Workshops
First round of workshops: 1.30 pm - 3 pm (Workshops 1-6)
Workshop 1: Reevaluating Teaching Approaches and Academic Uses of the English Language: Educating Through World Englishes
Michelle Quinones and Ingrid Hilário (IsF-UFPB)
This workshop aims to showcase the benefits of teaching International/World English in Brazilian schools over American and British English in order to minimize the perpetuation of imperialistic ideas that exclusively teaching the latter two could entail. This linguistic imperialism is essentially a demonstration of economic and political power and carries with it the culture of the dominant language. It can manifest itself in many ways, including the incredibly limiting prioritization of certain forms of English over others and over other languages (including the native language), the idea that the best teacher is a native English speaker from the United States or the UK (which devalues local teachers), the smothering of local accents as if the American and British accents were inherently better and more valuable and English as the new lingua franca, all of which will be discussed during the workshop. We will also address the use of select cultural content and realia in classrooms (which are often used to provide authenticity). In sum, English has come to represent modernity, progress and the capitalist ideal, and many advocate for its intrinsic, extrinsic and functional worth over other languages. How do we resist the negative aspects of imperialism through soft power (attracting and co-opting rather than coercing), the loss of cultural identity, ethnocentrism, subjugation etc., while still remaining realistic as to the usefulness of the English language in a modern globalized world and international market?
Biodata
Ingrid de Figueiredo Hilário is a Letras student at the Federal University of Paraíba and has been working with the Inglês sem Fronteiras Program since February 2015. She has been involved in the development of several IsF courses, including a minicourse about teaching English through the analysis of short films. In the program, she currently works as a teacher and certified TOEFL ITP proctor.
Michelle Quinones graduated with a B.A. degree in International Relations and Global Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. She also holds a M.A. degree in Spanish Literature and Linguistics from the University of Central Florida. In previous conferences, she has presented on the topics of violent death and textual violence in the works of Clarice Lispector and Silvina Ocampo. Quinones is currently a Fulbright Grantee at the Federal University of Paraiba, where she works as an English Teaching Assistant.
Workshop 2: Using social media in the teaching of English
Max Barbosa and Thiago Rodrigues (IsF-UFPB)
In this workshop, participants will learn about online social media and cellphone apps that are famous amongst teens nowadays and how to use such resources to engage students more effectively in the learning of a foreign language.
Biodata
Max Barbosa is an English teacher for the Inglês sem Fronteiras program at Universidade Federal da Paraíba in João Pessoa. He has also been teaching children and young adults in private schools for the last three years.
Thiago Rodrigues is an English Teacher for the Inglês sem Fronteiras program at Universidade Federal da Paraíba in João Pessoa. Having his first teaching experience, he has been in the program for the past eight months.
Workshop 3: Using games to review content
Marcelo Alvarado (IsF-UFPB)
The purpose of this workshop is to provide tips and ideas on how to create and adapt fun and effective review activities. We will see how using games to review content makes students engage more effectively in their learning experience and help each other in the classroom to achieve common goals.
Biodata
Marcelo Alvarado is an English Major student at UFPB and has been a teacher at IsF-UFPB for a year. He has been teaching for 2 years and has experience with teaching mostly young adults and adults.
Workshop 4: Phrasal Verbs: strategies, games and activities for the EFL classroom
Ana Gêrda Paz (IsF-UFPB/EFOPLI)
In this workshop, you will learn, execute and discuss games and activities that facilitate the teaching-learning process of Phrasal Verbs in the EFL classroom. The knowledge and contribution of its participants will play a significant role in the development and flow of this workshop.
Biodata
Ana Gêrda Paz is a teacher at NUCLI-UFPB and Yazigi Sul in João Pessoa. She has been working with developing new courses and materials for the NUCLI-IFPB while working there. She attended a bilingual school in Brasília and has experience in both the bilingual and EFL contexts.
Workshop 5: Corpus Linguistics and Teaching: hands-on work with corpora
Helmara Moraes
This workshop aims at presenting Corpus Linguistics, a new way of studying and teaching a foreign language that allows us to analyze electronically huge amounts of authentic data in order to identify linguistic patterns, different meanings of a given word, specialized language terms, equivalent forms in different languages, among many other possible kinds of research. Up to the present time, Corpus Linguistics has provided support to different areas of study, being Teaching English as a Foreign/Second Language, Translation and Contrastive Studies just some of them. Focusing on teaching, our objective is to show how this methodology can help the English teacher, independent of the level of their students. Besides presenting some introductory concepts and an overview on the theoretical aspect of this area of study, we are showing some corpora that are available online, such as the BNC (British National Corpus), a closed corpus of 100 million words, and COCA, with 450 million words and constantly growing. We will also present WebCorp, a search tool which has been especially developed for linguistic research and is frequently updated to fit the researcher’s needs. Using this material, and even other corpora that may be compiled specifically for some given study, we can search for different linguistic patterns in their naturally occurring contexts: collocations, colligations and extended units of meaning. Besides that, we can also investigate the semantic prosody, semantic field, and aspects related to the register of a given word or expression. These patterns can be analyzed through concordance lines, and we are working with some examples during this session so that participants can “discover” some of them. We also aim at presenting some activities that have been developed by English teachers and have resulted positively in the classroom, emphasizing that Corpus Linguistics provides theory, can be used as a tool, and is a methodology which might be very helpful for a language teacher/researcher.
