Letramento fonológico crítico : ressignificando o ensino de fonologia na aula de inglês como língua adicional

Abstract

This research investigates the transformative potential of English phonology teaching when devised within the perspective of Critical Literacy. Its main aim was to analyze and reflect upon my teaching practices in the disciplines Phonology of the English Language I and II - Phonological Literacy, in order to open up the possibility of reframing this teaching within the perspective of Critical Literacy. The case study was carried out at the Federal University of Alagoas and it involved 20 undergraduate students of the English Language Course. In its ontological dimension it tried to account for the way these students perceive the changes in meaning-making generated by phonological processes in speech; in its epistemological dimension to perceive how they established relations with this knowledge; and in its methodological dimension to act as a transforming element of teaching practice, using these processes as a means of understanding the oral language, envisaging more plural views regarding the teaching of English phonology as an additional language. Thisresearch is situated within Critical Applied Linguistics, according to Pennycook (2010), it attempts to open a dialogue between Intonational Phonology (Ladd, 2008), prosody (Wennerstrom, 2001, 2011), negotiation of meanings (Canagarajah, 2006, 2013) and meaning-making (Lemke, 2012, Kress; Van Leeuwen, 2006); it takes into account the ideas of heterogeneity and difference, Pennycook (2007, 2010), Bagno (2009, 2015); Critical Literacy (Janks, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2017), (Kalantzis and Cope, 2006, 2016); the studies on criticism by Menezes de Souza (2011), among others. The results envisaged innumerous possibilities: reframing the participants’ teaching of Phonology within a critical stand; the native speaker epistemic break; cross-boarder dialogues of Phonology with the Social Sciences, Psychology, Philosophy, Sociolinguistics, for instance. The data shows that Critical Phonological Literacy engenders a better understanding of the processes that interfere with the construction of meanings in the oral language and promote reflections on the implications of these meaning-makings in maintaining or not social inequalities.