Culture and language teaching: perspectives for in-service teacher education in the project Teletandem Brasil

Abstract

The possibility of intercultural communication in our world today, increased by the use of new technologies, brings a significant impact to the way we understand the relationship among language, culture and society. For the area of Applied Linguistics, in this scenario, an important task arises: that of significantly investigating the impact of the current "cultural globalization" on language teaching and teacher education. Thus, we propose a research project which aims at investigating the conception of culture of in-service teachers and their beliefs about the language-culture they teach, as well as the contributions of an in-service teacher education course which comprehends these aspects both in theory and practice. This project is part of the Thematic Project "Teletandem Brazil: foreign languages for all", supported by FAPESP, and it aims at examining the contributions of a hybrid course (virtual/presential) offered by the project Teletandem for in-service Brazilian teachers of Spanish language from public schools, in which cultural aspects were addressed theoretically and practically through synchronous virtual interactions with Uruguayan and Argentinean teachers of Portuguese as a foreign language, presential classes, and activities, forums and chats, in the virtual environment of the course hosted at Teleduc, with Brazilian professors and educators from a public university in the state of São Paulo. We expect to contribute to the Project Teletandem Brazil through the examination of how this teaching and learning modality may assist in-service teacher education, by means of the discussion of the role of the cultural component in current linguistic education. (AU)