Pragmatemas e a música no ensino-aprendizagem de inglês como língua adicional em um colégio estadual do RJ: papel na retenção lexical

Abstract

The present study analyzes the contributions of the use of music and complex lexical units to lexical retention in three classes of English as an additional language in a public school in the city of São João de Meriti (RJ). In order to do so, the research constituted three conditions in which twelve students participated of class 1 (T1), twelve students participated of class 2 (T2), and nine students participated of class 3 (T3). Class 1 (T1) participated in pedagogical practices with a focus on music and without explicit focus on institutionalized expressions present in the lyrics of the song, class 2 (T2) participated in classes with a focus on music and present in the lyrics of the selected song, and class 3 (T3) participated in pedagogical practices geared only to the teaching-learning of institutionalized expressions present in the lyrics of the song, without the support of music. Prior to the intervention, a questionnaire to uncover the socio-cultural habits of the participants was applied to the participants in order to know their preferences as well as their background, their literacy profile and their musical preference. To analyze the relationship between the use of music and institutionalized expressions in the participants lexical retention, a pretest was applied before the intervention and two post-tests were applied with an interval of one month between them. Furthermore, the study relied on semi-structured interviews with participants in order to understand their perceptions of the intervention. The findings indicate that there was a slightly higher retention in conditions T2 (music and focus on institutionalized expressions) and T3 (exclusive focus on institutionalized expressions), with a slight superiority for condition 3. The most frequently recovered institutionalized expression was "what's up", which can be partially explained by the fact that it is pronounced as one word and by the number of letters which are present in the expression. Future studies may clarify whether there is a statistical significance between the differences found in the conditions as well as how the explicit teaching of complex lexical units can contribute to the retention of lexical items and thus for the teaching and learning of additional. Furthermore, the intervention allowed learners to better understand that words do not occur in isolation, but also that they always occur in combination with others. Learners only responded positively to the practices used in the study, but also reported enjoying them during the semi structured interviews. That in itself seems enough to justify the use of similar practices and illustrates the contribution of this study