by Heitor Gribl
We are here… The Languages Learning Centre , founded at 1986, with the Japanese government financial support. Since then, thousands of students have learned foreign languages here. As you may know, we have English, French, Japanese, Hebrew, Russian, Spanish, Italian and German classes. Some courses consist of many levels.
This Centre is at the University of Campinas, in the south eastern of Brazil, South America, on planet Earth… but this is not enough to explain the complexity of the recent changes of our World… today we need to learn other languages not only to communicate, but also to be able to understand different cultures and to act in a globalised world.
Therefore, we need to think of a way to learn a foreign language that will help us overcome the challenges we may face in this world and, of course, to understand how globalisation affects our lives at University.
Thus, how can we study these themes in an English class and classroom? That's a good question! It is one of the challenges we have to think about to make our experiences of learning really meaningful.
So, to reach the aims of this course, we propose discussions and practices of reading and writing to produce an online newsletter or an online Journal, or something of the sort, as an opportunity to think about our University in the world.
To do so, we will need to know more about the genre "Journal", to choose which sections are more important for "our Journal" and which will best report what we have in mind.
Who will our readers be? What kind of information do we have to search? What is the news structure we are supposed to follow?
And, at last but not at least, how could this Journal transform our practices within a foreign language and our own lives at University?
First, we have to know more about an online Journal and its structure. So, we will research into some themes and facts about our University. Finally, we will find a way to make our own Journal and show what we think about a globalised and ethical University
This project was idealized by Cláudia and is being carried out by a group of other tutors who believe that we can learn by doing things in a cooperative way. The four of us - Cláudia, Heitor, Nayara and Eduardo will be with you along this term, so that you have the necessary support to make the Journal. Like Eduardo, Nayara and Heitor are also post-graduation students at the Language Studies Institute.
Nayara will create a Didactic Sequence to teach what the genre News Report is like, while Heitor will provide you with technological support.
We hope you enjoy this project and that we can have a great time together!
Thank you!
​​World English Voices Project ​
