Diversity in Class, from Brazil

FAZZIO, Cecilia Elisabete Aguirre de1

At a regular private school, a sixth-grade class with 20 to 30 children at the same age has
students from many different English backgrounds. Bereiter (2002) confirms our expectations
and fears when he says “I think educators must face up to the fact teaching for
understanding is not culturally neutral”. They come from other private schools, sometimes
from a public one, some of them enjoy learning English and some just don’t. “Furthermore,
they tend to overshadow what I call small-d diversity, the economic significance of which
is beginning to count as never before” finishes Bereiter (2002). In this scenario, English
teachers have to teach the language according to the academic curriculum with no possibility
of having a leveling test to get to know the student previous knowledge better.

As Mary Kalantzis and Bill Cope presented, we have to deal with many learner differences,
such as social issues, cognitive differences, contents, background education, age, sexual
orientation, gender and even disability, which Bereiter (2002) also agrees, “These are
important kinds of diversity, and for various reasons they are looming larger and larger in
educational policymaking”.
A way to start the language acquisition as L2 is through socialization, “forms of socialization
orient the child toward speech codes which control access to relatively context-
independent meaning” as Bernstein (1971) once said.

We cannot pretend these differences do not exist or deny our role as mentors. Delpit
(2006) says, “teachers need to support the language that students bring to school, provide
them input from an additional code, and give them the opportunity to use the new code in
a nonthreatening, real communicative context”. The easiest way of doing so is mixing
activities up, teaching from grammar to role-plays using sometimes the mother-tongue, as
well as giving them the constant support for accomplishing tasks.

Teachers need to support the language level that students bring to school, provide them
input from an additional code, using textbook, literature excerpts or simply an easy-to-
understand explanation of the context, and give them the opportunity to use the new code
in a nonthreatening, real communicative context, producing written and oral texts.

Bibliography

BEREITER, Carl. 2002. Education and Mind in the Knowledge Age. New York: Routledge. pp. 242-244.
BERNSTEIN, Basil. 1971. Class, Codes and Control: Theoretical Studies Toward a Sociology of
Language. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. pp. 175-178
CHALL, Jeanne. 1983. Stages of Reading Development.  New York: McGraw Hill. pp. 10-24.
DELPIT, Lisa. 2006. Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom. New York: New Press.
pp. 48-53.

1
Graduada em Letras português/inglês pela UNICID/SP com ênfase em Literatura Inglesa pela UCAM/RJ,
especialização em Psicopedagogia e Metodologia do Ensino da Língua Portuguesa e estrangeira pela
UNINTER/PR, aluna especial no Programa de Mestrado em Teoria Literária e Literatura Comparada pela
USP/SP. E-mail: ceciliafazzio@gmail.com