Ensino e aprendizagem de inglês para fins específicos: um estudo de caso

This work aimed to investigate an English for Specific Purposes course of a Language Teaching Center of a public university in the state of Sao Paulo. The study intended to detect possible causes of difficulties faced by its participants. The course dealt with the skills of reading, interpreting and translating texts from several areas, based on the undergraduate courses offered by the institution. The methodology used in this investigation was done by the Case Study (NUNAN, 1992), Content Analysis (BAUER, 2007), along with qualitative research (LARSEN-FREEMAN; LONG, 1991). The research was performed based on the concepts of Vieira-Abrahão (2006) and Bauer (2007), being conducted in the following order: data collection of the participating students; organization and categorization of data collected; qualitative analysis, to designate the most common causes of difficulties, as well as the indication of students who presented problems to carry out such activities. Although the analyzes indicate the students' good performance in the general use of the course, we identified that the absence of the participants during the course, the low number of extra activities performed, the lack of the study of certain topics, and the usage of the mother tongue were the causes of some of the problems identified. In the end, we made comments about the referrals for future courses, the gaps identified in this research, the possible contributions to the area, as well as the referrals and themes that appeared and that can be explored in other studies.