Análise de imagens no livro didático de inglês como recurso de interação em sala de aula

Abstract

The teacher, when entering a classroom, has the opportunity of interacting with students and allowing activities that also relate to the learners’ life trajectory. It is known that, in many educational contexts, the most used and common teaching material is the textbook. Many students use it beyond the school space, to study, read, research and also – in the case of foreign languages – broadening their vocabulary. For many teachers, the textbook is utilized under several aspects. One of them is to help in the structure of the contents developed in the school year, and it is also the resource from which the teachers select activities when elaborating their classes. In this sense, the objective of the present dissertation is to show that the teacher can potentialize the activities on the Textbook by reading the images, in order to broaden and even improve the interaction with the students, aiming at the social education of the learners. The choice for such topic is attributed to the presence of the visual resource in the textbook that, among other functions, is commonly used merely aesthetically, but can be explored as another text. We develop a bibliographic study about the textbook in the Brazilian educational context, the different approaches of teaching and the teacher-student interaction (MIZUKAMI, 1986; ALMEIDA-FILHO. BARBIRATO, 2016) and the reading of images based on the metafunctions of the Grammar of Visual Design (KRESS; VAN LEEUWEN, 2006). We also study the reading of images as one of the forms of activities that can be explored in the classroom to promote the education of citizens that participate, by means of texts, ethically and critically in various social practices. The images analyzed belong to the textbook Way to English for Brazilian Learners: língua estrangeira: inglês: fundamental II para alunos do 9º (foreign language: English: basic education II for students of the 9th grade, in the Brazilian educational system). The material belongs to a four-volume collection, elaborated for the school years that compose the Basic education level II and are part of Programa Nacional do Livro Didático – PNLD (National Textbook Program), for the years from 2017 to 2019. By our analysis, we perceive that the textbook can be an important tool in the teacher’s life for that, from it, new activities are elaborated, with more contextualization, and that allow student participation. One of such activities is the reading of images.