BASILAR CONCEPTIONS AND TEACHING PRACTICES IN PORTUGUESE LANGUAGE CLASSES

Abstract

The challenge of basic education, in the middle of the 21st century, is, in fact, to make our students leave the school mastering basic knowledge. We always listen that Brazilian students know nothing; large-scale assessments have different results throughout the year, attest the common sense: the extreme difficulties of student’ s education. The Portuguese Language and Mathematics lead in results below the desirable of the students. We cannot deny the efforts, even if sheepish, engendered by the MEC and by different education departments. The crucial question is why the Brazilian results continue to denounce the student’s serious difficulties. As a Portuguese language teacher and teacher trainer, I also address this serious problem. My central hypothesis is that the difficulties are not just a methodological issue or a lack of courseware. These will be achieved by the clear absence of theoretical assumptions that support the practices of teaching and learning Portuguese in the formality of the classroom. Taking this hypothesis as a starting point for the reflections I wish to propose in this paper, I intend to discuss the mistakes found in different didactic practices, considering fundamental linguistic concepts, such as: the concepts of langue and language, specifically,  língua and linguagem, in portuguese, the concept of text and the of genres. It is postulated that, despite of the great and important advance of linguistic theories, these concepts do not reach the end: the basic classroom and the teacher of basic education.