Produção escrita no ensino/aprendizagem de inglês como língua estrangeira no contexto de uma escola particular de Natal, RN: uma pesquisa-ação em pedagogia do gênero

Abstract

This study is characterized as an action research (TRIPP, 2005), and aims to investigate the effect of the implementation of the Teaching/ Learning Cycle developed by Rose and Martin (2012) and Rose (2015), in this case applied to the teaching/learning of reading and writing of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). The research was carried out in a bilingual program at a private school in Natal, RN. The focus of the research is on the development of elements of student writing within specific contextual, discursive and grammatical categories. The theoretical framework is mainly based on the concepts of the Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) of Halliday e Matthiessen (2004, 2014) and followers from the Sydney School. It is also based on Theory of Genre and Register (TGR) (MARTIN; ROSE, 2008; 2012) derived from LSF, as well as Genre Pedagogy (PG) developed from the concepts of TGR. International studies from the perspective of the Sydney School of Rose and Martin (2012) were also considered. These pedagogical practices are based also on the theory of explicit teaching developed by Bernstein (1975). Following the methods of action research, faced with the challenges of teaching/learning writing in EFL in the context of this private school, we developed a pedagogical intervention systematized by the Teaching/ Learning Cycle, (ROSE, 2015), for writing the factual genre, ‘description’, about the painting Christina's world, by Andrew Wyeth (1948). We analyzed the writing production based on the assessment categories included in the Teaching/ Learning Cycle (ROSE, 2015). Data generated from the writing of the 19 students who participated in the pedagogical intervention with the Teaching/ Learning Cycle, which was carried out over a period of one month, showed an increase in the writing scores in general, and particularly in the contextual categories of genre stages and phases, as well as in the graphic category of presentation. In addition, this writing assessment instrument, with its set of categories that highlights specific contextual and discursive categories, rather than merely grammatical, fostering a broad awareness and targeted development of these aspects through explicit teaching. Results indicate that this practice contributed to an improvement in the teaching practice of the teacher researcher and in the scholastic environment of the research context. Future work includes a longitudinal study and the use of other discursive genres and types of texts.