Papers by Maisa Zakir
Teletandem is a telecollaborative learning context that involves pairs of native (or competent) s... more Teletandem is a telecollaborative learning context that involves pairs of native (or competent) speakers of different languages interacting through voice, text and webcam image. Using Skype, each participant plays the role of learner for half an hour, speaking and practising the language of his/her partner. This paper focuses on a teletandem interaction between a female Brazilian and a male American undergraduate student. We aim to analyse how the participants approach the cultural dimension in a teletandem interaction. In the first part, we present five perspectives on the concept of culture (Levy, 2007. “Culture, Culture Learning and New Technologies: Towards a
Pedagogical Framework.” Language Learning and Technology 11 (2): 104–127). We also adopt a new discourse construct presented by Zhu (2012. “Weaving Language and Culture Together: the Process of Culture Learning in a Chinese as a Foreign Language Classroom.” PhD diss., University of Iowa) from the term coined by Swain and Lapkin (1998. “Interaction and Second Language Learning: Two Adolescent French Immersion Students Working Together.” Modern Language Journal 82 (3): 320–337), ‘language-related episodes’ and analyse five ‘culture-related episodes’. We define ‘culture-related episode’ as any segment of a dialogue produced during teletandem sessions in which students focus on any interest, explanation or inquisitiveness about their own or their partner’s culture. Our findings provide evidence that the exchanges between people from different nationalities and life experiences engender many possibilities of understanding culture in its various dimensions. Finally, we suggest that further research on learning languages and cultures should be developed to better understand the complexity and the characteristics of online telecollaborative contexts.
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Este artigo está licenciado sob forma de uma licença Creative Commons Atribuição 4.0 Internaciona... more Este artigo está licenciado sob forma de uma licença Creative Commons Atribuição 4.0 Internacional, que permite uso irrestrito, distribuição e reprodução em qualquer meio, desde que a publicação original seja corretamente citada. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.pt_BR Resumo: O projeto Teletandem e Transculturalidade na interação on-line em línguas estrangeiras por webcam é desenvolvido desde 2010 e coloca aprendizes de línguas estrangeiras no Brasil em contato com aprendizes de língua portuguesa no exterior em interações via Skype. O contexto no qual este estudo se desenvolveu é denominado teletandem institucional semi-integrado, por ser integrado ao currículo da universidade estrangeira parceira do projeto e não-integrado ao currículo da universidade brasileira. O objetivo do trabalho é analisar interações de teletandem entre uma aluna do curso intermediário de língua portuguesa de uma universidade privada estadunidense e um professor aprendiz de inglês como língua estrangeira que trabalha em uma universidade pública brasileira. As interações entre os participantes da pesquisa foram analisadas na perspectiva da Análise Dialógica do Discurso, fundamentada na obra de Bakhtin e do Círculo. Os resultados da análise evidenciam os papéis sociais identificados no discurso dos interagentes em discussões sobre aspectos culturais. Abstract: The Project entitled Teletandem and Transculturality in online interaction in foreign languages by webcam has been developed since 2010 and has put learners of foreign languages in Brazil in touch with learners of Portuguese abroad in interactions via Skype. The context in which this study was developed is called semi-integrated institutional teletandem, being integrated into the curriculum of the foreign university partner in the project and non-integrated into the curriculum of the Brazilian university. This paper aims at analyzing teletandem interactions between a female student of intermediate Portuguese in a private American university and a professor who studies English as a foreign language who works at a Brazilian public university. The interactions between the participants were analyzed under the perspective of Dialogic Discourse Analysis, grounded on the work of Bakhtin and the Circle. The analysis results show the social roles identified in the participants' discourse when discussing cultural aspects.
