Crenças de professores em formação sobre o papel da pronúncia nas aulas de inglês

Abstract

This study aims at investigating the beliefs about the role of pronunciation in the English classes held by undergraduate students doing a degree in Letras at UFRPE – UAST. This study also aims to add contributions to the works on the beliefs that specifically address the role or teaching of English pronunciation. We seek to identify what beliefs these future teachers construct and maintain about the variety of English they speak, and whether it relates to or is under the influence of a standard variety of the language. Therefore, in order to do so, we begin by conceptualizing what beliefs are according to several academic fields (BOTASSINI, 2015; FONTAINE, 1998; GUIMARÃES 2010; LALLANDE, 1976; NESPOR, 1987; ROKEACH, 1968, 1976) until we reach the discussions focusing on the teaching and learning of languages from the perspective of Applied Linguistics (BARCELOS, 2004). Based on the works of Barcelos (2004) and Pajares (1992), we also discuss teachers’ beliefs and how they can influence a teachers’ professional practice. Regarding the teaching of pronunciation, the concepts of intelligibility and comprehensibility were discussed based on the definitions of Nelson and Smith (1985), Derwing, Munro and Wiebe (1998), Derwing and Munro (2015) and Alves (2015). We also briefly review the literature on teachers ' beliefs about the teaching of pronunciation, taking as main basis the work of Shah et al (2017). In order to accomplish the main objectives of this study, we conducted a series of 10 interviews with students at UAST who were doing internships. Two of these interviews were discarded for they diverged from the research proposal, and the remaining eight ones served as data for the analysis and discussion on the beliefs about the teaching of the phonetic-phonological component under study. Results show that trainee teachers believe that pronunciation is an important aspect to teach either directly or indirectly, but they also believe in hegemonic varieties as references.