Questões de Inglês - Interpretação de texto | Reading comprehension para Concurso

One of the popular myths about the English language is that somewhere people are still speaking the kind of English that Chaucer or Shakespeare or Milton spoke. This myth does, of course, have some foundation in fact, though the mythical versions repeated above are gross exaggerations. The relevant fact is that some regional dialects of English retain old forms which have disappeared from the standard form of the language. This conservatism in colonial varieties is, rather unfortunately, termed 'colonial lag' - unfortunately because the term gives the impression that the colonial variety will (or should) one day catch up with the home variety, though this is unlikely ever to happen. Colonial lag is a potential factor in distinguishing colonial varieties from their home counterparts in all levels of language: phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and lexis.

BAUER, L. An Introduction to International Varieties of English. Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong, 2003. [Adapted].

When I made my way to college, I was truly astonished to find teachers who appeared to derive their primary pleasure in the classroom by exercising their authoritarian power over my fellow students, crushing our spirits, and dehumanizing our minds and bodies. I had chosen to attend Stanford University, a predominantly white college (primarily because the financial aid packages were better than those offered by black institutions), but I never once considered what it would be like to study with teachers who were racist. Even though I had attended a high school with outspokenly racist teachers who were contemptuous and unkind, I had romanticized college. I believed it would be a paradise of learning where we would all be so busy studying that we’d never have time for the petty things of this world, especially not racism.

HOOKS, B. Teaching critical thinking: practical wisdom. New York: Routledge, 2010, p. 2. 

When I made my way to college, I was truly astonished to find teachers who appeared to derive their primary pleasure in the classroom by exercising their authoritarian power over my fellow students, crushing our spirits, and dehumanizing our minds and bodies. I had chosen to attend Stanford University, a predominantly white college (primarily because the financial aid packages were better than those offered by black institutions), but I never once considered what it would be like to study with teachers who were racist. Even though I had attended a high school with outspokenly racist teachers who were contemptuous and unkind, I had romanticized college. I believed it would be a paradise of learning where we would all be so busy studying that we’d never have time for the petty things of this world, especially not racism.

HOOKS, B. Teaching critical thinking: practical wisdom. New York: Routledge, 2010, p. 2. 

It seems to me, having been involved for many years with teaching English as a so-called second or foreign language, that there are deep and indissoluble links between the practices, theories, and contexts of ELT and the history of colonialism. Such connections, I want to suggest, run far deeper than drawing parallels between the current global expansion of English and the colonial expansion that preceded it. Rather, I want to argue that ELT theories and practices that emanate from the former colonial powers still carry the traces of those colonial histories both because of the long history of direct connections between ELT and colonialism and because such theories and practices derive from broader European cultures and ideologies that themselves are products of colonialism.

PENNYCOOK, A. English and the discourses of colonialism. London: Routledge, 2002, p. 19.