Linguistic knowledge as an articulating axis and practices involving Educational Technologies and aspects for the review of the BNCC

 Linguistic knowledge as an articulating axis and practices involving Educational Technologies and aspects for the review of the BNCC.

Augusto Neves, 2024

 In my experience as a student at school the  foreign language was usually taught in a traditional way, with what it’s corrected or not, in a very formal way and the grammar always came first. After analysing some textbooks on the PNLD ( National Textbook Programm) have a strong tendency to focus much on the grammar, reading and interpretation which lead the activities such as oral discussion behind. It’s not that bad but it’s like incompleted, but it seems that there’s a tendency to change it.

Overall, the BNCC proposes a different point of view related to the grammar that goes beyond what it’s wrong and right, but the linguistic knowledge or the grammatical structure of English it’s to be analysed in a context  with the other axes including: reading, writing and speaking. In a nutshell, it’s as an inclusive analises of  the English language that includes the slangs, black English, dialects and in the case of non native speakers the common INTERFERENCES of their native language as a background. Furthermore, it highlights the relationship between the formal and informal English, if you work with language, you may know that the idea of a formal language it’s like following a dress code, it can in some case erase our background or diversity putting the speaker in a uniform and normative order by dictating how all of us should speak. But, communication it’s about being creative and understood, so grammar should only guide us to be understood with each other.

THE BNCC PROBLEMS:

As I pointed out so far, the BNCC sounds perfect. Doesn’t it?

But, the British Council recently did a research on the BNCC, they pointed the importance of the English to be a mandatory subject on the school’s curriculum in Brazil, and the polemic involves that if BNCC it’s a document base that describes the minimum of competency to work on, but the minimum sometimes can be too much competences to work on. So, the document sounds inflexible in a context of social problems, schools in the vulnerable neighbourhoods with a lack of accessibility and what about the indigenous communities?

Furthermore, if it’s mandatory to work with English as a social practice the document has a good general description, but, if you visit the BNCC website and browse through the grades, we can see that the overall of the competencies have a different view of the language. For example, the document doesn’t give much suggestion of how to work with grammar and social practise, but it says that it’s important how to apply it in an “intelligible” way. In a nutshell, it’s clear that the document needs to be revised making the competencies more adequate to the context of lingua franca and social practice, it’s a matter of how to use the words and to reorganise  and minimise the document.

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES TO WORK WITH GRAMMAR: 

Besides the traditional ones that I like and always mention  such: BBC learning English and British Council. I found some alternative options like the Education.com and Test-english.com. I particularly like the Test-english.com, since it’s very simple and different from Education.com . You don’t need to create an account. So, we can choose the level of the English of our students as well which in case of beginners, if they make a mistake the site provides explanations, in my opinion it’s not that bad and it can be a good and practical alternative to those excellent BBC’s websites mentioned before.

WHAT ABOUT YOU:

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE TEST-ENGLISH SITE?

HAVE YOU GOT A BETTER ALTERNATIVE OPTION?

DO YOU LIKE WORKING WITH BRITISH COUNCIL AND BBC LEARNING ENGLISH?

PLEASE, SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS IN THE COMMENTS BELOW.

Ta, xx

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REFERENCES:

BRASIL. Ministry of Education. Base Nacional Curricular Comum. MEC. Base nacional comum: Introdução. Available at <http://basenacionalcomum.mec.gov.br/abase/#introducao> accessed on 09/03/2024 at 2:25

BRITISH COUNCIL. Critical Reading. November 2017. Avalaible at <https://www.britishcouncil.org.br/atividades/ingles/bncc/leitura-critica> accessed on 09/03/2024 at 2:24

BRASIL. Ministry of Education. PNLD - Moderna. Available at <https://pnld.moderna.com.br/>

accessed on 13/03/2004 at 01:00