Inglês como língua franca: um estudo etnográfico na extensão do IFPR – Câmpus Curitiba.

RESUMO

The project INGLÊS COMO LÍNGUA FRANCA: UM ESTUDO ETNOGRÁFICO NA EXTENSÃO DO IFPR — CÂMPUS CURITIBA raises from the principles of extension, scientific research, innovation and education on Applied Linguistics and language learning and teaching. Established to be carried on in two years (1st semester/2014 – 2nd semester/2015), it s now with its stages 1 and 2 (which consist of the study of theoretical materials and planning) in progress and aiming to assess the possibility and venture to offer regular English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) lessons at IFPR Curitiba. The lessons (stage 3) and the writing of a scientific paper (last stage, 4) will produce the results of the course to the academic and scientific community and might empower the continuity of the work with its outcome. According to the understanding of the principles of ELF, the project tends to handle English from the perspective of a lingua franca, placing communicative intelligibility as a priority. Such perspective takes the focus away from a ‘native speaker’ or a ‘standard grammar’ as sources of successful communication and emphasizes the negotiation and openness to complex and contingent ways of meaning-making. The group of researchers is formed by a supervising teacher and two students (PIBIC-JR student and a volunteer student) who have been introduced to the academic and scientific research. This introduction focused on the familiarization with the field of Applied Linguistics and some of its ways of understanding the studies concerning social questions that focus on language and communication. Concerning the academic work, it has been involving the exploration of ELF and other ways of understanding the study of English over history (as a Global, Foreign, International, Second Language) and their insertion on ethnographic research over three months of weekly meetings. Thereby, for the time being, the group understands ELF as a common, urgent and effective strategy of communication between different linguistic and cultural backgrounds and focus its studies on the possibilities of learning and teaching English from the lingua franca point of view, pervading and questioning through reading processes described by authors like Jenkins (2000). The author argues for a pattern of features used by the non-native groups (non-according to native norms) — it has been concluded that there is an uncountable amount of individual strategies which make the communication possible, and that these differences occur even in the same linguistic community. The concept of Community of Practice as an atmosphere of meeting of individuals aiming to share knowledge pointed by Wenger (1998) has also been discussed and may contribute as a future methodological perspective for the course to be offered. As soon as the lessons are planned and prepared, the aim will be to go deeper into the ethnography of the research to describe the impact, reach and efficacy of the course to the community of IFPR.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE: English as a Lingua Franca; Ethnography; Communities of Practice; Teaching and Learning of English.