Cultural approach and critical literacy in English teaching as a foreign language in public schools: new perspectives for the exercise of reading

• Grant number: 12/02418-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: April 01, 2012
• End date: December 31, 2012
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Applied Linguistics
• Principal Investigator: Sandra Regina Buttros Gattolin de Paula
• Grantee: Rogerio Macedo de Oliveira
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research project has as its main motivation the fact that, in the school environment, modern foreign language subjects are one of the main means of access to cultural elements derived from different places. Such a context raises the need to create pedagogies that explore these features in a critical and reflexive way, preventing the rising and dissemination of general and stereotyped views about any cultural aspect to be explored. In addition, it is also important to highlight that, in schools, approaches related to culture are explored mainly through the reading of texts and other activities related to this issue. Both reading activities and cultural studies - whether taken in local or global dimensions- are considered necessary and important skills by official documents such as Proposta Curricular do Estado de São Paulo and Orientações Curriculares para o Ensino Médio for the formation of citizens that are able to reflect on the origins and consequences brought by certain points of view associated with different contexts. This conception is strongly related to the principles of Critical Literacy, characterized by bringing new perspectives to reading activities and that will be the main concept responsible for guiding this study, whose main objective is to verify, in English textbooks from public schools, the possible relationship between texts and activities about culture with the promotion of Critical Literacy. (AU)