Questões de Concurso

It is not uncommon for English language lessons to favour communication over accuracy: real life is nothing like a classroom! In real-life situations, when you make a mistake in the language you are learning, context provides ample information as to what the intended message is. In fact, most of the time, impeccable accuracy is not needed at all! “Don’t worry about making mistakes, ” I used to tell my English language students. “Communicating is the most important thing!”

While making mistakes when trying to master a language might seem counter-intuitive, letting learners freely communicate and negotiate meaning is key to success. A learner who communicates a lot while making a few mistakes is much more likely to develop confidence for dealing with real-life situations than a learner who communicates very little because they’re afraid of making any. In communicative language teaching, for example, the teacher is tasked with both encouraging the learner to express themselves and with providing corrective feedback in a way that is not obstructive to communication.

This means that if a learner says, “I go swimming last night, ” it is much more effective to respond with, “Oh, that’s nice, you went swimming. What did you do after?” rather than, “No! You went swimming! Use past simple for past events!” – the former encourages the learner to continue their narrative while the latter is much more likely to make the learner stop in their tracks, re-evaluate the context, and think twice before expressing themselves again in the future, for the fear of making a mistake again. Teachers need to be careful not to parrot back everything the students say in this manner, of course, but the technique can be an effective method of acknowledging the content of a student’s response, while also providing feedback on accuracy.

The importance of the freedom to make mistakes in language learning is also supported by research in psychology, which suggests that learners who try a task without having mastered it completely experience improved retention of new information. A similar experiment in the context of language learning also indicates that the process of making mistakes activates a greater network of related knowledge in the brain, which leads to superior learning outcomes.

It is believed that the key to help learners feel relaxed and ready for communicating freely in the classroom is authenticity. This means that there should be both a real communicative need for a learner to speak and the authentic reaction from those around to what the learner has said.

Here are a few ways of how such authentic communicative interactions can be practiced in the classroom:

• surround learners with the English language – encourage them to speak to you and each other in English;

• don’t worry about diverging from topics that are not strictly covered in your lesson plan;

• model communication by telling your students stories and anecdotes about your own life and encourage them to do the same;

• let your learners have fun with English – give them colloquial expressions to try and ask them to share some expressions

; • do not overcorrect – make a note of errors and cover it in subsequent lessons;

• avoid the temptation to turn what was intended as speaking practice into a full-on grammar lesson.

While easier said than done, especially when the outcome of an exam is at stake, it is worth remembering that people that our learners might come to interact with outside of the classroom are driven by the natural desire to understand the people they communicate with. This is especially powerful when practiced in the context of a classroom. They set the learners up for success in real-life communication. In other words, when communication is the goal, mistakes are secondary, and that’s real life, isn’t it?

Adapted from: https://wwwcambridgeenglish.org/blog/mistakes-help-you-learnfreedom-to-fail-in-games-and-language-learning/

It is not uncommon for English language lessons to favour communication over accuracy: real life is nothing like a classroom! In real-life situations, when you make a mistake in the language you are learning, context provides ample information as to what the intended message is. In fact, most of the time, impeccable accuracy is not needed at all! “Don’t worry about making mistakes, ” I used to tell my English language students. “Communicating is the most important thing!”

While making mistakes when trying to master a language might seem counter-intuitive, letting learners freely communicate and negotiate meaning is key to success. A learner who communicates a lot while making a few mistakes is much more likely to develop confidence for dealing with real-life situations than a learner who communicates very little because they’re afraid of making any. In communicative language teaching, for example, the teacher is tasked with both encouraging the learner to express themselves and with providing corrective feedback in a way that is not obstructive to communication.

This means that if a learner says, “I go swimming last night, ” it is much more effective to respond with, “Oh, that’s nice, you went swimming. What did you do after?” rather than, “No! You went swimming! Use past simple for past events!” – the former encourages the learner to continue their narrative while the latter is much more likely to make the learner stop in their tracks, re-evaluate the context, and think twice before expressing themselves again in the future, for the fear of making a mistake again. Teachers need to be careful not to parrot back everything the students say in this manner, of course, but the technique can be an effective method of acknowledging the content of a student’s response, while also providing feedback on accuracy.

