A escrita em inglês como sistema adaptativo complexo : uma abordagem colaborativa na aprendizagem de língua estrangeira por meio das TCI

Abstract

In the search for an approach that embraced language learning in a more global and dynamic way, applied linguists such as Larsen-Freeman (1997) and Paiva (2005) resorted to Chaos/Complexity theories as a metaphor to deal with the learning process. In this perspective, we defend that learning a language is a complex adaptive system (CAS), since it has all of its characteristics: it is open, susceptible to external factors and to initial conditions, unpredictable, non-linear, ruled by low level rules and self-organized. Besides, in order to keep functioning, active, a CAS needs the interaction among its constituting elements. In this study, we also worked with the concept of interlanguage, developed through five central processes (SELINKER, 1972) which we understand to have some points in common with the characteristics that constitute the CAS. It is also relevant to ponder the fact that the learning process of a foreign language can be affected by many factors through time, as well as that it does not follow a determined pattern of development, something that could be predicted. Likewise, innate factors should be taken into account in the learning process, since the context in which it takes place also plays an important role in the success of learning a language. Thus, the aim of this research was to investigate, through the writing ability being practiced and shown in a blog, the development of the interlanguage of two students of a teaching course in Languages/English of a public university. The intention was to verify how the interlanguage of the two students behaves during the sixth and seventh semester of English Language when the online activity was developed, analyzing the fluency, accuracy and grammatical complexity of their published texts. Besides, we observed how the collaborative correction of these texts, when the students worked as proofreaders of one another, making linguistic as well as communicative adjustments in the productions using the online tool, can influence their interlanguage, contributing to their improvement in writing in English.