Modern Foreign Language in Brazilian Public Schools: challenges and possibilities

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to discuss the possibilities
and challenges of foreign language teaching in Brazilian public
schools. In a social, economic, and, political moment in which the government is interested in students’ (urgent) learning of foreign languages in public schools, the dispute between two methodologies increases: on the one hand, a focus on teaching reading; on the other, the teaching of written and oral language competences. Starting the discussion with the socalled communicative approach and the official national documents, this text points to the deconstruction of this dispute between methodologies, indicating possibilities of actual work in the light of the official documents and a resignifying of the communicative approach.