In this work we present a study investigating the possibilities for curriculum and
materials development for the teaching of English as an Additional Language
(EAL) at the 19 de Abril state school in the Krahô indigenous village of Manoel
Alves Pequeno, in Tocantins, Brazil. In accordance with the demands of the Krahô
indigenous community and Brazilian indigenous education policy, the school’s
curriculum incorporates the Krahô language and culture into the teaching of
school subjects such as history and mathematics. Specialized intercultural
teaching materials have been created for these subjects, but do not exist for
English, a language required by the school’s curriculum. To investigate this
problem, the present study is guided by the following research questions: what are
the limitations for the EAL curriculum and materials at the 19 de Abril school?
Given these limitations, how should the variety of EAL to be taught in the school
be conceptualized? What linguistic content should be included in future teaching
materials? To answer these questions, the following research methodologies were
utilized: bibliographic analysis, document analysis, and quantitative and qualitative
corpus linguistic analysis. The primary research objectives were: first, to carry out
a situation analysis of factors present in the educational context to identify the
limitations for the English language curriculum and teaching materials for the
school (RICHARDS, 2001, 2006; NATION & MACALISTER, 2010); and second, to
produce a trilingual vocabulary list that will serve as a contribution for future
intercultural EAL teaching materials, through corpus linguistic analysis of existing
intercultural Krahô textbooks. The results of the situation analysis revealed
constraints on the English curriculum due to federal and state indigenous
education laws and limited classroom hours reserved for English (BRAZIL, 1988,
1996, 1998, 2002, 2014; ALBUQUERQUE, 2012, 2014; MUNIZ, 2017). Findings
also indicated encouraging possibilities for utilizing the school’s bilingual
pedagogical practices as a starting point for the implementation of EAL into the
school’s curriculum (ARAUJO, 2015; KRAHÔ, 2017). In response to these
findings, we explore some theoretical contributions regarding: Global and World
Englishes (KACHRU, 1992; KUMARAVADIVELU, 2003, 2016; CANAGARAJAH,
2005, 2014; GALLOWAY, 2017); multilingualism and the acquisition of third
languages (CENOZ, 2000; DE ANGELIS, 2007; JESSNER, 2008; CENOZ &
GORTER, 2011); cross-linguistic influence and lexical transfer (RINGBOM, 1987,
2001); lexicon and vocabulary (REY-DEBOVE, 1984; BIDERMAN, 1996, 1998;
NATION, 2001, 2005); quantitative and qualitative methods for corpus compilation
and analysis (BIBER, 1993; SARDINHA, 2000; O’KEEFFE & MCCARTHY, 2010;
MCENERY & HARDIE, 2012); and the use of the corpus analysis concordancing
software AntConc (ANTONY, 2016). To produce the trilingual vocabulary list, a
small corpus of student-produced texts from three intercultural Krahô textbooks
was analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. The analysis produced
approximately 500 nouns, verbs, adjectives, and multi-word collocations in
Portuguese, which were then translated into English and Krahô to compose the
final trilingual list. The trilingual vocabulary list is offered as an initial lexical
contribution to future intercultural EAL teaching materials that capitalize on
existing linguistic knowledge possessed by the bilingual indigenous students as
they learn English as an additional third language.
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