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Teletandem is a telecollaborative learning context that involves pairs of native (or competent) s... more Teletandem is a telecollaborative learning context that involves pairs of native (or competent) speakers of different languages. Using Skype, each participant plays the role of learner for half an hour by speaking and practicing the language of his partner. This paper focuses on a teletandem interaction between two university students – one Brazilian and one American. In the fi rst part, we sustain our proposition that the teletandem participants share information regarding the respective cultures. In the second part, we present fi ve dimensions of the concept of culture, defi ne cultural learning and propose a unit of analysis for interpreting the data – the culture-related episode. Finally, we suggest guidelines for further research related to the learning of languages and cultures in online collaborative contexts.
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Thesis Chapters by Maisa Zakir
The research reported in this dissertation is about reflection during the pre-service education o... more The research reported in this dissertation is about reflection during the pre-service education of future language teachers of a public university in the state of São Paulo. The study also
includes my own process of reflection on my first year as a teacher of Portuguese in a public junior high school. As I reflected on my own teaching practice as a beginning teacher, I noticed that my classroom action was being guided by the experience I had as a student, instead of a theoretically based concept of teaching. Then, I started questioning how a teacher who had just graduated could begin her work without having theoretically conscious bases
about the work that was to be developed with her students. Therefore, I decided to investigate how the difficulties I had when I started teaching could also be noticed by the pre-service teachers who participated in this study. Through the analysis of these participants’ narratives (portfolios developed in the course Teaching Practicum of Portuguese), I believed that I could
reach a broader perception of my own process of professional development if I focused on the matters that were affecting myself as a novice teacher. By writing research texts about the participants’ narratives, as proposed by Narrative Inquiry (CLANDININ & CONNELLY, 2000), I have produced meanings from excerpts of my participants’ stories about their expectations regarding their profession and the relationship between theory and their novice teaching practice. The first result of this study shows meaningful differences between understanding a theory when it is appropriated by us and when it is not. The second result
illustrates my process of appropriation of a theory and how central it became in the process of transforming my novice teaching practice. My contact with Vygotski’s Historical-Cultural Perspective allowed me to understand the complexity of the educational process. Concerning the teaching of Portuguese, Bakhtin’s concept of language as an uninterrupted social process
of interlocution was decisive for me to revisit the ways that I taught. Grounded on Geraldi (1993), Jolibert (1994a, 1994b), Foucambert (1994), Kaufman & Rodríguez (1995), it was possible for me to proceed with the necessary mediations in order to notice the implications that the appropriation of a theoretical perspective had for my teaching practice. Finally, by contrasting the narratives of the pre-service teachers and with my own professional trajectory, it was possible to draw some relevant conclusions to think the process of pre-service professional development of teachers of Portuguese: the undergraduate course of Languages does not seem to provide the necessary conditions for mediation so that the pre-service teachers can relate theory to the teaching practice; it is necessary to rethink the importance of the teaching credential in teacher development and promote a more effective dialogue among the specific and pedagogical subjects; when there is a dialogue between theory and teaching practice, the training period becomes an important moment for the pre-service teacher to be more aware of the profession he has chosen; and it is possible to question and to transform school practices that have been historically reproduced.
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This dissertation presents an exploratory ethnographic study that investigates telecollaborative ... more This dissertation presents an exploratory ethnographic study that investigates telecollaborative partnerships among students of a public university in Brazil and of a private university in the United States. The research study is part of the project entitled “Teletandem: Transculturality in Online Communication in Foreign Languages via Webcam” and is related to the topic “ways of understanding the partner’s culture and its impacts on the learning process and the relationship between partners”. The study aims at investigating the role of culture in the context of an institutional teletandem partnership. Thus, the specific objectives are: identifying the participants' conceptions of culture in activities proposed in a virtual learning platform and understanding how culture emerges in the dynamics of teletandem interactions. The participants were in contact with each other during part of the spring semester of 2012 in ten interactions conducted via Skype, with audio, video and chat resources. The last five teletandem sessions were recorded and the transcriptions are the main data of this study. Besides the interactions, other activities are part of the corpus: (a) texts that were written and published by the students in a virtual learning platform (user’s profile; narratives about the teletandem interactions; posts in a virtual discussion forum) and (b) handwritten texts that were produced by the students of the American university at the end of the semester. Considering the principle of dialogism from the relationality of the self and the other, and the production of meaning as part of the social activities of students, data are interpreted under the perspective of the theoretical methodological principles of what is called in Brazil Dialogic Discourse Analysis. Thus, the different texts produced by the participants will be deemed to give more elements to interpret data and, therefore, to investigate linguistic, social
and ideological issues embedded in the multiple discourses embodied in the corpus. The
results contribute to a reflection about the education of teachers and other professionals in a
context that has been less and less marked by geographical barriers, aiming at developing a
possible transcultural citizenship through contact with different languages and cultures. In this
regard, we provide some perspectives to the praxis of teletandem mediators, by understanding
the notion of culture in its discursive dimension.
