Interculturalidade na sala de aula de língua inglesa: um estudo de caso

Abstract

In this study, we present and analyze the intercultural experiences during the teaching/learning process of North American young adults English Teaching Assistants and undergraduate Brazilian freshman of English as an additional language in 2019 in the program of Licenciatura em Letras – Línguas Adicionais: Inglês, Espanhol e Respectivas Literaturas at Universidade Federal do Pampa – Campus Bagé. We use a qualitative approach to develop the study collecting data through a biographic questionnaire, semi-structured interviews, and journals. We used the following subject areas to further understand the intercultural experiences: interculturality in the classroom, intercultural communication, and internationalization as a pedagogical innovation. We acknowledge Spencer-Oatey e Franklin (2009) thesis in which they forefront that any kind of intergroup interaction has intercultural potential due to the nature of social groups, which are also cultural. Interculturality in the classroom goes beyond the theoretical level, the analysis and the comparison, as it allows students to experience other languages and cultures, providing unique moments of social interaction, making the pedagogical practice innovative. We realized that initial strangeness was giving way to negotiation and acceptance by both parties involved in the interaction and that the proximity initiative by one of the parties seems to have favored the negotiation of the strangeness. The writing of journals as a tool of interaction with students allowed a greater proximity between ETAs and students. We emphasize that we believe in internationalization and interculturality as pedagogical innovation since we can perceive evidence of transformation in all those involved in the interaction, as Beraza (2008) points out.