Editor's Note
I introduce readers to the second issue of the Revista Brasileira de Lingüística Aplicada 7th volume with immense pleasure. The ten articles compiled in the issue you have in your hands cover a broad array of topics and themes, converse with a variety of other texts and theoretical frames, and report studies oriented by a number of different methodologies and modes of knowledge production. Therefore, they are illustrations of the vivid activity of the Brazilian Applied Linguistics scholarly community, and they reflect the discipline's wealth and the diversity of vantage points held by its practitioners in their contemplations of language-related problems.
The issue is opened with a contribution by Jaçanã Ribeiro. The author reflects about educational policy plans that target indigenous students. Through an analysis of the document "Referencial Curricular Nacional para as Escolas Indígenas", Ribeiro problematizes the pedagogical proposals for reading and writing put forward in the document, employing the notion of writing and power. The article guides us into considerations of the problem of the cultural specificity of literate practices vis-à-vis the multiculturalism that typifies indigenous education.
Assessment is the focus in the next two papers in this issue. The paper authored by Laura Miccoli and Cristina Porto discusses a part of a case study that prompted the emergence of experiences of three English language teachers in the tertiary education context. In this article, we are led to consider that because assessment requires specialized knowledge not fully widespread among foreign language teachers, it is a component of pedagogical practice whose challenges are yet to be met if assessment is to be re-signified by students and teachers as a relevant aspect of teaching and learning. The third paper in the issue, by Celso Tumolo and Leda Tomitch, offers an analysis of test items for the assessment of EFL reading skills in light of a discussion of construct validity. The authors rely on an interpretive investigation procedure to look at construct validity of reading comprehension tests and make considerations that aim at contributing with guidelines for the design of more reliable assessment instruments.
Another theme focused on in the current issue by way of two distinct contributions is the question of teachers' beliefs. The first of such papers, by Márcia Carazzai and Glória Gil, discusses the results of an empirical qualitative study that delved into the beliefs of an EFL teacher and their contextualization in real classroom episodes. The study revealed a high frequency of focus on grammar in the teacher's classes, a fact that is discussed in light of the cognitive, experiential and contextual factors that shaped it. The next article on beliefs brings reflections by Ana Maria Barcelos. The author looks at changes in beliefs about the teaching and learning of languages by problematizing the very notion of changes in beliefs. The author considers the constitutive complexity of beliefs, and discusses factors capable of bringing about processes of change. The article eventuates with considerations of the implications that changes in beliefs may have for the contexts of teachers in charge of teacher education.
The sixth article in the current volume is a contribution by Tony Berber Sardinha, and it brings an analysis of metaphors based on the application of methods of Corpus Linguistics. Specifically, the author analyzes a corpus of transcribed debates held between Mr. Luis Inácio Lula da Silva and Mr. Geraldo Alckmin when both were candidates running for the Brazilian presidential election in 2006. The author invites us to consider the relevance of an examination of linguistic metaphors supporting conceptual metaphors, as proposed in Lakoff and Johnson's model, by providing us with an analysis of political discourse that illustrates the methodological possibilities for empirical studies of language in actual use.
The seventh article investigates the relationship between employment of communication strategies and foreign language fluency in oral production. The authors, Gicele Prebianca and Mailce Mota Fortkamp, make a contribution attempting to diminish the lack of studies about the relation between communication strategies and oral fluency based on robust evidence. In their study, the authors analyzed oral fluency by determining speech speed. Their study also relied on transcriptions and classification of data elicited from learners of English in three different levels of proficiency. The data set was treated statistically. Prebianca and Fortkamp offer a detailed discussion of the results of their study.
The article by Luiz Antônio Andrade looks at the process of second language learning from the point of view of learners' identity construction. The author develops reflections about the value of autobiographical narratives as manifestations of constructed identities based upon exemplars of learning narratives from the corpus compiled by the "Aprendendo com memórias de falantes e de aprendizes de línguas estrangeiras (AMFALE)" project, at UFMG. The author's study is also based upon categories for the analysis of themes and allegories in fairy tales proposed by Leppäne e Kajala.
The ninth article, by Antônio Carlos Martins and Júnia Braga, proposes a philosophical-epistemological reflection that invites us to an understanding of second language learning and interactive learning environments in light of Chaos and Complexity theory. The authors trace back the emergence of an epistemology of complexity within the general history of western science and bring a rich, detailed overview of studies in Applied Linguistics that acknowledge complexity as a philosophical yardstick for knowledge construction.
The present issue eventuates with an article by Tommaso Raso. The article presents some results of a large-scale research coupled with pedagogical activities that aimed at training professional writing educators in the Italian context. Raso reviews concepts for the specification of problems related to the development of competent writing skills for professional purposes and situations. He also provides us with in-depth descriptions of pedagogical interventions for the training of educators in charge of fostering such competence. It is certainly an inspiring report for those who work or aspire to work with similar initiatives in the Brazilian context.
My pleasure in presenting the studies in this issue stems not only from their intrinsic quality, but also from the fact that the Revista Brasileira de Lingüística Aplicada has been recently classified "QUALIS Nacional A" in accordance with the CAPES criteria. This makes me firmly convinced that this journal is a well-established, relevant publication of a lively field of knowledge.
Enjoy your reading!
Ricardo Augusto de Souza
Faculdade de Letras da UFMG
Assistant Editor
Publication Dates
-
Publication in this collection
22 Apr 2013 -
Date of issue
2007