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Papers by Maisa Zakir
Pedagogical Framework.” Language Learning and Technology 11 (2): 104–127). We also adopt a new discourse construct presented by Zhu (2012. “Weaving Language and Culture Together: the Process of Culture Learning in a Chinese as a Foreign Language Classroom.” PhD diss., University of Iowa) from the term coined by Swain and Lapkin (1998. “Interaction and Second Language Learning: Two Adolescent French Immersion Students Working Together.” Modern Language Journal 82 (3): 320–337), ‘language-related episodes’ and analyse five ‘culture-related episodes’. We define ‘culture-related episode’ as any segment of a dialogue produced during teletandem sessions in which students focus on any interest, explanation or inquisitiveness about their own or their partner’s culture. Our findings provide evidence that the exchanges between people from different nationalities and life experiences engender many possibilities of understanding culture in its various dimensions. Finally, we suggest that further research on learning languages and cultures should be developed to better understand the complexity and the characteristics of online telecollaborative contexts.
Thesis Chapters by Maisa Zakir
includes my own process of reflection on my first year as a teacher of Portuguese in a public junior high school. As I reflected on my own teaching practice as a beginning teacher, I noticed that my classroom action was being guided by the experience I had as a student, instead of a theoretically based concept of teaching. Then, I started questioning how a teacher who had just graduated could begin her work without having theoretically conscious bases
about the work that was to be developed with her students. Therefore, I decided to investigate how the difficulties I had when I started teaching could also be noticed by the pre-service teachers who participated in this study. Through the analysis of these participants’ narratives (portfolios developed in the course Teaching Practicum of Portuguese), I believed that I could
reach a broader perception of my own process of professional development if I focused on the matters that were affecting myself as a novice teacher. By writing research texts about the participants’ narratives, as proposed by Narrative Inquiry (CLANDININ & CONNELLY, 2000), I have produced meanings from excerpts of my participants’ stories about their expectations regarding their profession and the relationship between theory and their novice teaching practice. The first result of this study shows meaningful differences between understanding a theory when it is appropriated by us and when it is not. The second result
illustrates my process of appropriation of a theory and how central it became in the process of transforming my novice teaching practice. My contact with Vygotski’s Historical-Cultural Perspective allowed me to understand the complexity of the educational process. Concerning the teaching of Portuguese, Bakhtin’s concept of language as an uninterrupted social process
of interlocution was decisive for me to revisit the ways that I taught. Grounded on Geraldi (1993), Jolibert (1994a, 1994b), Foucambert (1994), Kaufman & Rodríguez (1995), it was possible for me to proceed with the necessary mediations in order to notice the implications that the appropriation of a theoretical perspective had for my teaching practice. Finally, by contrasting the narratives of the pre-service teachers and with my own professional trajectory, it was possible to draw some relevant conclusions to think the process of pre-service professional development of teachers of Portuguese: the undergraduate course of Languages does not seem to provide the necessary conditions for mediation so that the pre-service teachers can relate theory to the teaching practice; it is necessary to rethink the importance of the teaching credential in teacher development and promote a more effective dialogue among the specific and pedagogical subjects; when there is a dialogue between theory and teaching practice, the training period becomes an important moment for the pre-service teacher to be more aware of the profession he has chosen; and it is possible to question and to transform school practices that have been historically reproduced.
and ideological issues embedded in the multiple discourses embodied in the corpus. The
results contribute to a reflection about the education of teachers and other professionals in a
context that has been less and less marked by geographical barriers, aiming at developing a
possible transcultural citizenship through contact with different languages and cultures. In this
regard, we provide some perspectives to the praxis of teletandem mediators, by understanding
the notion of culture in its discursive dimension.
