“NOT ALWAYS THE LANGUAGE I SPEAK IS THE ONE THEY UNDERSTAND” – BELIEFS ABOUT ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING WITH PUBLIC SCHOOL ADOLESCENTS

Abstract

In this paper we analyze an English teacher’s beliefs in her first year of teaching adolescent students in a public school. The data were generated through a recorded interview which was transcribed for qualitative analysis. Based on studies within Applied Linguistics, Psychology and Education, the beliefs were inferred regarding the teaching experiences with adolescents and teaching in the public school context. The data reveal a distance between the teacher and her students, characterized by two types of mismatches, the constraint to understand and be understood by adolescents and the constraint she felt while having to integrate the theoretical knowledge she acquired from her English teacher education course and her classroom practice. About the public school, she believes it is not possible to teach English in an effective way, here understood as oral modality, due to several contextual and internal factors such as the students’ demotivation, excessive number of students per class and gaps in her initial teacher education process