The argumentative writing in the textbooks of Portuguese mother tongue - 9 year case
Submitted by:
Isabel Sebastião
Abstract:
The textbook as a teaching tool with a prominent place in the classroom has to be perceived from different perspectives according to the uses that underlie it (Castro & Sousa, 1998). The detailed analysis of school textbooks, according to these authors, allows the understanding of fundamental dimensions of the production and transmission of discourses that take place in the pedagogical field, enabling the identification of some principles that structure his field. Through the analysis of the manuals we have access to information on how the process of transmission and acquisition of knowledge is structured and organized. The discursive forms and methodologies adopted as well as the instructions related to the exercises are a reflection of the concepts underlying the teaching and learning of the mother tongue, whether they come from the official texts or from the authors.
This analysis becomes relevant, since the manual is an ambivalent teaching/learning aid: it serves the student, but especially the teacher. For the student, the manual is the vehicle of the knowledge that has to be learnt as per the stipulations in the official curriculum, for the teacher, it is a/the pedagogical tool that assists him in his practice.
The present work is inserted in the field of linguistics applied to teaching, specifically in the skill of writing. In this case, the analysis focuses on exercises that call for knowledge related to discursive genres related to argument (Adam, 1999; Schneuwly & Dolz, 2004) and intends to contrast the discursive heterogeneity linked to the methodological approach of the manual.
The research that is presented, an extract from a larger project, offers the results of the discursive analysis of a corpus constituted by the 9th grade textbooks that cover a greater number of schools in Portugal (3 textbooks and all the material that comes together: exercices books, CD’s, ...), and, therefore, a greater number of students. The study follows a methodology from the Discourse Analysis perspective, in a descriptive and interpretative analysis, more specifically, a pragmatic-discursive theoretical framework. So, will be analyzed the instructions of the writing (the levels of lexicon, syntax, semantics) exercises and linguistic, textual and discursive contents of expository and argumentative genres.
Keywords: mother tangue textbooks, teaching and learning of writing, discourse analysis.
References
Adam, J-M. (1999). Linguistique Textuelle – des genres de discours aux textes. Paris: Nathan.
Castro, R. V. & Sousa, M. L. (1998). Práticas de Comunicação verbal em Manuais Escolares de Língua Portuguesa. In Rui Vieira de Castro & Maria de Lurdes Sousa (orgs.), Linguística e Educação. Lisboa: APL/ Ed. Colibri. pp. 43-68.
Schneuwly, B. & Dolz, J. (2004). Gêneros Orais e Escritos na Escola. Campinas: Mercado das Letras.