Tradition of foreign language teaching and learning: Focusing on the Brazilian Portuguese as a foreign language textbook

Abstract

This study addresses the concept of the tradition of foreign language teaching and learning in an attempt to consider the role of the Brazilian Portuguese as a Foreign Language (BPFL) textbook within this tradition. Therefore, based on Bornheim (1987), but also resorting to Titone (1968), Kelly (1969), Leffa (2012), and Dickey (2012), we present our concept of the tradition of foreign language teaching and learning. Thereafter, according to Foucault (1971), we analyze a BPFL textbook published in 1966 and another in 2011, focusing on activities proposed by the textbooks. Lastly, our reflection suggests that both textbooks, as an element of this tradition, turn teachers and students into domesticated subjects of the foreign language pedagogy discourse, and they do not favor language teaching practices, but rather the mechanical repetition of grammatical exercises.