Musing over the role of emotions to promote the exodus from the Comfort Zone in English language teaching and learning at a state university in Brazil

Gomes, Gysele da S. Colombo

doi:10.1590/1984-6398202218427

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Articles • Rev. bras. linguist. apl. 22 (1) • 2022 • https://doi.org/10.1590/1984-6398202218427 copy

Musing over the role of emotions to promote the exodus from the Comfort Zone in English language teaching and learning at a state university in Brazil

Um olhar atento ao papel das emoções para promover o êxodo da Zona de Conforto no ensino-aprendizagem de inglês em uma universidade estadual no Brasil

Authorship SCIMAGO INSTITUTIONS RANKINGS

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the development of an empirical study over the Comfort Zone ( 2004; 2006; 2018), shedding light on the role played by emotions in empowering learners to confidently interact in English classes at a public university in Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil. The theoretical framework was based on the concept of the Comfort Zone (2004; 2006; 2018); and that of emotions (ARAGÃO, 2004; 2011ARAGÃO, Rodrigo. Beliefs and emotions in foreign language teaching. System, Amsterdam, v. 39, issue 3, p. 302-313, Sept. 2011. Available at: Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/p:/S0346251X11000893 . Acessed: 20 Nov. 2020.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar... ; BARCELOS, 2018; MATURANA, 2002MATURANA, Humberto. Emoções e linguagem na educação e na política.pdf 2002; ZEMBYLAS 2004ZEMBYLAS, M. The emotional characteristics of teaching through an ethnographic study of one teacher. Teaching and Teacher Education, Amsterdam, v. 20, issue 2, Feb. 2004, p. 185-201. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2003.09.008.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2003.09.0... ; 2018). This qualitative and interpretive study (DENZIN; LINCOLN, 2006DENZIN, N.K.; LINCOLN, Y.S. Introdução: a disciplina e a prática da pesquisa qualitativa. In:: O planejamento da pesquisa qualitativa. Teorias e abordagens. Porto Alegre, RS: Artmed, 2006. p. 15-42.; LINCOLN; GUBA, 2006) used an individual questionnaire, field observations, individual participants’ reports of observation of classes and peers’ performance, individual exploratory conversations and an ethnographic group interview (ERICKSON, 1986ERICKSON, F. Qualitative methods in research on teaching. In:: M. Wittrock (ed.), Handbook of research on teaching: Volume 3. New York: MacMillan, 1986. ) for debriefing, and a final individual diary of participants as tools for data collection. Results display a range of emotions impacting learners’ performance in interaction.¹ 1 The study here reported is part of a postdoctoral study, which was conducted in the Institute of Languages at the Federal University of Viçosa (UFV), in Brazil.

KEYWORDS:
Comfort Zone; emotions; teaching-learning; English

	BASIC STAGE
Stage 1
•	Learner can understand and use familiar everyday expressions by assimilation, understanding only a few words and associating them in the sense of the sentence.
•	Learner has the ability to participate in a conversation in a simple way, whenever the other person is willing to repeat what you said or at a slower speed.
•	Learner can introduce him/herself and answer basic questions about details of his/her personal life using simple expressions and not developing complete syntactic structures. (Eg: "Where do you live?" "São Gonçalo" or "Describe your house, please" - "Big, white").
Stage 2
•	Learner can formulate basic phrases and questions related to daily tasks and to satisfy concrete needs and, from there, develop simple dialogues, developing basic syntactic structures.
•	Learner can speak briefly and superficially on topics of interest and aspects of your knowledge, and immediate needs such as geographic location, food and shopping.
Stage 3
•	Learner has the ability to orally answer questions related to short texts and simple searching for specific information (by means of scanning technique), showing enough vocabulary to describe, with simple terms, personal information, lived experiences, his/her origin and other more topics related to his/her routine.
•	Learner can interact with speakers from the countries belonging to the "Inner Circle" (KACHRU, 1985KACHRU, B. B. Standarts, Codification and sociolinguistic Realism in the English Language: In the outer circle, In: QUIRK, R.; Widdowson, H. G (orgs) Inglês in the world: Teaching and Learning the Language and Literatures. Cambridge: Cambridge, 1985, p. 11-30) as long as they speak slowly.
	INTERMEDIATE STAGE
Stage 4
•	Learner can build short narratives and report areas of interest and professional routine.
•	Learner is able to produce meaningful descriptions of long texts with usual language
•	Learner can deal with everyday situations and develop dialogs based on cultural aspects of the target language.
•	Learner is aware of speech acts (SEARLE, 1981SEARLE, John. Os actos de fala: um ensaio de filosofia da linguagem. Traduzido por Vogt, Carlos. Coimbra: Almedina,) and language acts in discourse (KERBRAT-ORIOCCHIONIKERBRAT-ORECHINONI, Catherine. Os atos de linguagem no discurso: teoria e funcionamento. Niterói: UFF, 2005.), and can identify these acts.
Stage 5
•	Learner is able to consume content in the target language with good understanding as long as the manner of articulation is clear and the pronunciation belongs to "Inner Circle" - countries (KACHRU, 1985KACHRU, B. B. Standarts, Codification and sociolinguistic Realism in the English Language: In the outer circle, In: QUIRK, R.; Widdowson, H. G (orgs) Inglês in the world: Teaching and Learning the Language and Literatures. Cambridge: Cambridge, 1985, p. 11-30).
•	Learner can easily express his/her opinion and defend his/her views in discussions with general topics and/or of his/her interest.
•	Learner can share information and knowledge clearly.
Stage 6
•	Learner can understand more complex and extensive speeches such as lectures, seminars, television news as long as the topic is previously known.
•	Learner is able to actively interact in more developed debates by arguing and defending points of view so that conversation flows spontaneously.
•	Learner is able to maintain more complex interactions with third parties, in addition to, he/she encourages peers’ participation.
	ADVANCED STAGE
Stage 7
•	Learner can effectively use the language for professional, social and academic purposes.
•	Learner uses more complex structures and has greater mastery and knowledge of the formal language established by the group belonging to "Inner Circle" - countries (KACHRU, 1985KACHRU, B. B. Standarts, Codification and sociolinguistic Realism in the English Language: In the outer circle, In: QUIRK, R.; Widdowson, H. G (orgs) Inglês in the world: Teaching and Learning the Language and Literatures. Cambridge: Cambridge, 1985, p. 11-30).
•	Learner has a more critical view of language as an instrument of power and may use it is a possible determinant of social behavior.
Stage 8
•	Learner is able to express him/herself fluently and spontaneously displaying a good range of vocabulary, in a way that there is no hesitation in his/her speech.
•	Learner has wider understanding of long speeches even when they seem to lack cohesion and coherence
•	Learner manages to have a better perception of illocutionary speech acts (SEARLE, 1981SEARLE, John. Os actos de fala: um ensaio de filosofia da linguagem. Traduzido por Vogt, Carlos. Coimbra: Almedina,) coming from third parties.
Stage 9
•	Learner can understand the target language even outside the standards of the "Inner Circle" (KACHRU, 1985KACHRU, B. B. Standarts, Codification and sociolinguistic Realism in the English Language: In the outer circle, In: QUIRK, R.; Widdowson, H. G (orgs) Inglês in the world: Teaching and Learning the Language and Literatures. Cambridge: Cambridge, 1985, p. 11-30) by interacting and consuming content from these speakers.
•	Learner can produce and present seminars, lectures and classes in creative and diverse ways and themes.
•	Learner has a great command of different uses of the language being able to adapt it to different contexts fluently and accurately even in cases of high complexity.