Biodata
Helmara currently works at the United States Consulate General in São Paulo (RELO Office) as an English Language Specialist. She holds a PhD (2011) and an MA (2005) in Languages from the University of São Paulo and has worked with Corpus Linguistics in Translation and Language Teaching since 2000.
Workshop 6: More than reading skills in EFL: approaching texts and themes through critical literacy strategies
Dr. Angélica Maia (PIBID/UFPB) and Jonathan Ferreira (PIBID UFPB)
The purpose of this workshop is to share with participants a series of language learning activities based on multimodal texts (videos, songs, TV commercials, infographics). The activities were developed not only to facilitate students understanding of texts in English through reading, listening and multimodal practices, but also to foster their engagement in critical reflection on selected themes (Consumerism, tolerance, recycling). The activities are based on a critical literacy perspective which considers language learning a social practice, with focus on interaction and on promoting students capacities to use language to act in the world as informed citizens. Participants will also be invited to work in groups and create an activity based on critical literacy principles.
Biodata
Angélica Araújo de Melo Maia is a professor at the Department of Modern Foreign Languages at Universidade Federal da Paraíba. She holds a PhD (2014) in Educational Policies. She is currently the coordinator of the Supervised Internship area at DLEM and she is also one of the coordinators of the English PIBID Project at UFPB. She is a volunteer member of the board of directors at Casa Pequeno Davi, an NGO in João Pessoa-PB. Areas of interest: teacher education; critical literacy; supervised internship; teaching English for special needs students; English language teaching and youth professionalization.
Jonathan Ferreira is an undergraduate student at UFPB, studying Letras - Inglês. He has been in the EFL field for four years and got a CELTA certification in 2013. He has recently been involved in a PROBEX project and is currently developing course materials as well as conducting lessons in the light of a critical literacy approach in an NGO located in João Pessoa - PB.
Workshop 7: Grammar Teaching: using and reflecting upon language
Dr. Maura Dourado (UFPB/PIBID) and Juliana Silveira (UFPB/PIDIB)
What is the objective of EFL classes in Brazil? Would it be teaching students about English or teaching them how to communicate in English?It is well known that grammar organizes ideas and builds meaning. This means that the study of grammar cannot be divorced from the study of meaning. The teaching of grammar claimed by the Brazilian Curriculum Guidelines is the reflective rather than the prescriptive one. The objective of this workshop, then, is to foster the role of reflective grammar teaching taking into account the use-reflection perspective. Through a hands-on approach, participants will be invited to prepare a theme-oriented EFL class focusing on lexico-grammatical patterns. After all, when language is learned in larger lexical chunks or meaningful strings of words, more cognitive space is freed, avoiding cognitive overloading.
Biodata
Maura Regina Dourado is Associate Professor of Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, English Language and Teacher Education in the Department of Modern Languages at UFPB. She has co-authored EFL State Curriculum Guidelines for both elementary and high school and is currently one of the coordinators of The Scholarship Program Initiation in English Teaching (PIBID/UFPB-Letras-Inglês/CAPES). Her research interests are critical literacy learning, linguistic education, EFL teacher education, critical approaches to EFL teaching, lexico-grammatical choices and situated literacies.
Juliana de Souza Cavalcanti da Silveira is a Letras student at Federal University of Paraíba. She has been a scholar in the Institutional Program of Initiation to Teaching (PIBID/CAPES) for the past two years. Her research interests include EFL Brazilian public school teaching, grammar, collocations and new technologies in EFL teaching. She has experience teaching high school students.
Second round of workshops: 3.15 pm - 4.45 pm (Workshops 7-12)
Workshop 8: Teaching blind and visually impaired students: material adaptations
Ms. Rosycléa Dantas (UFPB/Proling)
The overall aim of the workshop is to discuss about blind and visually impaired students' needs in English classes by focusing on material adaptations. These students usually need adaptations to access printed and visual information that allows them to develop all language skills. Material adaptation needs vary, depending on the degree of functional vision and the task to be done, thus students may need tactile adaptation, braille print, recorded material, graphics, maps, and picture adaptation or real objects and materials (realia). Therefore, this workshop will provide participants with an opportunity to reflect about the process of teaching English to blind and visually impaired students, as well as suggestions and ideas to encourage material adaptations.
