A articulação e progressão dos gêneros textuais em atividades de produção de texto em livros didáticos de língua portuguesa dos anos iniciais do ensino fundamental

Abstract

This paper analyzes activity instructions to investigate how well text production tasks provided in Portuguese Language textbooks can contribute to developing students proficiency in writing and how well such tasks articulate and progress within a textbook and in relation to others in the textbook collection. The analysis particularly approaches twotextbook collections designed for students in the 3rd to 5th years of the Brazilian Elementary School that had been previously assessed in the scope of the National Textbook Program (Programa Nacional do Livro Didático PNLD 2010). In the reviews provided by this program, Linhas e Entrelinhas is introduced as a collection that stands out for its textproduction tasks, and L.E.R. Leitura, escrita e reflexão is presented as a collection that deserves public attention. The analysis aimed to assess how the written-text production activities are organized in terms of articulation and progression between themselves both within a textbook and within a collection. The analysis also considered how the instructions describe production conditions, planning and revision stages, as well as guidelines on text form and content. This paper assumes that language is a set of social and cognitive practicesthat are historically located (Marcuschi, 2008: 61), and the text is the interaction arena for such practices to take place. Therefore, text production conditions and planning stages are important requirements to allow students to produce their texts considering real circulationcontexts. The articulation between texts and progression thereof are deemed, according to Dolz & Schneuwly (2004), as a guiding principle for writing tasks. As such, the activities need to be constantly recaptured in a spiral fashion and introduce increasingly complex elements stage by stage. The methodology involved approaching what text genres areexplored in the textbooks, and how the activities are proposed. In the first part of the analysis, the activities were categorized aiming to identify the genres that are worked on once or more than once in a given textbook and in the collection. In the second part of the analysis, the textproduction instructions were assessed to shed a light into how a collection approaches text genres after they had been worked on somewhere else in the own collection. The analysis of both collections built on Dolz & Schneuwlys (2004) proposal for grouping text genres. Theauthors argue that one way to ensure progression in approaching text production is grouping the several text genres in common capacities related to the text types: narrating, exposing, reporting, arguing, and describing actions. The analysis of the collections from thisperspective shows that Linhas e Entrelinhas introduces improvements in relation to the other collection, as it addresses a variety of genres that accounts for all the five capacities, structures production stages better and contributes to the topic construal. On the other hand, L.E.R. Leitura, escrita e reflexão is more concerned with the production of narrating genres and does not include arguing and describing genres. The analysis shows that the tasks of this collection are usually aimed at school drafting and provide ill-formed instructions. The results point out that irrespective of proposal and context varieties, text production tasksincluded in textbooks still need further rearrangements aiming to organize activities in such a way that they articulate and progress over time.