Faculdade de Letras - Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais - Faculdade de Letras, Av. Antônio Carlos, 6627 4º. Andar/4036, 31270-901 Belo Horizonte/ MG/ Brasil, Tel.: (55 31) 3409-6044, Fax: (55 31) 3409-5120 - Belo Horizonte - MG - Brazil
E-mail: rblasecretaria@gmail.com

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1	After our debriefing I could see that in many moments
2	during the classes I had emotions that motivated me to talk and come off
3	my Comfort Zone. There was this time when I disagreed with the teachers'
4	explanation and when I talked to her about it, I could see that she enjoyed that
5	discussion because it was a good way to talk about the subject, so after that, every
6	time I did not understand the explanation, instead of being awkward of asking
7	and talking about it, I wanted even more to know about the subjects, and I felt very
8	secure to do it, curious to answer my questions and with desire to learn and speak.

1	I ALWAYS feel nervousness and fear and even lose strength to talk to the teacher.
2	Although, I know the answer I am asked, I feel I am blank to answer, I guess
3	everybody will judge me. […] I guess it was due to this all, I feel more
4	uncomfortable and scared and prefer to lower my voice in classroom […] That
5	student, D, knows English, but his anxiety […] I can´t say he is in any stage …
6	I can say I feel like this.
	(Totoro, September 27th, 2020)

1	I feel more pressure, because I always feel fear and uneasiness in the English
2	language class and it frustrates me to think that it may be understood as lack
3	of interest and motivation. I think that boy feels like me, I see the way he avoids
4	expressing what his REAL opinion is. […] Sorry, teacher.
	(Totoro, September 27^th, 2020)

1	For me, fear is the emotion that can promote my stagnation in the Comfort
2	Zone. My fear of losing face and being judged for it is what, sometimes, keeps
3	me from speaking and interacting in the target language. Fear and anxiety are
4	obstacles that I must face in my process of exodus from the Comfort Zone.

1	One of the feelings that surrounded me during my English Language classes
2	(1 and 2) was the fear. I was afraid of judgement but this didn't impede me of
3	speaking and interacting in class. That's why I'm calling this, feeling, because in
4	this case the fear didn't interfere in my actions. But there was another thing
5	which surrounded interfered in my actions, empathy. This emotion surpassed
6	the fear and gave me a big push to participate in classes. Being in an interactive
7	class gives you the opportunity to speak, show your points of view and knowledge.
8	And for me, seeing that the students didn't enjoy these opportunities
9	was terrible. Even when I didn't know the correct answer, I tried to interact
10	with the professor. How can the students let the professor talking by herself? For
11	me, this fact affected me more than speaking wrong or lose/ expose my face.
12	I'm still trying to understand this dynamic, but for me the main feelings and
13	emotions which are shown are, respectively, fear, empathy and guilt.

1	"An experience I had with the use of English was when I started
2	to have English class in the first semester. It was only the beginning of
3	the study of the language, so I was aware of several subjects of the class, mainly
4	about grammar, which I always liked. Even with my shyness and my fear of
5	judgment from other students, I tried to answer the questions. First because
6	I knew the answers and it gave me confidence, and second because I wanted to
7	show that I knew that subject to everyone. I felt and feel really proud of the
8	knowledge I acquired, so pride would be one of the most present feelings in that
9	moment. I have the impression that I was successful because the teacher even
10	called my attention when I did not answer out loud. Sometimes I just wanted to
11	know the response from the other students to make sure that my answer
12	was correct. I felt a little anxious to show that I knew the content of the lesson,
13	but also afraid to give a wrong answer. My confidence was not something
14	I tried to show, it was really a thing of mine, due to my pride. What I avoided
15	was really giving answers that I was not sure of to avoid embarrassment."