The development of a teacher’s meta-awareness on the importance of experiencing language as social practice in an EFL classroom through collaborative research

Abstract

In this paper is discussed the thoughtful process experienced by two English teachers, as they problematize their procedures in the classroom. In the foreground is the process of reconfiguration of their pedagogical activities, which initially would focus on the isolated lexical-grammatical structures and which, along the reflective process, were reconfigured to focus more on textual genres and on the (de)construction of the situational and cultural contexts in which such texts are socially produced and experienced (MOTTA-ROTH, 2006). Such thoughts were developed by means of a collaborative research process (MAGALHÃES, 2004). The discourse analysis of those teachers indicate that the reflective process allowed them to develop a meta-awareness about how language organizes itself and constitutes itself when it mediates the social activity.