Questão 2139638

Teachers need to be better prepared by the university in order to learn how to select a method which will make teaching more practical to students, allowing them to use the language based on the models that have been used successfully worldwide.

This dimension refers to the necessity of combining theory and practice. Teachers play a very important role in the selection of material, thus they are led to adopt materials that were designed to approach language in a global way, focusing, in his practice, on the context of native speakers.

Practicality, according to Kumaravadivelu, is deeply rooted in Paulo Freire’s theories. Teachers should encourage students to put everything they learn into practice in a contextualized way. In order to do so, teachers need to be able to reproduce a method they have learned and that they consider appropriate. For him, practice and theory are constantly together.

Practicality comprehends a whole new set of activities that can be designed by the teacher to promote a more practical use of the language. Among the techniques discussed by Kumaravadivelu in his text, providing spaces for students to discuss issues related to the countries where the target language is spoken seems to be the most effective one.

Kumaravadivelu defends the idea that teachers are entitled to developing their own theories, considering that each context demands a different approach, which means students can discuss their own contexts when learning the target language. For him, there is no theory without practice.