EL Fellow Program
Site Navigation
Application Links
Links of Interest
|
|
Country Brazil
City Londrina Parana
Host Institution Universidade Estadual de Londrina
Note: This project starts in February 2008 Project Description
The EL Fellow will teach English language to undergraduate students who are being prepared to become teachers; work with the staff in the development of supplementary teaching materials; help with the courses on language proficiency (beginners and intermediate) and methodology offered to public school teachers; participate in meetings with school teachers through the NAP program; interact with other teachers of English working with UEL through the ENFOPLI network; develop and teach mini-courses on cultural aspects of the United States, such as media, pop culture and multiculturalism in contemporary America. The EL Fellow will work full-time with not more than 20 class hours/week.
Project Objectives
The 10-month period at the university will be of great help to post’s several activities in addition to providing students and staff with an invaluable intercultural experience.
About the Host Institution
The State University of Londrina is one of the leading universities in the south of Brazil. Located in the state of Paraná, it has 14,000 undergraduate and 3,700 postgraduate students. There are 1,700 teachers among whom 43% hold PhDs and 40% have M.A. degrees. The Department of Foreign Languages is among the oldest departments in the university and is currently responsible for undergraduate courses in English, Spanish and French. It also runs a language laboratory where English, French, Italian, German, Chinese and Japanese courses are offered to the community. A program of Portuguese for Speakers of Other Languages is also available to foreign students. At the postgraduate level, there are two specialization courses: one in English and another in the teaching of foreign languages, with groups of 30 and 25 students respectively. At the MA and PhD levels, teachers from the department are responsible for teaching and supervising research in the areas of teaching/learning of languages and teacher education. With a staff of 32, of whom 19 belong to the English area, the department runs several research projects in the following areas: Foreign language teaching/learning; EFL teacher education; Discourse analysis; Translation; Lexicography and lexicology; and Literature. The department has strong expertise in the field of EFL teacher education, with 8 PhDs developing studies in initial and continuing teacher education. There is a strong commitment to public education through several projects. One of such projects is NAP, an extension program dedicated to integrating pre-service and in-service education. The education of EFL teachers has been the focus of research of the group linked to NAP, which houses a resource center and projects aimed at producing teaching materials for state schools and keeping teachers updated. NAP works in close connection with similar projects in the state of Paraná as part of a network of EFL teacher educators who are interested in developing expertise in English language teaching in the Brazilian context. The university teachers involved with NAP have established relationships with school teachers by organizing and participating in events, as well as publishing articles in newsletters and academic journals. A recent collaborative project with the American Embassy resulted in the publication of a collection of papers by public school teachers who took part in one of the courses. At the regional level, the Department established links with other higher education institutions through a group of English language teacher educators in Paraná, called ENFOPLI. About 35 institutions are linked to ENFOPLI. As a community of practice, the purpose is to develop understanding and practices aimed at improving the preparation of prospective English language teachers.
| |