The importance of the freedom to make mistakes in language learning is also supported by research in psychology, which suggests that learners who try a task without having mastered it completely experience improved retention of new information. A similar experiment in the context of language learning also indicates that the process of making mistakes activates a greater network of related knowledge in the brain, which leads to superior learning outcomes.

It is believed that the key to help learners feel relaxed and ready for communicating freely in the classroom is authenticity. This means that there should be both a real communicative need for a learner to speak and the authentic reaction from those around to what the learner has said.

Here are a few ways of how such authentic communicative interactions can be practiced in the classroom:

• surround learners with the English language – encourage them to speak to you and each other in English;

• don’t worry about diverging from topics that are not strictly covered in your lesson plan;

• model communication by telling your students stories and anecdotes about your own life and encourage them to do the same;

• let your learners have fun with English – give them colloquial expressions to try and ask them to share some expressions

; • do not overcorrect – make a note of errors and cover it in subsequent lessons;

• avoid the temptation to turn what was intended as speaking practice into a full-on grammar lesson.

While easier said than done, especially when the outcome of an exam is at stake, it is worth remembering that people that our learners might come to interact with outside of the classroom are driven by the natural desire to understand the people they communicate with. This is especially powerful when practiced in the context of a classroom. They set the learners up for success in real-life communication. In other words, when communication is the goal, mistakes are secondary, and that’s real life, isn’t it?

Adapted from: https://wwwcambridgeenglish.org/blog/mistakes-help-you-learnfreedom-to-fail-in-games-and-language-learning/

TEXTO ASSOCIADO

Bob Dylan and the “Hot Hand”

For decades, there’s been a running academic debate about the question of “the hot hand”— the notion, in basketball, say, that a player has a statistically better chance of scoring from downtown if he’s been shooting that night with unusual accuracy. Put it this way: Stephen Curry, the point guard genius for the Golden State Warriors, who normally hits forty-four per cent of his threes, will raise his odds to fifty per cent or better if he’s already on a tear. He’s got a “hot hand.” If you watch enough N.B.A. ball, it appears to happen all the time. But does it? Thirty years ago, Thomas Gilovich, Amos Tversky, and Robert Vallone seemed to squelch the hot-hand theory with a stats-laden paper in the journal Cognitive Psychology, but, just last year, along came Joshua Miller and Adam Sanjurjo, marshalling no less evidence, to insist that an “atypical clustering of successes” in three-point shooting was not a “wide spread cognitive illusion” at all, but rather that it “occurs regularly.”

Steph Curry fans, who have been loyal witnesses to his improbable streaks from beyond the arc, surely agree with Professors Miller and Sanjurjo. But let’s assume that the debate, in basketball or at the blackjack table, remains open. What’s clear is that when it comes to the life of the imagination, the hot hand is a matter of historical fact. Novelists, composers, painters, and poets are apt to experience stretches of intense creativity that might derive from any number of factors — surrounding historical events, artistic rivalries, or, most mysteriously, inspiration — but the streak is undeniably there.

For Dylan, the greatest and most abundant songwriter who has ever lived, the most intense period of wild inspiration and creativity ran from the beginning of 1965 to the summer of 1966.

Before that fifteen-month period, Bob Dylan, who was twenty-three, had already transformed folk music, building on Woody Guthrie and Hank Williams. Now he was scribbling lyrics on pads and envelopes all night and listening to the Stones and the Beatles and feverishly reading the Surrealists and the Beats. In short order, he recorded the music for “Bringing It All Back Home” (the crossover to rock that ranges from “Mr. Tambourine Man” to “Subterranean Homesick Blues”); “Highway 61 Revisited” (the best rock album ever made; again, send your rebuttal to ); and “Blonde on Blonde” (a double album recorded in New York and Nashville that includes “Visions of Johanna” and “Just Like a Woman”).

Full text available on https://www.newyorker. com/culture/cultural-comment/bob-dylanand-the-hot-hand

TEXTO ASSOCIADO

Bob Dylan and the “Hot Hand”

For decades, there’s been a running academic debate about the question of “the hot hand”— the notion, in basketball, say, that a player has a statistically better chance of scoring from downtown if he’s been shooting that night with unusual accuracy. Put it this way: Stephen Curry, the point guard genius for the Golden State Warriors, who normally hits forty-four per cent of his threes, will raise his odds to fifty per cent or better if he’s already on a tear. He’s got a “hot hand.” If you watch enough N.B.A. ball, it appears to happen all the time. But does it? Thirty years ago, Thomas Gilovich, Amos Tversky, and Robert Vallone seemed to squelch the hot-hand theory with a stats-laden paper in the journal Cognitive Psychology, but, just last year, along came Joshua Miller and Adam Sanjurjo, marshalling no less evidence, to insist that an “atypical clustering of successes” in three-point shooting was not a “wide spread cognitive illusion” at all, but rather that it “occurs regularly.”

