Reading and understanding through music genre: interculturalism sung in English language teaching and learning

Abstract

This paper emphasizes the importance of understanding the Intercultural Approach to English Language Teaching through music genre. This field study demonstrates how this approach encourages students’ reflections when they engage in ideological, cultural and social issues, as well as contributes to develop the formation of students’ language communicative competence. The developed study through the music genre was to comprehend how the genre, through reading and understanding, could reveal the intercultural language interpretations. The participant observation with novice teachers was used as data collection method, through Thiollent (2009) perspective, and developed at the State University of Bahia – Campus II – Alagoinhas City. This research was based on: the development of the communicative competence concept, which considers learning as student-centered (Leffa, 1988); the didactic sequence productions on text genre, which leads learners to social and cultural enrichment through regular interaction (SCHNEUWLY and DOLZ, 2004); the language socio-cultural aspects linked to its use (MENDES, 2008); and the fundamental intercultural issues for teaching and learning foreign language (Siqueira, 2005). This music genre study, through theoretical and practical foundations, intended to contribute to change perspectives beyond the linguistic learning forms, focusing on cultural aspects, values, and speeches insertions that are mediated by language, enabling the teaching and learning process through intercultural discourse.