Several studies have offered solutions to improve foreign language teaching in public schools; however, they do not investigate students understanding of its validity or of the adequacy of existing proposals. This study undertakes this endeavor. It investigates students views of the role of FL teaching in public schools, contrasts pedagogical practices to students psychological reality, suggests materials that are in line with such a reality, and gathers students reactions to these materials. Conjugating the framework of action-research, qualitative principles, and descriptive statistics, this study analyzes questionnaires with open and closed questions, interviews with fifteen subjects and the reaction of students enrolled in the sixth grade of a public school in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro. Results indicate that the subjects do not see any reasonable explanation to learn a foreign language in public schools and that they see the experience as a sequence of non-sense exercises. However, their reaction to materials designed in line with their socio-cultural reality increased participation and allowed the development of competencies that go beyond the teaching of the English language itself. In fact, literacy development emerges as the answer to the validity of EFL teaching in this context.