ABSTRACT
The education of prospective foreign language teachers has evolved in Brazil parallel to the demands established both by the official curricular parameters and by the very expansion of the market of commercial courses. Thus, the aspiring foreign-language teacher faces a diverse and heterogeneous work environment when entering the labor market. Although students are often exposed to a wide range of subjects on the history and nature of their target languages as well as to pedagogical tools necessary to teach them, novice teachers face potentially diverse market demands and the lack of prestige of the profession. This article aims to identify and analyze bottlenecks and potentialities of the university training of foreign language teachers by looking into curricular subjects and activities comprising professional practice training. Our research is inspired by the literature on ‘professional capacity-building’ in foreign language teaching and the working concept of teachers´ professional self-definition.
Keywords:
teachers’ training; professional self-definition; German as a foreign language; teachers’ professionalization