Biodata
Rosycléa Dantas is an English teacher at Instituto dos Cegos da Paraíba. She holds a degree in Modern Languages – English, Universidade Federal da Paraíba (2010) and a Masters Degree in Applied Linguistics also from Universidade Federal da Paraíba (2014). She is a PhD student and member of Grupo de Estudos em Letramentos, Interação e Trabalho (GELIT/CNPq/UFPB). Her research interests involve Applied Linguistics, Sociodiscursive Interactionism, Inclusive Education, teacher Education and Foreign Language Teaching to blind and visually impaired people.
Workshop 9: Implementing your students' collocations
José Ribamar de Castro (UFPb-PAELE)
The aim of the present workshop is to aware students of how words work together for fluent and natural English self-study and classroom use.
Biodata
José Ribamar de Castro is a professor at the Departament of Modern Foreign Languages at Universidade Federal da Paraíba. He holds a Master (1981) in Applied Linguistics (Phonology)/PUC /SP and the International House Teacher Training Certificate (1998) in "Collocations in Use"/Hastings-England. Currently he teaches Phonetics and Phonology in the Letras course.
Workshop 10: (Trans)forming the classroom: overcoming challenges
Gerthrudes Helena Cavalcante de Araújo (IFPB) and Liane Velloso Leitão (IFPB)
The classroom is an environment to learn, innovate and build the path to a more inclusive and dynamic education. The context of work of English teachers in Brazil is extremely diversified, especially when we teach (or intend to) at public, private and language schools. Thus, we propose to present practical ideas on how to adapt material for classroom use with the aim of overcoming some challenges the teacher may face when starting work in a new context.
Biodata
Gerthrudes Hellena Cavalcante de Araújo is an English Language and Linguistics professor at the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Paraíba (IFPB). She holds a Master’s degree in Linguistics from the Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB / PROLING) and is currently studying at the doctoral programme of Linguistics at the same university. Her main areas of research interest are teacher education, distance learning and teaching and learning languages.
Liane Velloso Leitão has a Master's Degree in Linguistics and is a doctorate student at the Universidade Federal da Paraíba (UFPB). She has a degree in Business from the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and in Liberal Arts – English from the Universidade do Vale do Acaraú (UVA). She is a member of Grupo de Estudos em Letramento, Interação e Trabalho (GELIT/CAPES/CNPq). Her research focus is teacher’s work. She is an English teacher at Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia da Paraíba (IFPB).
Workshop 11: Applying the Theory of Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom
Idmantzi Torres (IsF-UFPB/EFOPLI)
This workshop will briefly introduce Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences while providing a practical, hands-on environment for teachers by introducing classroom activities. These activities will acknowledge varies learning styles that students may possess while serving as useful English learning content. The objective of this workshop is to enable teachers to detect their students learning style and needs in order to benefit the overall classroom environment.
Biodata
Idmantzi Torres is a Fulbright English teaching assistant with the Ingles sem Fronteiras program at the Universidade Federal da Paraíba (UFPB) in João Pessoa. She has a Bachelor degree in Psychology from San Diego State University in California, where she was born and raised.
Workshop 12: The Office of English Language Programs: opportunities and resources for interaction
Helmara Moraes
This session will demonstrate some of the many resources for fostering fun and communication in the classroom available from the Office of English Language Programs of the U.S. Mission in Brazil. Participants will receive an overview and have hands-on practice with activities and materials that are easily adaptable. Information on programs and opportunities for teacher development such as MOOCs and webinars will also be shared.
Biodata
Helmara currently works at the United States Consulate General in São Paulo (RELO Office) as an English Language Specialist. She holds a PhD (2011) and an MA (2005) in Languages from the University of São Paulo and has worked with Corpus Linguistics in Translation and Language Teaching since 2000.
Workshop 13: Facing New Challenges with Principled Teaching
Najin Lima (Pearson)
The theme of this workshop derives from some disturbing while enlightening meetings I had with some youngsters who could be our students. The different situations led me to question myself about my relevance as a teacher for this generation and to reconsider the content I bring into class.
Biodata
Najin Lima holds a degree in languages (Portuguese/English) and a MA in Linguistics. He has a post-graduation in Material Development from London University and the ICELT certificate from Cambridge University. He worked for many years in language institutes and colleges in Brazil teaching English as a foreign language and for specific purposes. He is now particularly interested in investigating how multimodality can enhance the learning of a foreign language in a multiliterate community. Najin is currently the academic consultancy coordinator for Pearson Brazil.