Os métodos de ensino de língua inglesa usados em escolas públicas de ensino médio regular de Teresina

Abstract

Teaching Foreign Languages in a Public School is as old as the Public Education itself. It shows that, from the very beginning, learning a Foreign Language was relevant. It was Greek, than Latin, but now, English is, by far, the most important language in a world level, and it is part of the Public Education from very early stages. Through all this time, education has changed for better, and English teaching has changed as well, with new methods, techniques and approaches, however, Public Schools have not shown itself able to take students even to a basic level of English skills. Looking at the reality of the English Teaching, it is said that the Grammar-Translation Method is one of the biggest problems that make worst the current situation. For that, this research aims to find out if Grammar-Translation is the most used method on English Teaching in Public Schools through a field research in four school in the city of Teresina-PI, observing teachers and their classes, focusing on their techniques and approaches, to make it possible to identify which method they fit better. To achieve that, this research is based on Richard and Rodgers (2001), Sant’Anna, Spaziani and Góes (2014) and Larsen-Freeman (2001) using their descriptions of every method, pointing and describing to which method are closer to what teachers have done in the period they were observed. Besides them, Kumaravadivelu (1994) contributed to the discussion about the current educational Post-Method Era. Analyzing the obtained data, we could see that teachers, beyond not knowing what a method really is, do not use any specific method, making clear that the Grammar-Translation Method is not useful to justify the current failure of the English Teaching in the Public System of Education