A PROPOSAL FOR A REFLECTIVE APPROACH TO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING AT ELEMENTARY AND HIGH SCHOOL Rejane K.

Rolim Ritter, Master in English Language Linguistics (UFPR) Professor of English at UTP

As far as education is concerned, it has become a common ground for conversation to talk about motivation, reflective teaching and effective learning. These topics have also been discussed in the English teaching area because many teachers report their difficulties to do their jobs properly, due to the high level of discipline in class. Teachers assume that the reason for such indiscipline is the students lack of commitment to their subject-matter, disregarding the importance of this language as the main tool for international business and commerce, science and technology, and international relations and diplomacy (Larsen-Freeman 1992 p.1). Anyway, students of the fifth year of the elementary school are usually eager to learn English, but their motivation gradually disappears until the end of high school, in the spite of their teachers appeal to the necessities and advantages of learning English . The English classes in the majority of the private and public schools are failing to enable the students to learn the language, as it can be observed by the low scores most of the students get in the English section of the vestibular. The cause might be in the gap between, theory and practice, since societies have become more and more complex in structure and resources, the need of formal or intentional teaching and learning increases have also increased. However, according to the same author, formal instruction is always in danger of becoming abstract and bookish, due to the undesired split between experience gained in more direct associations and what is acquired in school. ( Dewe, 1938). The hypothesis of this gap as one of the causes of the students failure to learn the language make us wonder how the English language, as a school subject- matter, could be meaningful and therefore effective for the learner and for the teacher, as well?

To answer this question it is necessary to investigate the foreign language teaching praxis that occurs in the official school systems and analyze it from a cognitive perspective. As a consequence of the study, the teacher must be able to reflect about his praxis, on the grounds of hypotheses over what enables the students optimize the period of foreign language learning/acquisition. In addition, by offering trustworthy results, the research should elicit the aspects of the current general praxis that do not reveal a reflective teaching attitude, thus not contributing to the students effective learning. According to Larsen-Freeman (1992 p.3), many teachers feel attracted by the research in second language acquisition as a source of insight in relation to the teaching-learning process. Paulo Freire (1996 p. 32) states that teaching demands research, once questioning, searching and researching are part of the teaching praxis nature. The importance of this study, then, is to make a link between the foreign language teaching / learning process through a critical perspective, by investigating the current foreign language teaching praxis, which is an empirical approach in itself, and a cognitive view of the acquisition. Consequently, this research is expected to lead to a thorough analysis of the data and, consequently, to a better understanding of the teaching activity and the learning processes. Nowadays, reflective teaching has been constantly mentioned in the teaching area. A reflective English language teaching approach could be an attempt to enable the teacher to reflect about his praxis critically, based on linguistic theoretical background and also getting subside from supporting areas such as psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, philosophy of education, etc. As far as second language acquisition is concerned, one of the best materials found is Rod Ellis Understanding Second Language Acquisition (Ellis, 1985), which is a thorough account of several language learning theories. According to the author, All teachers have a theory of language learning. That is, they act in accordance with a set of principles about the way language learners behave. This theory however, may not be explicit (Ellis, 1985 p.). Accordingly, the book is an attempt to make the teachers theory of language learning explicit and thus open for revision. For example, many foreign or second language teachers

