English Approaches to Discourse – The present study is an investigation of how English has been conceptualized in the discourses of ten Brazilian English language teachers with diverse language teaching experiences.
PDF #28 – Eduardo Figueiredo – Conceptualizations of English in the discourses of Brazilian language teachers
Discourses of major agents in Brazilian English language teaching (ELT) – mainly the media, language schools, and the Ministry of Education through its national guidelines – usually associate English with notions of mobility, empowerment, and international ownership.
The understanding of how English language educators conceptualize the language thus provides a valuable perspective on how these discourses may be taken on and reproduced by teachers. Such understanding is also relevant because educators have firsthand experience in what actually goes on inside schools, thus being able to provide important accounts that are based on real life examples of their practices.
The accounts of the teachers presented here signal that there is a belief that mobility and empowerment – often associated with English – do not necessarily come with the language, but are actually often seen as assets that one must have in order to be able to learn it in the first place. According to the teachers interviewed in this study, this is usually the case with students who
have no interest in learning the language simply because they do not envision themselves traveling outside of Brazil. Therefore, based on these participants’ accounts, the case of Brazil seems similar to those of other expanding circle countries – such as Argentina, China, Japan, and Ukraine, to cite a few (see, for instance, Hu, 2008; Niño-Murcia, 2003; Nishino & Watanabe, 2008; Nunan, 2003; Tarnopolsky, 1996; Zappa-Holman, 2007) – where larger discourses about English (promoted by pedagogical policies, for instance) are all too often very detached from the realities of local schools, teachers, and students.
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