Memes in English Language Teaching/learning for Brazilian pre-teens and teens: a Genre Based Pedagogical Approach

Abstract

Humorous discourse offers many possibilities for highlighting morphosyntactic and/or semantic aspects of the English language (EL) that are challenging and important for Brazilian English language learners (BELLs). In a classroom environment, it is important for the teacher to bring diverse materials to keep students engaged and interested in learning. In that sense, humor can be used as a pedagogical tool in English as an Additional Language classrooms for students to learn morphosyntactic and/or semantic aspects of the EL. For that reason, this study aims to propose the use of memes as a pedagogical tool to teach aspects of the EL that may be challenging to pre-teen and teenage BELLs. Our research question is “How can memes be used to teach challenging aspects of the English language to pre-teen and teenage Brazilian English language learners?” To answer this question, the following specific objectives were developed: (1) select memes that illustrate morphosyntactic and/or semantic aspects of the EL that are challenging to BELLs; (2) classify them in semantic categories; (3) propose a pedagogical intervention for the comprehension and production of memes in a private EL classroom that is relevant to pre-teen and teenage BELLs. The theories that we base our study on begin with the model of language in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) by Halliday and Matthiessen (2014) and Eggins (2004), then on notions of humorous discourse by Eggins and Slade (1997). Also, we rely on some categories of semantic aspects of the EL in Cruse, (2010). Finally, for the pedagogical intervention we adopt the Genre Based Pedagogy of the Sydney School (GBPSS) proposed by Rose and Martin (2012). Our results show 4 types of language play in the memes that make up the corpus, one of which we present in a proposal for the comprehension and production of memes using the Teaching Learning Cycle of the GBPSS. With this research we aim to contribute to innovative classroom teaching/learning practices in the context of Brazilian English Language Learners.