From critical to complex: a pedagogy on english for specific purposes to promote brazilian graduate students' academic literacy at a distance

Author(s)

Bruna Gabriela Augusto Marçal Vieira

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São José do Rio Preto. 2019-05-28.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp). Instituto de Biociências Letras e Ciências Exatas. São José do Rio Preto
• Defense date: 2019-04-12
• Advisor: Solange Aranha

Abstract

This research – sponsored by CAPES (001) and FAPESP (processes n. 15/11088-1 and 16/06589-4) – aimed to design a sensible pedagogy to the reality of Brazilian post-graduation, which is, at the same time, applied at a distance and potentially able to contribute to students’ academic literacy (FERREIRA, 2015) development. Critical-complex pedagogy was, then, designed on the basis of Critical English for Academic Purposes (CEAP) (BENESCH, 2012) approach, and on the complex methodology for EAP course design (VIEIRA, 2014). This pedagogy proposes the realization of a course through three stages: in the first one, the course is designed, in the second, it is taught, and in the third, evaluated. These three stages, however, are inter-related and recursive, once the syllabus of the course is constantly (re)designed as a response to the results of the evaluation of the units previously taught. Moreover, the target genre(s) are critically taught by means of an interrelated work with two different genre analysis perspectives: the sociorhetoric (SWALES, 1990, 2004, 2009) and the new rhetoric (MILLER, 1984, BAZERMAN, 1998, 2004, 2011) ones, in order to keep the same level of attention to the textual and to the contextual dimensions of discourse uses. This proposal was implemented in an online CEAP course to Computer Science Brazilian graduate students. Results indicate that the complex methodology adopted assures the adaptation of the course to the specificities of the teaching and learning context. Besides, they show that the critical teaching, based on tasks of genre recognition, analysis, production and discussion, offers favorable conditions to the development of students’ academic literacy in foreign languages, even at a distance. Therefore, the critical-complex pedagogy contributes to an educational demand from the Brazilian post-graduation context to the teaching of academic writing. It offers principles and procedures to help teachers and course developers in the design of courses that fulfill the pedagogical, didactic, institutional and logistical needs of such a context. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 15/11088-1 - Critical EAP for Brazilian Computer Science graduated students: contributing to learners' academic literacy in two genres
• Grantee: Bruna Gabriela Augusto Marçal Vieira
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate