O mercado de línguas estrangeiras: a relação com o saber nos cursos livres de francês e inglês

Abstract

This work investigates what we call the language market. Our objective is to understand what it is like to know a foreign language through free French and English courses in Brazil. We researched the senses and meanings produced in learning foreign languages by adults, in the spaces and times of those free courses. Our theoretical and methodological foundation is the Relation with Knowledge, by Charlot (2000, 2001, 2005, 2009, 2013, 2020, 2021), which allows us to raise socio-historical and socio-didactic questions on the subject. As an alternative to the regular school, free courses in foreign languages are numerous in Brazil and in the world and work in a logic the private market, in vocational education and training for the job market. A movement to describe the spaces that offer French and English language courses, understanding the nature of these places of learning, allowed us to design what we call the foreign language market. The corpus of this investigation is formed by the legislation on language teaching, national and local newspapers, pedagogical documents and speeches by students and ex-students of free courses in French and/or English. As instruments for data collection with the research participants, an open questionnaire and an adaptation of the Balance of Knowledge were applied.