criterion for proficiency. So, the profession is better served by considering a person’s communicative proficiency across the four skills. Teachers of any language, regardless of their own variety of English, can then be judged accordingly, and in turn, their pedagogical training and experience can occupy focal attention. (Brown, 2006. Adaptado)

What's the Difference Between a Solstice and an Equinox? You may know that the solstices and equinoxes signal the changing of the seasons on Earth, but do you remember which is which? Are they just different names for the same thing? Actually, a solstice and an equinox are sort of opposites. The seasons on Earth change because the planet is slightly tilted on its axis as it travels around the Sun. This means different points on Earth receive more or less sunlight at different times of year. If Earth were not tilted, the Sun would always appear to be directly above the Equator, the amount of light a given location receives would be fixed, and there would be no seasons. There also would be no need to mark equinoxes or solstices. The two solstices happen in June (20 or 21) and December (21 or 22). These are the days when the Sun’s path in the sky is the farthest north or south from the Equator. A hemisphere’s winter solstice is the shortest day of the year and its summer solstice the year’s longest. In the Northern Hemisphere the June solstice marks the start of summer: this is when the North Pole is tilted closest to the Sun, and the Sun’s rays are directly overhead at the Tropic of Cancer. The December solstice marks the start of winter: at this point the South Pole is tilted closest to the Sun, and the Sun’s rays are directly overhead at the Tropic of Capricorn. (In the Southern Hemisphere the seasons are reversed.) The equinoxes happen in March (about March 21) and September (about September 23). These are the days when the Sun is exactly above the Equator, which makes day and night of equal length. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Adaptation.

The mysterious death of Alexander the Great When Alexander the Great’s body seemingly remained unchanged for six days after his death in 323 BCE, his contemporaries could offer only one explanation. Alexander must have been a god. So… was he? Alexander the Great first fell ill during a days-long series of parties, during one of which he collapsed, complaining of a searing pain in his back. After 10 days of intense fever, Alexander’s soldiers were brought in to see him one final time. As reported by the historian Arrian, at that point the king “could no longer speak… but he struggled to raise his head and gave each man a greeting with his eyes.” When Alexander was declared dead on June 13, theories began forming. Had he been poisoned? Sabotaged? Had he been killed by drinking too much wine? Today we have an explanation for Alexander’s death and his period of bodily freshness that relies less on the supernatural and more on science. In 2018 Dr. Katherine Hall, a lecturer in New Zealand, proposed that Alexander the Great had Guillain-Barré syndrome, an acute autoimmune condition that results in muscle paralysis. In other words, Alexander may have been alive when he was declared dead—a mistake that could have been made when physicians mistook the shallow breathing of a coma patient for no breathing at all. If this was the case, Alexander may have been effectively murdered during embalming —a process that would have seen him disemboweled. While we can’t travel back in time to confirm Hall’s theory, it is the only one that takes into account all the details of Alexander’s death—and his body’s mysterious life. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Adaptation