Ensino de língua inglesa para idosos por meio de uma atividade social

Abstract

In Brazil, there are many studies on English teaching for children, adolescents, and adults, however, there are few studies about the teaching and learning of English for the elderly. Considering this low number of studies, we carried out an interpretative exploratory research, which the main objective was to understand the pedagogical practice of a teacher in the implementation of a teaching activity for the social activity “barbecue”, in the context of teaching and learning English for elderly learners, in order to improve it. Taking as the research context the English extension course for the elderly at the Federal Technological University of Paraná, Pato Branco Campus, our specific objectives were to: (a) identify the language operations and language capacities mobilized by the teacher-researcher in implementing the teaching activity to the social activity “barbecue”, in English classes for elderly learners; and (b) analyze how language operations and language capacities were used in the implementation of the teaching activity for the social activity “barbecue”, by participants of the English course for elderly learners. Data generation was carried out through audio and video recording of four face-to-face meetings with the elderly, lasting two hours each, in 2024. The recordings were then transcribed (Marcuschi, 2010) and organized into four parts, each corresponding to one of the face-to-face meetings with elderly students. The data were analyzed using the "language capacities" (Dolz; Noverraz; Schneuwly, 2004, Cristovão; Stutz, 2011, Lenharo, Cacilho, 2016) and discussed in light of studies of the Theory of Socio-Historical Cultural Activity (Leontiev, 1977, Vygotsky, 2001, Daniels, 2003, Engeström, 1999, apud Liberali, 2009, Engeström, 2013) and Sociodiscursive Interactionism (Bronckart, 2006 and followers). Analysis of the investigation reveals that all language capacities (action capacities, linguistic-discursive capacities, meaning capacities, multisemiotic capacities, digital capacities) and its language operations were used through two main textual genres, namely: oral and written experience reports and dialogue, as well as by different instruments and teaching strategies (vocabulary lists, activity with flashcards and interactive games). Furthermore, it was used agentic performative enunciation capacities (Petrini, 2011), aligned with the teaching activity to the performance of the social activity “practice and tasting barbecue”, which proved to be highly motivating to learn English by the elderly. It is expected that this study can contribute to English teacher education for the elderly and to the area of applied linguistics in teaching English as an additional language.