Reflections on teaching and learning English in the workplace

This book reports on an investigation of the teaching-learning process of two students who studied English for professional reasons in a workplace environment. As adults with specific needs and limited time to complete the course, these students could be characterized as having instrumental motivation to learn the language. However, they chose to take a General English course. Given this context, I observed how these students established and sought to achieve their learning goals and how the classroom interaction process contributed to the achievement of these goals. In the course of my work, I realized that much more than the needs to learn the language were in focus... the students' social representations of what they believed to be an effective English course, what it means to learn English, and what the job market expected of their respective profiles played a decisive role in this process.