Questões de Concurso Comentadas sobre ensino da língua estrangeira inglesa em inglês

The Amazon Forest

The Amazon is often called the lungs of the earth and produces 20% of the world’s oxygen. For this reason, many people are trying to stop deforestation in the rainforest. Brazil, for example, is working hard to help the rainforest survive.

A few years ago, the Brazilian government put forward a plan called ARPA (Amazon Region Protected Areas). It had the support of many international agencies, including the World Bank, and the German Development Bank, KfW. The main aim was to build new areas of protected rainforest, maintain areas of the rainforest that hadn’t yet been destroyed, and stop deforestation. Deforestation contributes greatly to global warming because carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere when trees get cut down and burned.

One of the first areas to be recognized as part of ARPA was the Tumucumaque Mountains National Park. It is 38,800 km² and is the same size as Switzerland, a small country in Central Europe. It’s the world’s largest protected tropical national park, and the second largest national park. It is home to certain species of jaguar, eagle, and lizard, which can only survive in the rainforest. Many of these species are under threat from climate change and deforestation.

In order to work in the park, conservationists need a reliable map. However, no map existed, and they didn’t have enough knowledge to make one on their own. They came up with the idea of involving local tribes to help them, combining modern and ancient methods to produce a map. The tribes learned to use global positioning system handsets (GPS), in conjunction with their local knowledge of the area, which included fishing and hunting grounds, and places of historical or mythical importance. Aerial photos were a 20useful aid in the process as well. This method of map-making is now the key to the future of rainforests, in Brazil and the rest of the world too.

Education

Education encompasses both the teaching and learning of knowledge, proper conduct, and technical competency. It thus focuses on the cultivation of skills, trades or professions, as well as mental, moral & aesthetic development.

Formal education consists of systematic instruction, teaching and training by professional teachers. This consists of the application of pedagogy and the development of curricula. 

The right to education is a fundamental human right. Since 1952, Article 2 of the first Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights obliges all signatory parties to guarantee the right to education. At world level, the United Nations’ International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966 guarantees this right under its Article 13. 

Educational systems are established to provide education and training, often for children and the young. A curriculum defines what students should know, understand and be able to do as the result of education. A teaching profession delivers teaching which enables learning, and a system of policies, regulations, examinations, structures and funding enables teachers to teach to the best of their abilities.

Primary (or elementary) education consists of the first years of formal, structured education. In general, primary education consists of six or seven years of schooling starting at the age of 5 or 6, although this varies between, and sometimes within, countries. Globally, around 70% of primary-age children are enrolled in primary education, and this proportion is rising.

In most contemporary educational systems of the world, secondary education consists of the second years of formal education that occur during adolescence. It is characterized by transition from the typically compulsory, comprehensive primary education for minors, to the optional, selective tertiary, “post-secondary”, or “higher” education (e.g., university, vocational school) for adults.

Higher education, also called tertiary, third stage, or post secondary education, is the non-compulsory educational level that follows the completion of a school providing a secondary education, such as a high school or secondary school. Tertiary education is normally taken to include undergraduate and postgraduate education, as well as vocational education and training. Colleges and universities are the main institutions that provide tertiary education. Collectively, these are sometimes known as tertiary institutions. Tertiary education generally results in the receipt of certificates, diplomas, or academic degrees. 

Read Text 4 and answer the question.

Text 4

Exploring Identity-based Challenges to English Teachers’ Professional Growth 

Heather Camp 

Minnesota State University-Mankato

   Research on pre-service teacher education indicates that identity construction is an important facet of becoming a teacher. To establish oneself as a teaching professional, a person must craft a teacher identity out of the personal and professional discourses that surround him/her. This idea is consistent with contemporary theories of identity construction, which posit that the self is discursively constructed, made and remade by the various discourses that encompass the person. Such discourses -- “pattern[s] of thinking, speaking, behaving, and interacting that [are] socially, culturally, and historically constructed and sanctioned by a specific group or groups of people” (Miller Marsh 456) -- are constantly intermingling, wrangling for ideological power and dynamically shaping one another. To construct an identity, an individual must integrate these diverse discourses, weaving them together to form a dynamic but cohesive sense of self. On one hand, this twining process has the potential to promote psychological development, leading to the attainment of “an expanded, integrated self, more diverse and richer in the possibilities for action that these multiple identities afford” (Brown 676). Yet, it also may produce identity destabilization and fragmentation, leading to uncertainty, distress and stymied psychological growth.  

   New teachers are confronted with the task of adopting new discourses, and of forging relationships between old and new strands of their identities. Succeeding at this process facilitates the development of a secure and satisfying professional sense-ofself: research indicates that the attainment of an integrated identity helps teachers transition into and find satisfaction within the teaching profession, teach effectively, and nurture students’ self-development. Further, it suggests that attaining a cohesive identity better prepares teachers to champion educational reform. 

    Yet, research also suggests that accessing this array of rewards can be difficult. As teachers seek to integrate their teacherly roles with other discourses that contribute to their sense of self, they may encounter identity conflicts that work against a sense of identity cohesiveness. Encountering such conflicts can lead to emotional turmoil and stunted professional growth, even leading some student teachers (and practicing teachers) to leave the teaching profession altogether.

     Growing awareness of the importance of professional identity construction and the psychological labor it demands has led to an upsurge in scholarship on pre-service teacher identity formation. […] This scholarship has drawn attention to the complexity of identity construction for pre-service teachers and offered educators insights into how they might support these students through this important work. 

Adapted from http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/cgi/ viewcontent.cgi?article=1030&context=wte

Read Text 2 and answer the question. 

Text 2

Here are four passages from an article on awareness of English as a lingua franca (ELF):

1) “Few will deny that research in the area of English as a lingua franca (ELF) has significantly contributed to our understanding of many different facets of communication involving non-native speakers of English. Such studies have added valuable insights to the growing research in the domain of critical applied linguistics and critical pedagogy and have prompted many scholars to problematize all aspects of English language teaching, learning, testing, curriculum designing, etc.”

2) “It is important at this stage to distinguish between the critical and the transformative perspective in ESOL teacher education. While they both share the element of reflection, they are different in a crucial way, although the former has often been seen as an umbrella term that subsumes the latter.”

3) “Critical pedagogy is invaluable in our attempt to understand the complex processes of the global spread of English and the intricate ways in which it continues to be localized and relocalized (Pennycook, 2010). It has the tools to help teachers appreciate the complications of context and the various underlying and often hidden discourses, from learner identity construction in the ESOL classroom (Norton and Toohey, 2011) to language testing (Shohamy, 2004) to the politics of pedagogy in the ‘classroom as a microcosm of the larger social and cultural world’” (Pennycook, 2001: 138).

4) “The value of an ELF-aware transformative perspective to ESOL teacher education lies in its power to help teachers define ELF for themselves and for their teaching contexts. In this way, teachers are involved in the co-construction of ELF and, in particular, in the development of one or more pedagogical frameworks for ELF. To achieve this, teachers have to have an informed awareness of the ELF construct, a critical awareness of their own deeper convictions about essential aspects of language, communication, and language teaching/learning, and the capability to bring about sustainable change in their teaching.” 

From Sifakis, N. C. (2014). "ELF awareness as an opportunity for change: a transformative perspective for ESOL teacher education". Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 3/2: 317-335