Base Nacional Comum Curricular (BNCC) is a normative document that defines the essential learning that all students must develop throughout the Basic Education stages and modalities in Brazil. This is the introductory text to the English language competences provided in it.
“Studying the English language provides access to the linguistic knowledge necessary for the students to engage and participate in a social world growing plural and globalized, contributing to students’ critic agency and to the exercise of active citizenship, besides broadening possibilities of interaction and mobility, opening new knowledge construction and studies continuity routes. This is the formative feature that inscribes learning English in a linguistical, conscious and critical education perspective, in which pedagogical and political dimensions are intrinsically connected.
Teaching English for this purpose hasthree important implications for the curriculum. The first one is that this formative feature requires a review of the relations between language, territory and culture, as English speakers aren’t located only in countries in which this is the official language. This fact leads to a lot of questions, among them, “What is the English we teach at school?”.
Treatment given to this component on BNCC focus on English’s social and political function giving it a lingua franca status. It’s not a new concept and it has been recontextualized by theoreticians in recent studies that analyze English language uses in the contemporary world. In this perspective, the ways speakers from around the world use English are welcomed and legitimized, with different linguistic and cultural repertoires. This enables, for instance, questioning the idea of American or British Englishes as the “correct” ones to be spoken — and taught.
Moreover, treating English as lingua franca unlinks it to the notion of belonging to certain territory and, consequently, to typical cultures of specific communities, legitimizing uses of English in its local contexts. This understanding favors a linguistic education aimed to interculturality, i.e to the acknowledgment of (and respect to) differences, and to the comprehension of how they are produced. Thinking about that favors critical reflection on different ways of understanding the world, oneself and others.
The second implication is about the expansion of multiliteracy, also conceived in social practices of a digital world — in which knowing English increases the possibilities of participation and movement — that approximate and intertwine different semiosis and languages (verbal, visual, body, audiovisual), in a continuous contextualized, dialogical and ideological signification process. Conceiving language as social construction, the subject “interprets”, “reinvents” the senses in a situated way, creating new forms of identifying and expressing ideas, feelings and values. In this sense, as it assumes its status of lingua franca — a language materialized in hybrid uses, marked by fluidity and that opens itself to the invention of new ways of saying, nurtured by pluri/multilingual speakers and their multicultural characteristics –, the English language becomes a symbolic wealth to speakers worldwide.
Finally, the third implication is regarding the teaching approaches. Situating the English language in its lingua franca status implies understanding that certain beliefs — such as that there is a “right English” to be taught, or a specific “proficiency level” to be reached by the students — should be relativized. This requires from teachers a welcoming and legitimizing attitude toward different expression forms using language, such as the usage of “ain’t” for negative, not only “standard” forms as “isn’t” or “aren’t”. In other words, we don’t want to treat these uses as exception. On the contrary — it is treating local usages of English and linguistic resources related to them in the perspective of linguistic repertoire construction — a repertoire that must be analyzed and provided to students in order for them to use it, always watching the intelligibility conditions in the linguistic interaction. That is, English’s status as lingua franca implies moving it from an ideal speaker model, considering the culture’s importance in language teaching-learning process and dropping out aspects related to linguistic “correction”, “accuracy” and “proficiency”.
These three implications guide the following organization axes, proposed for the English Language component.
Orality axis involves language practices in English oral usage situations, focusing on comprehension (or listening) and oral production (or speaking), articulated by negotiation on construction of meanings shared by interlocutors or participants involved, with or without face-to-face contact. Thus, in-person oral language practices — such as debates, interviews, talks/dialogs, among others –, constitute oral genres in which texts, speakers involved and their “particular ways of speaking the language” — which sometimes mark their identities — have to be considered. Lexical items, linguistic structures, pronunciation, intonation and rhythm used, for instance, plus strategies of comprehension (global, specific and detailed), adaptation (conflict resolution) and negotiation (clarification and confirmation requests, paraphrase and exemplification usages) constitute relevant aspects in these practices configuration and exploration. In other contexts, in which oral practices happen without face-to-face contact — as watching movies and programs via Web or TV or listening to music and advertising messages, among others –, comprehension involves watchful listening to other elements, mainly related to context and language uses, to themes and their structures.
Moreover, orality also provides development to a series of behaviors and attitudes — as taking risks and making oneself understood, giving voice and opportunity to others, understanding and welcoming others’ perspectives, overcoming misunderstandings and dealing with insecurity, for instance. For the pedagogical work, it is worth mentioning that different verbal-visual media resources (cinema, internet, television, among others) constitute authentic and significant inputs, indispensable for oral use/interaction practices instauration and for the exploration of fields in which these practices can be developed. These practices articulate various aspects of our languages beyond the verbal one (such as visual, sound, gestural and tactile), and then students will be able to experience and reflect about oral/oralized uses of the English language.
Reading axis approaches language practices due to the reader’s interaction to written text, especially focused on construction of meanings, based on comprehension and interpretation of written genres in English language, that circulate in various society fields.
The work with verbal and hybrid genres, potentialized mainly by digital media, enables significant and situated experiences of different ways of reading (reading to have a general view about the text, to search for specific information, comprehend details etc.), as well as different reading goals (reading to research, to review one’s own writing, reading aloud to expose ideas and arguments, to act taking a stand critically, among others). Furthermore, reading practices in English language comprehend various possibilities of language use contexts for research and expansion of knowledge on significant themes for the students, working with interdisciplinarity or aesthetic fruition of genres as poems, plays etc.
