BAMBIRRA, Raquel. Motivation to learn English as a foreign language in Brazil -giving voice to a group of students at a public secondary school. Linguagem em (Dis)curso -LemD, Tubarão, SC, v. 17, n.

Narratives reveal complex nets of experiences, typical of dynamic systems. Disentangling them reveals their nature, broadening and deepening the understanding of complex language teaching and learning processes. In this paper, we present over 20 years of research done in Brazil, focusing on foreign language teaching and learning experiences. Reviewing the motivation that led Author 1 to the emergence of experiential research, we discuss experience as a construct and unit of analysis and its complex nature; share visual representations of the complexity of teaching and learning experiences with illustrative data excerpts; and finally present teachers’ and students’ experiential frames of reference for research. To conclude, we defend experiential research as a successful approach to investigate language teaching and learning, hoping that other researchers may find it useful.

This paper seeks to discuss the interrelations between the motivation of an English teacher at a public federal high school in Brazil and that of her students from a dynamic systems perspective. Three teachers’ oral narratives and 14 students’ logbook entries were used for the data analysis. The teacher’s descriptions and comments on her pedagogical practice were compared to the students’ impressions and motivational levels in an attempt to understand this English classroom-system motivational dynamics and self-organization processes, focusing on how this teacher’s and her students’ motivation co-adapt and soft-assemble, influencing and being influenced by the context. The results seem to confirm not only that student motivation and teacher motivation are deeply interrelated, but also that they interact organically and continually, revealing that the context is contingent.

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Este artigo apresenta os resultados de um estudo piloto que procurou levantar os estereótipos emergentes do discurso de 18 estudantes de 1º ano do Ensino Médio de uma escola regular de Belo Horizonte. Os informantes tiveram acesso a 33 imagens pertencentes a cinco categorias: (1) família heterossexual e família homoafetiva; (2) papel social dos gêneros; (3) orientação afetivo sexual dos gêneros; (4) expressões de gêneros; e (5) comportamento social dos gêneros. Por meio de um quadro, registraram a impressão que tiveram ao lidar com cada uma. Com base na Teoria Queer, verificou-se que a visão predominante reflete o padrão heteronormativo de relações humanas – a despeito de lidarem com a multiplicidade de identidades e de expressões de gêneros sexuais, esses estudantes fazem julgamentos de valor e agem de forma preconceituosa. Parece necessário que a escola enfrente abertamente as questões de identidade e de orientação sexual para efetivamente cumprir sua função social.