Steph Curry fans, who have been loyal witnesses to his improbable streaks from beyond the arc, surely agree with Professors Miller and Sanjurjo. But let’s assume that the debate, in basketball or at the blackjack table, remains open. What’s clear is that when it comes to the life of the imagination, the hot hand is a matter of historical fact. Novelists, composers, painters, and poets are apt to experience stretches of intense creativity that might derive from any number of factors — surrounding historical events, artistic rivalries, or, most mysteriously, inspiration — but the streak is undeniably there.

For Dylan, the greatest and most abundant songwriter who has ever lived, the most intense period of wild inspiration and creativity ran from the beginning of 1965 to the summer of 1966.

Before that fifteen-month period, Bob Dylan, who was twenty-three, had already transformed folk music, building on Woody Guthrie and Hank Williams. Now he was scribbling lyrics on pads and envelopes all night and listening to the Stones and the Beatles and feverishly reading the Surrealists and the Beats. In short order, he recorded the music for “Bringing It All Back Home” (the crossover to rock that ranges from “Mr. Tambourine Man” to “Subterranean Homesick Blues”); “Highway 61 Revisited” (the best rock album ever made; again, send your rebuttal to ); and “Blonde on Blonde” (a double album recorded in New York and Nashville that includes “Visions of Johanna” and “Just Like a Woman”).

Full text available on https://www.newyorker. com/culture/cultural-comment/bob-dylanand-the-hot-hand

TEXTO ASSOCIADO

Bob Dylan and the “Hot Hand”

For decades, there’s been a running academic debate about the question of “the hot hand”— the notion, in basketball, say, that a player has a statistically better chance of scoring from downtown if he’s been shooting that night with unusual accuracy. Put it this way: Stephen Curry, the point guard genius for the Golden State Warriors, who normally hits forty-four per cent of his threes, will raise his odds to fifty per cent or better if he’s already on a tear. He’s got a “hot hand.” If you watch enough N.B.A. ball, it appears to happen all the time. But does it? Thirty years ago, Thomas Gilovich, Amos Tversky, and Robert Vallone seemed to squelch the hot-hand theory with a stats-laden paper in the journal Cognitive Psychology, but, just last year, along came Joshua Miller and Adam Sanjurjo, marshalling no less evidence, to insist that an “atypical clustering of successes” in three-point shooting was not a “wide spread cognitive illusion” at all, but rather that it “occurs regularly.”

Steph Curry fans, who have been loyal witnesses to his improbable streaks from beyond the arc, surely agree with Professors Miller and Sanjurjo. But let’s assume that the debate, in basketball or at the blackjack table, remains open. What’s clear is that when it comes to the life of the imagination, the hot hand is a matter of historical fact. Novelists, composers, painters, and poets are apt to experience stretches of intense creativity that might derive from any number of factors — surrounding historical events, artistic rivalries, or, most mysteriously, inspiration — but the streak is undeniably there.

For Dylan, the greatest and most abundant songwriter who has ever lived, the most intense period of wild inspiration and creativity ran from the beginning of 1965 to the summer of 1966.

Before that fifteen-month period, Bob Dylan, who was twenty-three, had already transformed folk music, building on Woody Guthrie and Hank Williams. Now he was scribbling lyrics on pads and envelopes all night and listening to the Stones and the Beatles and feverishly reading the Surrealists and the Beats. In short order, he recorded the music for “Bringing It All Back Home” (the crossover to rock that ranges from “Mr. Tambourine Man” to “Subterranean Homesick Blues”); “Highway 61 Revisited” (the best rock album ever made; again, send your rebuttal to ); and “Blonde on Blonde” (a double album recorded in New York and Nashville that includes “Visions of Johanna” and “Just Like a Woman”).

Full text available on https://www.newyorker. com/culture/cultural-comment/bob-dylanand-the-hot-hand