Questões de Inglês - Análise sintática | Syntax Parsing para Concurso

It is not uncommon for English language lessons to favour communication over accuracy: real life is nothing like a classroom! In real-life situations, when you make a mistake in the language you are learning, context provides ample information as to what the intended message is. In fact, most of the time, impeccable accuracy is not needed at all! “Don’t worry about making mistakes,” I used to tell my English language students. “Communicating is the most important thing!”

While making mistakes when trying to master a language might seem counter-intuitive, letting learners freely communicate and negotiate meaning is key to success. A learner who communicates a lot while making a few mistakes is much more likely to develop confidence for dealing with real-life situations than a learner who communicates very little because they’re afraid of making any. In communicative language teaching, for example, the teacher is tasked with both encouraging the learner to express themselves and with providing corrective feedback in a way that is not obstructive to communication. 

This means that if a learner says, “I go swimming last night,” it is much more effective to respond with, “Oh, that’s nice, you went swimming. What did you do after?” rather than, “No! You went swimming! Use past simple for past events!” – the former encourages the learner to continue their narrative while the latter is much more likely to make the learner stop in their tracks, re-evaluate the context, and think twice before expressing themselves again in the future, for the fear of making a mistake again. Teachers need to be careful not to parrot back everything the students say in this manner, of course, but the technique can be an effective method of acknowledging the content of a student’s response, while also providing feedback on accuracy.

The importance of the freedom to make mistakes in language learning is also supported by research in psychology, which suggests that learners who try a task without having mastered it completely experience improved retention of new information. A similar experiment in the context of language learning also indicates that the process of making mistakes activates a greater network of related knowledge in the brain, which leads to superior learning outcomes.

It is believed that the key to help learners feel relaxed and ready for communicating freely in the classroom is authenticity. This means that there should be both a real communicative need for a learner to speak and the authentic reaction from those around to what the learner has said.

Here are a few ways of how such authentic communicative interactions can be practiced in the classroom: 

• surround learners with the English language – encourage them to speak to you and each other in English;

• don’t worry about diverging from topics that are not strictly covered in your lesson plan;

• model communication by telling your students stories and anecdotes about your own life and encourage them to do the same;

• let your learners have fun with English – give them colloquial expressions to try and ask them to share some expressions

; • do not overcorrect – make a note of errors and cover it in subsequent lessons;

• avoid the temptation to turn what was intended as speaking practice into a full-on grammar lesson.

While easier said than done, especially when the outcome of an exam is at stake, it is worth remembering that people that our learners might come to interact with outside of the classroom are driven by the natural desire to understand the people they communicate with. This is especially powerful when practiced in the context of a classroom. They set the learners up for success in real-life communication. In other words, when communication is the goal, mistakes are secondary, and that’s real life, isn’t it?

Adapted from: https://wwwcambridgeenglish.org/blog/mistakes-help-you-learnfreedom-to-fail-in-games-and-language-learning/

        EAL classrooms are spaces to build communicative competence in the English language. That language has a unique role for many people around the world. For those without financial resources who do not live in English dominant countries, the digital sphere is perhaps the only space in which authentic use of the language is likely to take place. For learners situated in inner circle countries, effective use of the language can make the difference between social, economic and political exclusion, or inclusion. This is also true for a lesser extent in outer circle countries. For those in expanding circle countries, English is becoming a language of the global elite in political, economic, and academic life. In all of these circles, it is often used as a lingua franca. Sociocultural theory states that true competence in encoding and decoding language can only exist when there is an understanding of the cultural realities attached to the communication when it is used. Digital media provide the vector of communication for a tremendous number of communicative acts in all of the circles, but communication in the digital medium carries special attributes that are not necessarily obvious or transparent. Therefore, it seems imperative to arm language users with an understanding of communication issues the digital realm as well as an understanding of the implication of communication in this space. Furthermore, there is an ethical responsibility to empower language users from a variety of background with equal agency and therefore equal voice. Doing so requires more than just technical skills, but also skills of critique and critical language awareness, productive ability, and an understanding of agency and rights claims that stretch from the linguistic to the economic and political. By reimagining Critical Language Awareness as a component of a multiliteracy approach that encompasses the full spectrum of analogue to digital communication in English, teachers, students, and policy makers can work toward making language studies as relevant, authentic, and empowering as possible. 

Adapted from: (PDF) English as an Additional Language: Enhancing Critical Digital Literacy (researchgate.net)

(Available at: https://www.classycareergirl.com/5-simple-time-management-tips-for-a-great-week/– textespecially adapted for this test).