Language and Literacy
Changing Assessment Practices in ELT: A Collaborative Experience View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Camila Haus
As two teachers who are engaged with English Language Teaching (ELT) from a critical perspective, we have felt discomfort throughout our careers when evaluating students. The prevalence of testing and normative criteria based on structuralist and modern assumptions in our context is not only disconnected from our readings in relation to language, but also has material consequences to our students, such as insecurity and imposterism. Within this background, we turned our attention to assessment and tried to develop a practice that challenged the traditional, hegemonic, and normative paradigms in ELT.. In this paper, our goal is to share and reflect on the approach we took in a collaborative action-research where we explored a different way of doing assessment at a language center for adults during one semester. We start by describing the meetings we had before and during the experience, when we: a) discussed theories such as English as a Lingua Franca, Multiliteractices and Decoloniality; b) planned our assessment practice; c) reflected on the outcomes, difficulties and impressions of the process as it was taking place. Then, we explain the context of our classrooms and present the assessment we developed. We conclude with our thoughts on some of the possibilities and limitations of our intervention, considering critical ELT assessment in online environments, collaborative work among teachers and students’ engagement and agency in their learning process.
English For Internationalization Purposes In Higher Education: Experiences Within Languages Without Borders View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Nayara Stefanie Mandarino Silva
I understand the internationalization process as linked to modern/colonial thinking, which leads to tensions and complexities, including in attempts to delink (Mignolo, 2007) from this dominant way of being/knowing. Despite being imperfect, efforts towards decolonial options can teach us possibilities and help us exercise our imaginations, which might open space to a university otherwise (Escobar, 2007). Considering that, this paper sheds light on my experience with course planning in Languages without Borders (LwB), a national and public program that promotes language learning for internationalization purposes in Brazilian universities. In this sense, I analyze three courses I developed in 2019 within LwB. To do so, I engage in an autoethnographic study (Eriksson, 2010), dialoguing with decolonial studies (Castro-Gómez, 2007, Grosfoguel, 2007, Mignolo, 2011). The (self)analysis reveals conflicts and contradictions in a process marked by delinking and reproducing modern/colonial thinking in attempts to teach English from critical perspectives. Additionally, tensions between expectations in relation to learners and personal understandings are explored, highlighting the complexities of meaning negotiation.
Multiliteracies in Action: An English Teaching Context View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Lídia Rocha Moraes
Considering a critical pedagogy that enables students to have an effective citizen action in the world, as well as its transformation through a local/global action, this work discusses the Multiliteracies Pedagogy in practice. This perspective reinforces the ideal of a learning approach that explores the work on meaning through different senses and different world conceptions. Moreover, its biggest breakthrough is the inclusion of digital media in the learning process, straightening the distance between classroom work and social life. The present work proposes a learning plan of work for English classes, in an English course context, which goes along with the ideal described above. It also discusses about the application of the lesson plan in a real class and its development together with the students, evaluating its highlights and challenges to work on. The main theme of the analysed class is racism and the discussion is mobilized by the Little Mermaid live action film, in which a black actress stars as the main character. The data used for this research comes from class recording and analysis of the final project constructed by the students. All this is analysed through the Multiliteracies processes: Experiencing; Conceptualising; Analysing and Applying.
