Aprendizagem da língua inglesa como segunda língua baseada em tarefas: uma proposta de trabalho com ciclo complexo

Abstract

In 1997, the linguist Diane Larsen-Freeman published a disturbing article called “Chaos/Complexity Science and Second Language Acquisition”(LARSENFREEMAN, 1997). In this article, the author states that there are many similarities between the new science of chaos/complexity and second language acquisition. Faced with the reflections, which give rise to such ideas, one intends to analyse the structure and theory of Task Based Learning under the light of the Chaos/Complexity Theory. According to Willis, J. (1996), this communicative approach presents itself with six stages, namely: pre-task, task, planning, report, analyses and practice. As part of a so vast research area, one intends to relate the Chaos/Complexity Theory with the task cycle – task, planning and report – formulated by Willis, J. (1996). According to Larsen-Freeman and Cameron (2008), a complexity approach does not translate into a complexity method for teaching language. This work aims to approximate the seminal article by Diane Larsen-Freeman about the Chaos/Complexity Theory and Second Language Acquisition (1997) with Task Based Learning proposed nine years before by Willis, J. and Willis, D. (1988).To sum up, this dissertation aims to show that the task cycle may be characterized as a complex adaptive system, once it complies with the rules of such systems, that is, dynamic, complex, nonlinear, chaotic, unpredictable, sensitive to the initial conditions, open, self-organizing, feedback sensitive and adaptive.