A abordagem intercultural para o ensino de língua inglesa no Ensino Médio

Abstract

Discussions about what culture is have been held for a long time and in many areas of human knowledge, including the field of teaching and learning English as a foreign language (FL). Much has been said about the importance of cultural issues for FL teaching and the challenges of teaching not language and culture, but language as culture (KATRA & KRAMSCH, 2008), in which cultural aspects should not be a "tourist curriculum" (SANTOMÉ, 1995 ) since it does not interfere with students’ critical training and distort the authenticity of social practices. Therefore, it is necessary to teach FL so that culture allows teachers and students to construct their own meanings from a third space: between the native and target cultures (KRAMSCH, 1993). So, it is important to understand which alternatives and contributions an intercultural approach to the teaching of English as a FL can offer to the development of critical cultural awareness through opportunities for construction of attitudes (relativising self and valuing other), knowledge (of self and the other), skills (to discover, interact, interpret and relate aspects between two or more cultures) mediated by a political education (BYRAM, 1997). Searching for this understanding, I conducted a qualitative research, with narrative and reflexive methodological basis, in which I interpreted lessons, questionnaires and interviews with high school students involved in teaching and learning process. The results revealed that, despite limitations and restrictions, (a) the awareness process was initiated, (b) the experience allowed the partial development of critical cultural awareness of participants and (c) the need to develop a pedagogy which incorporates the intercultural relations in a systematic and conscious way.