Research and policies reach school environments in many different ways and need

to be adapted by each teacher, since each context is faced with specific demands.
During your teaching practice, it will be important for you to understand and keep an
open communication channel regarding government, coordinator, students’ and family’s
expectations towards how English should be taught.

Example

Assess the local environment of your internship school community for beliefs on
ELT. You can ask your coordinators, the supervising teacher, students, available
family members and employees about their thoughts on what English classes
should be like. If that is not possible, you can analyze their speech, attitudes and
practices in order to understand which beliefs they imply.

Any final responsibility regarding what, when and how to

teach remains with the teacher in charge for the class.
However, while studying these different perspectives and
observing their practical application, you are informing
yourself in order to make adequate choices. This diagnostic
repertoire will help you develop flexibility and reflectivity to
deal with daily school interactions. After some years of
practice, you will be able to recognize ideological and
methodological positioning faster. This will help you to
negotiate your needs as a teaching professional.

Know more

Most countries have their own national curriculum (e.g. The British National
Curriculum – BNC, adopted by the British School in Brazil). You may check
other national proposals as a means of familiarizing with international teaching
parameters. Most of them refer to skills using a division based on reception
(listening/reading) and production (reading/writing), since these are the four
easily observable and assessable groups of skills when stating one’s level of
proficiency.

26
The classes that you are going to watch were rendered in international settings. The first
presents a small group of students learning English as Second Language (ESL). If you
search for ELT related material online, you will find a great number of ESL videos, lesson
plans, worksheets, and books. In ESL, the student is an immigrant or foreigner living in a
country where English is the official language. The U.S. State Department and its Bureau
of Education has invested a lot of energy and resources in the linguistic qualification of
foreigners, resulting in an enormous amount of material that is not necessarily adequate
to the Brazilian reality if not adapted.

Reflection time

Consider the differences between studying English while living in the U.S. and
studying English in Brazil. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each
case? Now, think about the classes you are observing. How different would they
be if rendered in an ESL context?

The second recorded class presents a large multi-level and multi-aged group of students
working in a long-term project at their school. English is not their official language and
their situation resembles the one faced by Brazilian teachers at public schools in terms of
infrastructural conditions. Even though they share a common national language, English
is understood as a lingua franca for the purposes of the pedagogical project in question.

Observe how students participate according to their level of language development,

produce spoken and written texts mediated by different supports and help each other
overcome their communicative constraints.

Media Library

Access your Media Library for Unit 1 and check the supplementary content selected
by your professor on the topic Study Cases – ESL and English as a Lingua Franca.

27
The purpose of this training material, provided by the U.S. State Department, is to
encourage analyses on how teachers can integrate skill production in practice. In this
sense, it aligns with the proposals of the BNCC and its integrative axes for language study
at schools. While watching the classes, you may have realized that interactional patterns
differ a lot in the two settings. The first class is quieter and silent, while the second is lively
and participative — a difference that might be explained by contextual characteristics
such as the number of students, their age and their use of English.

English as a lingua franca ESL

Interactions tend to be Interactions tend to
fragmented, mixing two rely on teacher models;
or more languages, code- students wait for teachers’
switching prevails. encouragement (as a native
speaker) to communicate.

If English is understood as a foreign language (EFL), we can imagine two possible

scenarios:

• The teacher is understood as a model (native-like), commanding all interaction.

• The teacher is perceived as non-native and interaction is mediated by materials that
are originally produced in English. Students may question the teacher’s authenticity as
an English speaker.

28
 Important

Remember that views about the English language and ELT are under constant
negotiation in educational communities. Therefore, you cannot classify a
teaching context as ESL, EFL or as adopting a English as a lingua franca
approach without observing classroom interaction. Some schools in the U.S.,
the U.K. and in Australia receive immigrants in their classes encouraging an
approach to English as a global communication language. These classes are
large-sized, multi-lingual and focused on intercultural respect.

Teachers can highly influence the discussion about how English should be approached
in class. For instance, if teachers exclude certain kinds of student production based
on their level of association with native-like standards, they will reinforce the need of a
foreign-like environment. Similar effects may occur when teachers exclude Portuguese
and non-English constructions and disavow mixed language attempts. Since all of
these are part of the communicative phenomena, students tend to withdraw from the
activity and may find other interactional means of expressing themselves (e.g. side
conversations; unrelated drawing and writing; forced class interruptions).

Example

Analyze the classes you have watched in terms of their adaptability to the
Brazilian context. Consider your internship school scenario as the application
setting. You can use the chart below as a guide:

Adaptations
Teacher’s Students’ (Considering
Analysis Objectives Activities
Role Roles Internship
School Context)

Class 1

Class 2

29
Project-based teaching may help you design lesson plans focused on the integration of
communicative skills. We understand a project here as a larger open-ended problem that
needs to be solved collaboratively. Depending on how time management works at your
school, you will need to conceive short, medium or long-term projects. As you already
know, Brazilian schools assign 40-50 minutes slots of time for each subject. English
classes may be concentrated or scattered within the weekly schedule. Some schools
may choose to offer more hours than the mandatory amount required by the government
for language development. They can also encourage Portuguese and English teachers
to work together, sharing their time.

