Contributions of the lexical notebook in english language lessons in a public school: experience of a pre-service teacher in a internship context

Abstract

In the context of foreign language teaching, acquiring vocabulary becomes essential in the learning process of a target language. In addition, it is noticed that, once the students have more lexical knowledge, their resourcefulness becomes more active. With this in mind, this work intends to analyze how the use of the lexical notebook contributes to the acquisition of vocabulary during the English classes. We believe that lexical knowledge is an important component, because through it, there is a broader knowledge of the studied language. Our work is categorized as a case study, having as corpus students from 6th of elementary school in a public context, located in Campina Grande. The analyzed data which was the “lexical notebook”, were part of our Didactic Sequence entitled "Respect in the School Environment”, created in the internship context. Moreover, our theoretical background is based on the ideas of Oliveira e Paiva (2010), related to English teaching and learning practices, Scott Thornbury (2010), about vocabulary teaching and Larsen-Freeman (2001), about teaching English as a second or foreign language. As results, it was perceived that the use of the lexical notebook during the English classes was a relevant tool, providing and improving students’ lexical knowledge throughout the learning process.