Pedagogical Framework.” Language Learning and Technology 11 (2): 104–127). We also adopt a new discourse construct presented by Zhu (2012. “Weaving Language and Culture Together: the Process of Culture Learning in a Chinese as a Foreign Language Classroom.” PhD diss., University of Iowa) from the term coined by Swain and Lapkin (1998. “Interaction and Second Language Learning: Two Adolescent French Immersion Students Working Together.” Modern Language Journal 82 (3): 320–337), ‘language-related episodes’ and analyse five ‘culture-related episodes’. We define ‘culture-related episode’ as any segment of a dialogue produced during teletandem sessions in which students focus on any interest, explanation or inquisitiveness about their own or their partner’s culture. Our findings provide evidence that the exchanges between people from different nationalities and life experiences engender many possibilities of understanding culture in its various dimensions. Finally, we suggest that further research on learning languages and cultures should be developed to better understand the complexity and the characteristics of online telecollaborative contexts.
includes my own process of reflection on my first year as a teacher of Portuguese in a public junior high school. As I reflected on my own teaching practice as a beginning teacher, I noticed that my classroom action was being guided by the experience I had as a student, instead of a theoretically based concept of teaching. Then, I started questioning how a teacher who had just graduated could begin her work without having theoretically conscious bases
about the work that was to be developed with her students. Therefore, I decided to investigate how the difficulties I had when I started teaching could also be noticed by the pre-service teachers who participated in this study. Through the analysis of these participants’ narratives (portfolios developed in the course Teaching Practicum of Portuguese), I believed that I could
reach a broader perception of my own process of professional development if I focused on the matters that were affecting myself as a novice teacher. By writing research texts about the participants’ narratives, as proposed by Narrative Inquiry (CLANDININ & CONNELLY, 2000), I have produced meanings from excerpts of my participants’ stories about their expectations regarding their profession and the relationship between theory and their novice teaching practice. The first result of this study shows meaningful differences between understanding a theory when it is appropriated by us and when it is not. The second result
illustrates my process of appropriation of a theory and how central it became in the process of transforming my novice teaching practice. My contact with Vygotski’s Historical-Cultural Perspective allowed me to understand the complexity of the educational process. Concerning the teaching of Portuguese, Bakhtin’s concept of language as an uninterrupted social process
of interlocution was decisive for me to revisit the ways that I taught. Grounded on Geraldi (1993), Jolibert (1994a, 1994b), Foucambert (1994), Kaufman & Rodríguez (1995), it was possible for me to proceed with the necessary mediations in order to notice the implications that the appropriation of a theoretical perspective had for my teaching practice. Finally, by contrasting the narratives of the pre-service teachers and with my own professional trajectory, it was possible to draw some relevant conclusions to think the process of pre-service professional development of teachers of Portuguese: the undergraduate course of Languages does not seem to provide the necessary conditions for mediation so that the pre-service teachers can relate theory to the teaching practice; it is necessary to rethink the importance of the teaching credential in teacher development and promote a more effective dialogue among the specific and pedagogical subjects; when there is a dialogue between theory and teaching practice, the training period becomes an important moment for the pre-service teacher to be more aware of the profession he has chosen; and it is possible to question and to transform school practices that have been historically reproduced.
and ideological issues embedded in the multiple discourses embodied in the corpus. The
results contribute to a reflection about the education of teachers and other professionals in a
context that has been less and less marked by geographical barriers, aiming at developing a
possible transcultural citizenship through contact with different languages and cultures. In this
regard, we provide some perspectives to the praxis of teletandem mediators, by understanding
the notion of culture in its discursive dimension.