From the methodological point of view, presentation of reading situations organized in pre-reading, reading and post-reading must be seen as a boost for these learning processes in a contextualized and significant way to the students, in the perspective of (re)sizing pre-existing reading practices and competences, especially in mother language.
The text production practices proposed in the Writing axis consider two aspects of writing. On the one hand, it emphasizes its processual and collaborative nature. This process involves collective and individual movements of planning-producing-reviewing, in which decisions on ways of communicating are taken and evaluated, having in mind aspects like the text objective, mediumthat will allow the social circulation and the potential readers of the text. On the other hand, the act of writing is also conceived as social practice and reiterates a writing purpose that is consistent with this practice, giving the students opportunity to be protagonists.
Therefore, it is about an author’s writing that starts with short verbal-resourced texts (messages, comic strips, cutlines, riddles, among others) and grows into more elaborated texts (autobiographies, sketches, news, opinion pieces, chats, folders, among others), in which various linguistic-discursive resources can be used and taught. These experiences contribute to the development of an authentic, creative and autonomous writing.
Linguistic knowledge axis is consolidated by practices of usage, analysis and reflection on language, always in a contextualized, articulated way at service of oral, reading and writing practices. Studying lexicon and grammar, involving verb forms and tenses, phrase structures and discursive connectors, among others, focuses on guiding students in an intuitive way to discover how English works systematically. Beyond what is right or wrong, these discoveries propitiate reflections on notions as “adequacy”, “standard”, “linguistic variation” and “intelligibility”, inducing the students to think about English language usages, questioning, for instance: “From whose perspective this way of using English would be ‘adequate’? Who defines what is ‘correct’ in language? Who would be included in these ways of using language? Who would be silenced?” In a contrastive way, relations of similarity and difference between English, Portuguese and other languages known by students should also be explored. Beyond trivial comparison, just for curiosity’s sake, transiting between different languages can constitute a fruitful metalinguistic exercise and make other languages besides English visible.
Intercultural dimension axis’ proposition comes from the understanding of cultures, especially in contemporary society, as in continuous process of interaction and (re)construction. Thus, different groups of people, with various interests, agendas, linguistic and cultural repertoires experience during their international contacts and flows, construction processes of open and plural identities. This is the English as lingua franca scenario, in which learning English implies problematizing the different roles it plays in the world, its values, its range and effects in relations between different individuals and peoples, as in contemporary society as in a historical perspective. In this sense, treating English as lingua franca imposes challenges and new priorities to education, among them we have densification of reflections on relations between language, identity and culture, and development of intercultural competence.
It is indispensable to say that these axes, although treated separately on this BNCC explicitation, are intrinsically connected in social practices of English language usage and this is how they must be taught at school. In other words, it is the language in use, always hybrid, polyphonic and multimodal that guides the studying of its specific features, and none of the axes, especially the Linguistic knowledge one, can be treated as a precondition to this use.
It is worth mentioning that BNCC abilities organization criteria (with the explicitation of knowledge objects related and these objects grouping in thematic units) express just one possible arrangement. Thereby, the proposed groupings must not be taken as a mandatory model to design the curriculums.
Considering these assumptions, and articulating BNCC’s general competences and Languages field specific competences, English language curricular component must guarantee the development of specific competences[1]to the students.
SPECIFIC COMPETENCES OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING TO MIDDLE SCHOOL
1. Identifying one’s and the other’s place in a plurilingual and multicultural world, critically reflecting on how learning English contributes to subjects’ insertion in the globalized world, including in what concerns the world of work.
2. Communicating in English language by the means of various languages in printed or digital medias, recognizing it as an access tool to knowledge, an extension of perspectives and possibilities to understand other cultures’ values and interests and to exercise social protagonism.
3. Identifying similarities and differences between English and mother language/other languages, articulating them to social, cultural and identitary aspects, in an intrinsic relation between language, culture and identity.
4. Elaborating linguistic-discursive repertoires in English, used in different countries and by various social groups in a common country, enabling recognition of linguistic diversity as a right and valuing heterogeneous, hybrid and multimodal emergent usages in contemporary societies.
5. Using new technologies, new languages and new ways of interaction to research, select, share, take a stand and produce meanings in literacy practices in English, ethically, critically and responsibly.
6. Getting to know cultural heritages (material and immaterial ones), disseminated in English language, aiming the fruition and extension of perspectives in contact with different artistic-cultural manifestations.
ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN MIDDLE SCHOOL — FINAL YEARS: THEMATIC UNITS, KNOWLEDGE OBJECTS AND ABILITIES
English language BNCC to middle school — final years is organized by axes, thematic units, knowledge objects and abilities. The thematic units in general are repeated and their corresponding abilities are expanded. Knowledge objects and abilities were selected to each unit to be emphasized in each school year (6th, 7th, 8th and 9th years), serving as a reference to construction of curriculums and teaching planning, that must be complemented and/or resized according to local specificities.
[1]These competences might be a reference to design other languages curriculums, if systems opt to offer them.”
Source: BRASIL. “Base Nacional Comum Curricular”. 2017. Available at: <http://basenacionalcomum.mec.gov.br/images/BNCC_EI_EF_110518_versaofinal_site.pdf> p. 241–247.
