Formação do professor de produção escrita em língua materna: da idealização à concretização

Abstract

This study investigates the teaching of writing skills in the Portuguese as a Native Language Teaching Certificate Program at the Federal University of Ceará (UFC). The study aims at diagnosing how the skills of teaching to write are developed in this program. This quali-quantitative study relates to the field of Applied Linguistics and is supported by the principles of the socio-interactionist approach and by the theories of Bakhtin and Vygotsky and of some Brazilian researchers who adopted these theories and approach. Questionnaires were administered to two groups of students taking the course “Teaching Oral and Written Skills” and to two teachers who taught this course at UFC. Student teachers were also observed while teaching classes in Portuguese as a native language in schools in 2012. Official documents, such as the curriculum of the Program and the syllabi of some of the courses, were also analyzed, with special attention to the description of the courses, their content and bibliography. The purpose of this analysis was to identify the theoretical-methodological principles that were used as foundations for the Program – its goals, mission, theoretical and pedagogical bases. The answers to the questionnaires, the audio and video recordings of the classes as well as the notes taken during the observation of these classes enabled this researcher to analyze the theoretical discussions on general writing themes and the activities undertaken in the courses and performed by the student teachers while teaching classes in schools. These data were used to diagnose the concepts of teaching writing which underlie the curriculum and pedagogical practices developed in the Program. The analysis of the official documents of the Program points out certain discrepancies between the idealized goals of the Program and the training provided to the student teachers. The answers given in the questionnaires highlighted the little influence that the theories that support the Program and the courses had on what is actually done in the courses. There is no straight connection between these theories and the practice in the classrooms. For example, Bakhtin and Vygotsky are not read in their original sources, and the discussions on the interactional approaches to writing are superficial and fragmented. The observations of the classes demonstrated that the student teachers still adhered to pedagogical practices based on traditional concepts of writing in which writing was understood as a result, and the types of texts worked on were limited to the traditional narrative, descriptive and argumentative genres. Moreover, the writing activities developed in the student teachers’ classes resulted in group writing to one and only specific reader – the teacher.