A utilização de readers em aulas de língua inglesa no ensino médio

Abstract

This research aims to investigate the use of adapted fiction in the kind of educational texts known as “readers” as a teaching tool in the English-language classroom. This resource is introduced in our classrooms on the hypothesis that it would address failures in the teaching and learning process which had been observed in practice and which corresponded to similar failings identified in Moreira (2002), Bohn (2003), Rajagopalan (2006), Oliveira (2007), Jorge (2009), and Borges (2009). The participants in this research are 144 Secondary School students from a state school in Rio Grande do Norte/Brazil and the methodology used is action research (KEMMIS; McTAGGART, 1988). For the classroom intervention we use didactic sequences involving activities based on a reader. The data has been gathered by means of questionnaires with both open and closed questions. The theoretical framework is based on Larsen-Freeman (2000), Hill (2001), Kramsch (2001), Brown (2007), Marcuschi (2008), Oliveira and Kleiman (2008), Almeida Filho (2007), among others. The national curriculum guidelines (BRASIL, 1996; 1998; 2006), as well as the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (COUNCIL OF EUROPE, 2001) are used as points of departure for this research. The results of our research show that the use of readers in the classroom is an effective way of combating the learning deficit noticed by the aforementioned researchers thus confirming our hypothesis.