Training teachers of Italian through the analysis of identity building in TEACHER-STUDENT and peer-to-peer interactions

• Grant number: 15/12825-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: December 13, 2015
• End date: February 13, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Modern Foreign Languages
• Principal Investigator: Roberta Ferroni
• Grantee: Roberta Ferroni
• Host Investigator: Maria Helena Almeida Beirao de Araujo e Sa
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Universidade de Aveiro (UA), Portugal

Abstract

This research proposes to study identity acts - the linguistic comments by which speakers reveal either their personal identity or the social role they aspire to - produced by learners in interactions between teacher and student and between peers whose native language is akin to the foreign language, during the language class. The first part of the analysis, to be conducted in Italian courses at the University of São Paulo campus, will be based, as recommended in the ethnographic approach, on the observation of three classes compounded by learners of Italian whose native language is Portuguese (Brazilian variant), in levels A2, B1, and B2 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (2002). The data will be collected in audio and video recordings and subsequently transcribed, to form a corpus that will enable us to analyze the different typologies of acts used by the students. A critical reflection on the interaction in foreign language classes, based on the study of the identity roles that the learners tend to take according to the interactional context, initially will enable us to gather information related to the power and submission dynamics brought forth in the foreign language class and later, from the achieved results, to contribute to the training of teachers who work in the Italian courses at the University of São Paulo, so that they be able to observe themselves and manage their own training and educational innovation. As the theoretical and methodological framework, we will follow an approach based on conversation analysis, supplemented with a set of notions and references extracted from studies covering the training of foreign language teachers. (AU)