Inglês na palma da mão: o ensinar e o aprender através de um aplicativo móvel desenvolvido para alunos do Proeja

Abstract

In the globalized world, the acquisition of the English Language (EL) was no longer a simple differential between people from the academic and professional world, given that, due to its status as global language, the EL has become a resource to be used in different scenarios, making it an essential tool for enabling the information and communication between nations. However, the learning of this language in Brazilian public schools, especially in Youth and Adult Education (YAE), still comes up against various obstacles as regards its implementation. In the face of this, and considering that the educational literature points the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) as possible tools for the improvement of educational processes, the purpose of this research was to understand the possible contributions of mobile applications for teaching and learning English in PROEJA, from the development of an educational application aimed at this curricular component. The applied nature research was developed according to the qualitative approach, through an action research with integrated high school students in the modality YAE, at IFAM campus Eirunepe. The study was developed in five stages: in the first, Problem diagnosis, the bibliographic and documentary research, as well as the questionnaire were used aiming to know the main difficulties of students in learning EL. In the second stage, planning an improvement of practice, the educational application “English in the palm of the hand” was elaborated as educational product to intervene on the problem detected. In the third stage - action to implement the planned improvement, there was the use of application as a pedagogical resource. Then, the fourth stage, aimed at monitoring and describing the effects of the action. Finally, the fifth stage consisted of evaluating the results of the action. In order to manage collected data, it was used the content analysis based in Bardin (2016). The research concluded that it’s possible to use mobile applications as facilitators of the English learning in high school courses integrated to YAE, given that, from the pedagogical use of application “English in the palm of the hand”, it was noticed the maintenance and increase of predominant emotional factors in the teaching process EL, such as safety, motivation and self-esteem. The inclusion of this technology in classroom made the teaching and learning process more dynamic and attractive, developed in students a new perception about the language acquisition, in addition to developing the self-directed learning, optimizing study time and providing learning.