Questão 66588

An English teacher at a Brazilian university is teaching a Sociolinguistics course to undergraduate students who are future English teachers. The topic of the week is linguistic variation, change, and prejudice. The professor wants to address the pervasive issue of 'linguistic imperialism' and the prejudice against non-native varieties of English. To do this, he presents two audio recordings of the same academic text being read aloud. The first is read by a native speaker of 'standard' American English. The second is read by a highly proficient Brazilian speaker of English, whose speech, while perfectly intelligible and grammatically flawless, retains a noticeable Brazilian Portuguese phonological influence. After playing the recordings, the professor asks the students to rate the speakers on a scale for 'intelligence', 'competence', and 'trustworthiness'. The results, gathered anonymously, show a clear bias in favor of the native speaker. This exercise serves as a powerful, if uncomfortable, starting point for discussion. The professor then introduces a text by a sociolinguist, which argues: 'Linguistic prejudice, or 'linguicism', is not a reaction to a lack of clarity or correctness, but rather a socially conditioned response to accent. An accent becomes a symbol, a proxy for the speaker's perceived nationality, ethnicity, and social class. The 'native speaker' ideal in ELT is a colonial construct that perpetuates a hierarchy, privileging speakers from the center (e.g., USA, UK) and marginalizing those from the periphery.'

Based on this scenario and the theoretical framework, analyze the following pedagogical actions the professor could take to further challenge the students' linguistic prejudice:

I. Publicly shame the students who rated the native speaker higher, accusing them of perpetuating colonial mindsets.
II. Propose a research project where students analyze job advertisements for English teachers in Brazil, looking for phrases like 'native speakers only' or 'native-like fluency' and then write a critical essay on the ideological implications of such requirements.
III. Organize an activity where students listen to various 'non-native' accents (e.g., Indian English, Nigerian English, German English) and, instead of judging them, are tasked with identifying specific phonological features, treating them as systematic characteristics of a variety, not as errors.

Which of the proposed actions are pedagogically sound for addressing linguistic prejudice in a teacher education context?