Tradition of foreign language teaching and learning: focusing on the Brazilian Portuguese as a Foreign Language textbook

Abstract

This study addresses the concept of the tradition of foreign language teaching and learning in an attempt to consider the role of the Brazilian Portuguese as a Foreign Language (BPFL) textbook within this tradition. Therefore, based on Bornheim (1987), but also resorting to Titone (1968), Kelly (1969), Leffa (2012), and Dickey (2012), we present our concept of the tradition of foreign language teaching and learning. Thereafter, according to Foucault (1971), we analyze a BPFL textbook published in 1966 and another in 2011, focusing on activities proposed by the textbooks. Lastly, our reflection suggests that both textbooks, as an element of this tradition, turn teachers and students into domesticated subjects of the foreign language pedagogy discourse, and they do not favor language teaching practices, but rather the mechanical repetition of grammatical exercises.

Portuguese as a foreign language textbooks: Framing the discourses on the teaching and learning of writing

“…Therefore, they perpetuate learning strategies with the purpose to practise fixed language structures as the direct method or audio/oral method defended years ago (cf. also Azevedo & Piris, 2018, for similar results in Brazilian textbook contexts).…”

“…To some extent, it represents certain forms of curriculum supply that give confidence and security to the teacher (cf. also Azevedo & Piris, 2018;Dionisio, 2000;Rachmijati & Cahyati, 2020;Ramadhana et al, 2019;Teixeira, 2012). Zabalza (1992) argued that when teachers plan, they do not commonly work directly with governmental syllabi, but with textbooks that act as guides to structure their classes, due to the textbook's organisation.…”