Some teachers may think that it is impossible to work with the continuity a long-term
project demands if concentrated time for English classes (e.g. two or more slots of 40-
50 minutes in a row) is not available. Each class has a warm-up period, when students
arrive (if it is the first class of the day) or prepare for the next subject. Classes have
their own rhythm, influenced by time and contextual constraints alike. Considering that,
teachers may choose to work with short-term projects or problems: proposals that can
be wrapped up in one class time. However, there are also good experiences with medium
and long-term projects under similar timeframes.

Reflection time

Does your supervisor work with projects? How does she/he organize them? Are
they short, medium, or long-term? How does time management affect project
work?

In Unit 2, you will analyze your internship classes with a focus on how skill integration
occurs. In order to do that, you will review techniques related to each of the four main
communicative skills and produce an integrated lesson plan for the class you are
observing.

30
 In Practice

In Supervised Internship III, you will be required to plan, teach and write a report
about a class prepared for the school group that you are currently observing. How
can you use what we are studying here to base your lesson design? Select the most
meaningful reflections and insights produced by your answers to the “Reflection
Time” and “Exercise” boxes throughout this unit. Answer the following questions:
What do these reflections say about teacher and students’ beliefs on ELT? How
close are these views to my own? How negotiable are these views? Is classroom
interaction close to the proposals of the BNCC? Is it competence-based? With these
answers in mind, start discussing your future class with the supervising teacher.

31
Summary of Unit 1

In Unit 1, you have analyzed class interaction at your internship school under the light
of a competence-based approach to ELT. In order to do that, you reviewed the notion
of communicative competence as a set of knowledge and skills required by the
communicative process. You assessed the interconnection of grammar/linguistic,
sociolinguistic, discursive, and strategic competences in the classes you are observing.
You have also related this broad notion of communicative competence to the Brazilian
national curriculum proposals stated by the BNCC. While comparing international teaching
settings with the Brazilian public school reality, you investigated the notions of EFL, ESL
and English as a lingua franca, discussing their possible impacts on teaching practices.
Finally, you applied project and problem-based approaches to the reality of ELT planning
in Brazil, considering our particularities in terms of class size and time management. This
knowledge will be important when you produce your final report, when you plan the class
you will teach at the assigned school and for all of your future classes as a teacher.

Concept

Competence-based approaches in ELT focus on the development of communicative

skills through contextualized and meaningful practice. They are based on an
interactional view of English, understanding that theoretical knowledge about
linguistic structures (knowing of) does not prepare students for engagement in real
life language practice (know how).

32
References

BRASIL. Ministério da Educação. Base Nacional Comum Curricular - BNCC, Brasília:

2018. Available at: http://basenacionalcomum.mec.gov.br/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/
BNCC_EI_EF_110518_versaofinal_site.pdf. Accessed on: Mar. 28, 2019.

CANO, M.R.O; LIBERALI, F. Inglês: linguagem em atividades sociais. São Paulo: Blucher,
2016. Biblioteca Virtual.

MARQUES, F. S. Ensinar e aprender inglês: o processo comunicativo em sala de aula.

Curitiba: Intersaberes, 2012. Biblioteca Virtual.

33
 UNIT 2

The four communicative

skills at school
 INTRODUCTION

Vast research accumulated over the years on how to teach English as a Foreign Language,
as a Second Language, or English as a lingua franca (EFL, ESL and ELF respectivelly). Due
to the status of English as a transnational communication medium, these studies tend to
focus on how to achieve higher levels of fluency. Worldwide, four communicative skills –
namely, speaking, listening, reading, and writing – have been examined and reexamined,
under more or less critical scrutiny, in search for teaching techniques that would prove
applicable to different contexts. You have already studied many of these techniques
throughout your teaching education. However, adopting the communicative approach at
Brazilian public schools, while based in an overall competence-based methodology, may
prove to be challenging. In Unit 2, you will observe your internship classes through the
lenses of skill development techniques. You will also prepare a lesson plan, based on
your class group characteristics, with the objective of creating an activity in which the
four skills are integrated. This knowledge will help you adapt theoretical guidelines to your
future practice as a teacher, while preparing for the class you will present at the end of
this internship.

Objective

At the end of this unit, you will be able of:

• Applying the concepts proposed by the communicative approach to the

observation of classes at school.

35
Reading/writing skills

In Unit 1, you applied the main concepts implied by competence-based approaches to

class observation. By now, you probably know the answers to most of the following
questions:

- Do the lessons I observe focus on competence

development?
- If they do, why does it work that way?
- If they do not, how could they be adapted?
- Which roles do the teacher, the students, and other
school community members play in this scenario?
- To which extent are lesson plans based on open-
ended problems?

These answers may also change, gaining in depth and level of detail as you move along
your internship journey. Take clear notes, since they will be useful for your final class
and report writing activities. In Unit 2, you will study your internship experience from the
angle of skill development, which will turn the analysis into a more technical enterprise.
Before you start your job, let us organize our mindset around some important theoretical
frameworks.

Communicative competence and the four main skills

As you have reviewed in Unit 1, the term communicative competence refers to the set of
knowledge and skills necessary for a language user to carry out any communicative task.
It is composed of micro competence frames, which need to be developed simultaneously:
grammar/linguistic, sociolinguistic, discursive, and strategic competences.

If you understand language as a form of interaction, this is where you would normally
start conceiving lesson plans. You would consider social contexts, identities, roles and
students’ expressive needs. Then, you would start thinking about the skills necessary
to fill in the gaps.

36