ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the author’s attempts to engage in problematização when using a colleague’s syllabus to teach a semester-long course titled Study of English, a sociolinguistic course focused on the history of English; the relationship between English and social and political contexts in which it is spoken, heard, read, and written; as well as theories of language acquisition. The essay focuses on the author’s use of guiding questions as a way to generate problematização. The essay identifies three influences on the development of these questions: Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Sandro Barros’s re-translation of Freirean concepts, and the ongoing conversation about Critical Language Awareness (CLA) occurring in the fields of literacy education and English education. After establishing the theoretical underpinnings of the essential questions, the essay shows how these essential questions impacted daily routines, small and large group activities, and the projects students created. The essay ends by arguing that students and teachers in the class made three things through problematização: sense, mess, and—hopefully—nothing.
