Abstract

COUTRIM, Erica de Cássia Modesto. Language acquisition on the web: which teacher? Which student? Which language?. ETD [online]. 2016, vol.18, n.3, pp.553-563. ISSN 1676-2592.  https://doi.org/10.20396/etd.v18i3.8646110.

The introduction of Internet in educational practices is strongly affecting learning, teaching strategies, and the language itself. A non-human element is modifying the way people learn and interact. The new empiricist and new materialist views refuse the Cartesian though that established a binary that serves as a framework for the social sciences and the education, and assumes that agency is not restricted to the human action. The objective of this paper is to show that the transfer of the teaching-learning process of foreign languages to the virtual environment goes far beyond the mastery of technology. It was intended to identify the complexity of introducing the Internet to learning activities, bearing in mind the inadequacy of archaic and hierarchical relations and of a learning process that treats languages and students as inert elements. Brazilian students who learn German were observed, but the limits of the qualitative methods weren't enough to analyze these new thoughts on the reciprocal influence and agency of all elements included in the process. For this reason, the philosophy as a method, the new materialism as a framework, and the 'onto-ethical-epistemological' (Barad, 2007) turn as an alternative to the way we relate to subjects and objects were applied. The results indicated that there is a persistence in maintaining established roles despite the belief regarding the significance of the nonhuman in this new context. In face of that resistance, a mix of false expectations and false results have been established, thus producing nothing 'new' in a new environment.

Keywords : Internet; Foreign Language Acquisition; New Materialism; New Empiricism.

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