associate the word acquisition with Krashen`s Natural Approach, a theoretical model consisting of five hypotheses: The Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis, the Natural Order This Hypothesis, The Monitor Hypotheses, the Input Hypothesis, The Affective Filter Hypotheses ( Krashen & Terrel, 1983 ) in a clear or covert way, because it was a compulsory topic during their formal instruction. Equally important for the L2 teacher/researcher, is the material An Introduction to Second Language Acquisition Research (Larsen-Freeman, 1991). The book introduces readers to research on second language acquisition (SLA). After describing SLA and how researchers describe it, the book deals explicitly or implicitly with current explanations of the learning process and the search for better ones. Since learning is an internal process, the author states that researchers have to study their students language in order to make their inferences and suggests some examination of the input so as to improve the quality of their inferences . Once the issue of vocabulary acquisition has proved to be crucially important in the study of second language research, the book Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition (Coady,1996) can also be of great interest for those interested in the historical trends in second language acquisition research and current views on the nature of L2 vocabulary acquisition and approaches to L2 vocabulary teaching. Some articles have also proved to be good sources of information for the development of a project of this kind, such as Metodologia de Pesquisas das Crenas sobre Aprendizagem de Lnguas by Ana Maria Ferreira Barcelos. Language learning beliefs have been a topic in Applied Linguistics due to their recognized influence on the learning/acquisition process. However, only a few studies have examined the methodology of investigating beliefs (Barcelos 2001 p. 71). The author fulfills this need by presenting a state of art review of current research methodology on students learning beliefs a really helpful tool during the data collection and analysis periods.

Brown (1993) defines the type of research that is derived from primary sources of information such as a group of students learning a language as primary research, to distinguish it from the one which deals with secondary sources as books, documents, etc. Thus, as an intended primary research, this project proposes a case study focusing on a group of high school students of the third year. The research itself will initiate with some piloting investigation over the present situation of the English teaching activity in such environment, specifically the English classes for the vestibular. So, after having done a descriptive report on the research area, data can be systematically collected in the form of stimulated recall, which Nunan (1992 p. 94) defines as a technique in which the researcher records and transcribes part of a lesson and then gets the teacher (and, the students if possible ) to comment on what was happening at the time the teaching and learning took place. In addiction, other data collection methods can be of great help, such as ethnographic observation and ethnographic interviews as the research would take place in context. At the same time, a review of the second language acquisition approaches should be done in order to obtain parameters of comparison among the existing approaches and that one(s) which is/are in use. As a qualitative research of the ethnographic type, its generalizations and hypotheses would emerge during the course of the data collection and interpretation, once that they were not predetermined by the researcher before hand and hypothesis over which approaches enable them to optimize their learning are expected to be derived at this stage. Probably, by the time of the data analysis, it may be necessary to get subside from supporting areas such as psychology and psycholinguistics, psychology of education, etc. in conformity to the findings of the research. For example, cognition theories such as Vygotskys provide an important supporting material for this study, especially the concept of the proximal development zone, the central aspects of his cognition theory. In Vygotskys theory, learning is basically taken as the transformation of an interpersonal

process (social) into an intrapersonal process and we can apply that to the study of the nature of the teacher versus students and students versus students interactions. Finally, a grounded theory, a theory derived from the observation of factual data ( Nunan,1992) is supposed to be derived, perhaps providing a totally different insight into the learning/acquisition perspective. Once that the data refers to the teachers own praxis, this background theory must lead to a reflexive teaching attitude, thus questioning their present beliefs. Hopefully, the results of this study might provoke some improvement in the elementary and/or high school education, as far as the effectiveness is concerned. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES BROWN, J. D. (1993). Understanding research in second language learning: A teacherss guide to statistics and research design. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. VYGOTSKY, L. S. (2000). A Formao social da mente: o desenvolvimento dos processos psicolgicos superiores. So Paulo: Martins Fontes. Barcelos, A. M. F. (2001). Metodologia de pesquisas das crenas sobre aprendizagem de lnguas: Estado da Arte. Revista Brasileira de Lingstica Aplicada, vol. N.1 (71-92). Nunan, D. (1992). Research Methods in Language Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Freire, P. (1996). Pedagogia da Autonomia: saberes necessrios prtica educativa . So Paulo: Paz e Terra. Larsen-Freeman D.and Long M. H. (1992). An introduction to second language acquisition research. New York :Longman. Coady, J. and Huckin T. (1997). Second language vocabulary acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ellis R. (1985). Understanding second language acquisition research. Oxford. Oxford University Press. English language teaching