Social activity as volunteer work: perspectives of engagement

Abstract

This article, clipping of a master's thesis in Applied Linguistics as a form of experience report, discusses the accomplishment of a volunteer work developed in English classes at the 3rd grade high school level in the countryside of São Paulo. The problem that motivated the work developed from the lack of students´ engagement and interest in the English subject, in face of traditional pedagogical practices used by teachers. Therefore, the purpose of this report is to reflect on the way in which a social activity as voluntary work provides the engagement of students and the expansion of the linguistic repertoire, as well as new ways of being and acting in society. Specifically, it is intended to discuss which values of volunteer work are revealed, in a multimodal way, through the textual genre Testimonial. Thus, this study is anchored in the conceptions of the Socio-Historical-Cultural Activity Theory, in the Pedagogy of Multiliteracies, in Social Activity and in the concept of Volunteering. The methodological bases that support this study are anchored in the Critical Collaborative Research – PcCol. The corpus that composes this research was analyzed through the enunciative, discursive and linguistic categories of language. The results indicate that having participated in a social activity as voluntary work led to class engagement through the redefinition of the English classes and enabled new ways of being and acting in society, in addition to expanding the English language repertoire.