O Ensino-Aprendizagem do Inglês como Língua Estrangeira (ILE) no Espaço Dentro-Fora da Lei de uma Unidade Socioeducativa para Adolescentes infratores

Abstract

This research investigates the way students within a Juvenile Detention Center in the city of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, experienced the teaching and learning of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). If a youth under 18 violates some of the Brazilian laws, the Statute of the Child and the Adolescent (ECA) establishes that he or she may be sent to a Juvenile Socio- Educational Center. In this center, the adolescents have regular junior and high school classes which are expected to consist of the regular curriculum taught in all the public schools of the state of Minas Gerais. Therefore, the English language is included as a mandatory subject to be taught at the Center. This study describes and analyzes the nature of the actions involved in the (non) teaching and (non) learning of EFL within this space. The investigation explores the notion of memory related to the notion of space as a central point to the understanding of the practice named as teaching-learning English in this context. It also shows how the institutional/physical space and the discursive space are established and negotiated by the teacher and students involved in this practice. In order to do so, one lesson is analyzed to show the way the participants take the word to build the physical and discursive space as their relationship in the teaching-learning of English. The lesson was audio-recorded and transcribed, additionally, and a structural map was designed. A triangulation of the data was developed by relating the themes found from the analysis of the lesson to the themes foundfrom the journals and interviews, also gathered during the data collection. The study is conducted by the French Discourse Analysis methodology which relies specifically on a psychoanalytical notion of subjectivity, and the corpus is composed of audio-recorded lessons, the students journal writings and interviews collected within ethnographic procedures. The analysis points to a constitution of a confused space formed by the way the educational and the incarcerated settings are confronted by the (participants) memory. It is also formed by the way the teacher and students assume or deny their discursive positions. Besides, it is noticed that the confused space is also established by the effect of suspension,from which the current moment of teaching and learning EFL seems to be in suspense or even stagnant by the repetition of some linguistic content. The effect of suspension is also constituted by the allusion to some events in the past and to external spaces that influence thespace where the participants are currently acting. Therefore, the way the participants build their discourse in this particular setting suggests the existence of a space in which the actions are suspended or dependent on what happens and/or has happened somewhere else brought tothe current moment by the work of memory.