Vocabulary ensino de inglês

ABSTRACT

The aim of this paper is to analyze the content of didactic books dedicated to teaching English

as foreign language to children, showing how notions of teaching and vocabulary acquisition

are conceived and worked. So, the first premise of this work is that words are acquired from

the well-succeeded comprehension of a context. The second premise is that didactic books are

based in the fact that the public for which the material is made is children, elaborating,

though, material considering their characteristics. It was used, as data collection proceeding,

the documental analysis, preceded by an exploratory research that consists on the application

of a questionnaire of five didactic books that have the same profile of the object of this study.

In the data treatment, it was made the content analysis of one didactic book, as well as its

manual, chosen between those books that were in the exploratory stage, directed to first level

English Language learners. That allowed observation, recognition and reflection about lexical

items and the context in which they are presented, enabling proximity with the theoretical

reference implicit on the approach. The results imply that the notion of teaching expressed on

the analyzed book is characterized by the audio-lingual method, however this is not identified

by the authors in the teacher’s manual. In this method, the language is perceived as a series of

conditioned habits acquired in a mechanical process of stimulus and response, which is

connected to behaviorists’ ideas. After the identification of the teaching method and the

analysis of proposed activities on the book, it has become evident that the treatment of the

vocabulary is not based on words unattached from its context or presented in lists, but

introduced into phrasal structures and themes. Nevertheless, the vocabulary acquisition is

stimulated by repetition proceedings, without any attention to student’s meaning construction,

being, then, unconnected to the notions defended in this study.