A prática docente no ensino de pronúncia do inglês para brasileiros.

Abstract

The participation on two research projects of PIBIC in 2016/2017 and 2017/2018 (CAPES/CNPq), which the studying object was textbooks of English pronunciation for Brazilians involved us in the theme pronunciation teaching for Brazilians. Besides, classroom research that investigates English pronunciation teaching for Brazilians still is an unexplored theme in Brazil (cf. LIMA JÚNIOR, 2010; RAMOS, 2014). Therefore, we felt the necessity to comprehend and reflect on the practice of a teacher in an English pronunciation course for Brazilian learners. The specific objectives are: (1) to identify which aspects of the sound system of English are approached by the teacher throughout the course; and (2) to investigate in which way the teacher presents these sounds. This study is characterized as qualitative (MOREIRA; CALEFFE, 2006) of ethnographical type (ANDRÉ, 1995). The data collected consists on recordings of passages of the classes of the pronunciation course English Pronunciation for Brazilian Learners, which was offered by the program Inglês sem Fronteiras, at UFCG. Besides recording classes, a questionnaire was applied to the teacher. As theoretical support, we present the concept and the origin of classroom research (ALLWRIGHT; BAILEY, 2004); some classroom studies developed in Brazil (D’ELY; MOTA, 2004; PAULA, 2010; REIS, 2015); and pronunciation characteristics of Brazilian learners’ English (LIEFF; NUNES, 1993; BAPTISTA, 2001; SCHUMACHER; et al, 2002; GODOY; et al, 2006; LIEFF; et al, 2010; SILVA, 2015). The analysis was divided into four categories: (1) Consonants; (2) Vowels; (3) Stress; e (4) Vowel insertion. For each sound described in the categories, we present excerpts of the class passages which were transcribed, based on the norms of Allwright and Bailey (2004). The results show that the sounds approached by the teacher throughout the course English Pronunciation for Brazilian Learners correspond to those considered difficult to Brazilian learners. We noticed that, when presenting these sounds, the teacher used two teaching techniques: (1) Comparison of the phonological differences between Brazilian Portuguese (BP) and English; and (2) Relation of the Brazilian difficulties with results of Brazilian pronunciation intelligibility. The comparison between the phonological differences of the two languages revealed to us that in the teacher’s practice underlies Contrastive Analysis (CELCE-MURCIA, 2010). The presence of the research results made us reflect about the relation between research and teaching, and the presence of this phonological acquisition theory made us reflect about the importance of considering the learner’s mother tongue during the process of pronunciation acquisition of a foreign language.