Socializando e aprendendo: a incorporação da rede social orkut ao ensino de língua inglesa

Abstract

The incorporation of virtual environments into instructional contexts has become an increasingly common practice in our society. The adoption of non-formal environments, i.e. not designed for educational purposes, has considerably grown due to new educational demands that place the learner at the center of the teaching-learning process and emphasizeslearning through spaces used by digital natives. In line with this framework, this study aims to check the pedagogic possibilities of the social network Orkut for the teaching and learning of English through the participant observation of an online course offered to undergraduatestudents at the Federal University of São João del Rei. The course based on Task-based Learning and Teaching (TBLT) approach, aimed at the development of English language through the development of collaborative tasks with the support of the tools available in thatdigital environment. The data analysis was grounded in the complexity theory (Larsen-Freeman and Cameron, 1997, 2008), the ecological approach to language teaching (van Lier, 2000, 2004a, 2004b) and the concept of community of practice (Wenger, 1998). Those three theories provide a holistic approach to the understanding of the dynamics of learners participation in a virtual community with a focus on language learning through the negotiation of meaning. The results show that conducting courses mediated by Orkut can be an important motivating factor in learning English, since learners are already familiar with thefeatures of that environment and with the affordances it offers for interaction with English speakers.