Uso de ferramentas digitais no desenvolvimento de habilidades orais: um estudo sobre a autonomia do aprendiz à luz da complexidade

Abstract

This study analyzes the development of student autonomy in learning oral skills in English as a foreign language in a group of students of the 8th grade of elementary school of a state public school located in Minas Gerais. Based on language learning narratives and on complementary data of a questionnaire and field notes from this group of digital nativestudents (PRENSKY 2001), I intend to explore the understanding of the dynamic and patterns of the development of autonomy, considering the integration of digital tools to didactic and pedagogic practices, aiming at oral skills development of the learners in the target languageand at promotion of their autonomy in the process. Complexity theory in the Applied Linguistics, proposed in studies of Larsen Freeman (1997), Larsen-Freeman e Cameron (2008), Paiva (2002, 2005, 2011) served as epistemological basis to the data analysis and considering autonomy as a complex adaptive system (PAIVA e BRAGA 2008), this workanalyses the corpus by the light of the characteristics of the complex systems, having as focus the development of oral skills of the learners and their autonomy, using digital tools in their learning process. It analyses narratives written by each of the 28 (twenty-eight) students, theaverage age of thirteen (13) years old, in two (2) moments - the beginning and the end of the study. The results show that the integration of digital technologies in the context of development of oral skills in English promotes opportunities for students to make choices, manage, reflect and evaluate their learning process. Besides this, the use of digital tools in the language classroom provides dynamic as the interaction among peers, collaborative groups and self-confidence; finally, it favors the emergence of attitudes that together promote the development of autonomy.