Línguas, literatura e intercompreensão: estudo sobre as representações de professores.

Abstract

For a long time, we have discussed the need for a structural and pedagogical reform of the Modern Foreign Letters (MFL) Teacher Education Programs in Brazilian universities, because there seems to be a gap between the programs of these courses and the new scientific conceptions of the 21st century. On the basis of this observation, in our research, we analyze the way in which the dichotomous separation between linguistic teaching and literary teaching - and the disciplinary compartmentalisation of the programs of these courses - reflect the pedagogical representations of the teachers. Thus, in this research, we have the general objective of analyzing the representations of teachers on languages/literatures and in relation to the methodological principles of IC in the teaching of foreign languages. Consequently, the specific objectives are: a) to analyze teachers' representations on the role of mother tongue (MT) and other foreign language (FL) in classroom activities; b) check whether the teachers are open to the methodological principles of the Intercomprehension of Romance Languages; and c) identify the space allocated to the literary text, as well as the approach used by the teachers, in the context of teaching FL. To do this, we developed a questionnaire on the google.docs platform (GOOGLE Form) and sent it to participants by email. The corpus of our research includes 167 questionnaires, collected from the 26 states of the Federation and the Federal District. The participants are teachers of 8 different languages (English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, Russian and Libras - Brazilian sign language) from all over Brazil, who work in the most diverse teaching contexts.Our research is exploratory qualitative and quantitative sampling survey collects. As a theoretical reference, we base ourselves on the contributions of Moscovici (2007), with regard to the principles of the theory of social representations and in Castellotti and Moore (2002), with regard to the application of these concepts in the teaching-learning domain of FL. Regarding the work on literary texts in FL classes, we are based on the contributions of Séoud (1997), Albert and Souchon (2000), Pinheiro-Mariz (2007; 2008), among others. On the fundamental principles of the approach to intercomprehension in language teaching, we have drawn on the work of Degache (2006; 1997), Capucho (2008; 2010; 2013), Silva (2013), Coste , Moore and Zarate (2009), Caddéo and Jamet (2013), among others. The results show that IC is still relatively unknown to most teachers. However, although some of these teachers still have resistance, the principles of IC are widely recognized by most of them. With regard to the approach to the literary text in FL classes, we have identified that there is a strong relationship between teacher training and their didactic practices. In this sense, we have noticed that the separation between language and literature in the academic field has an impact on teachers' practices in relation to the literary text. Consequently, the dichotomous separation between language and literature and the disciplinary compartmentalisation of MFL courses have a negative effect on representations and teaching practices.