Ensino e aprendizagem de inglês como língua estrangeira no Ensino Superior Público em Angola

: entre os desafios e as perspetivas

Abstract

Angola is a Portuguese-speaking country in Southern Africa that also has a heritage of great multicultural and multilingual diversity, constituting a range of major fundamental ethnolinguistic groups: “the peoples of Bantu origin, who constitute the overwhelming majority of the population, the Khoisan or Hotentotes (non-Bantu ethnicity), considered as minorities of the population and Caucasians, who constitute the European minorities. English is a foreign language discipline in school curricula and is taught as a compulsory subject in all Public Higher Education Institutions. The teaching of English in Public Higher Education aims to ensure the acquisition of knowledge and skills necessary for an adequate and effective participation in individual and collective life, training an individual capable of understanding national, regional and international problems in a critical, constructive and innovative way for their active participation in society, as well as facilitating globalization and regional and international integration. In Angolan Public Higher Education, English focuses on the development of language proficiency and communicative competence, that is, the acquisition and real use of the four essential language skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking. The purpose of this study was to understand the methods and strategies of teaching / learning English in Public Higher Education in Angola, the educational results and the quality of the learning they have led, the reasons for dropping out this discipline, the teachers' perceptions and students about the effectiveness of the methodologies used to improve language skills and school curricula, as well as analyze the challenges faced by educational actors and propose innovations that can lead to a greater effectiveness of the teaching / learning process of English in Public Higher Education in Angola. The study had a mixed methodological approach and took place in an Organic Unit of a public HEI located in the 1st Academic Region Luanda / Bengo in the city of Luanda. The investigation covered 6 teachers and 79 students, 34 of them from the First Year and 45 from the Fourth Year. The data were collected through a variety of investigation techniques, namely: questionnaire survey, semi-structured interviews and document analysis. The study establishes a bridge between the challenges and perspectives of the different educational actors, during the learning carried out in English at ESPA and shows us that several factors lead to ineffectiveness in the development of language proficiency and communicative competence in English graduates at ESPA. The evaluation processes are not clear and the teaching and learning methods and strategies used by teachers are questionable in the light of the theoretical frameworks mobilized. The study also reveals some shortcomings in the teaching/learning process foreign languages at ESPA in terms of educational, institution and classroom policies. In addition, this study also reveals that some of the grades and marks given to students do not seem to correspond to their real language competence. Despite the factors that contribute to a certain inefficiency with regard to the development of language proficiency and communicative competence, graduate students are divided into those who manage to reach the desired level in the curriculum or advocated by the CEFR and those who fail to achieve positive and high levels of English.

Date of Award	15 Jul 2022
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Ilídia Cabral (Supervisor)