PORTUGUESE AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE IN A PRE-SERVICE EDUCATION CONTEXT MEDIATED BY COMPUTER: reflections and projections

Abstract

This article focuses on a brazilian teacher in pre-service education in a context of Portuguese and Spanish interaction in teletandem, in the institutional project Teletandem Brasil: línguas estrangeiras para todos (UNESP/FAPESP). In general terms, language learning in-tandem involves pairs of native speakers of different languages working collaboratively to learn each other's language, without the presence of a language teacher, mediated by the computer. This study has as participant a Letters Portuguese-Spanish brazilian student in a public university, interacting with a Mexican partner, which is a Ph.D. candidate in Applied Linguistics and lives in Spain, and a Brazilian mediator, the author of the investigation. The study aims at analyzing, under a interpretative perspective, the beliefs, the discourse and the reflective processes that are revealed and (re)constructed in relation to communication and language learning processes, mediated by the computer, which represents a real possibility for communication and language-culture learning. Finally, by considering the results of this investigation, we can figure out that the context can contribute to the formulation of educational official documents which focus on new realities and necessities, that is, a coherent theoretical and practical education, according to contemporary times and contexts.