Reading abilities focused on in the PISA and in Prova Brasil: reflections to offer support to the Portuguese Language teacher working

Abstract

The aim of this article is to describe the main features of the reading evaluation of the International Program of Student Assessment (PISA) and to compare them to the main features of the Prova Brasil.  This comparison is justified by the fact that Portuguese teachers have to face discouraging data from students’ reading proficiency and are also unsure of the nature of PISA’s evaluation, which has great media repercussion. The results of this research show that many of the reading abilities focused on in the PISA are similar to the ones focused on Prova Brasil. We conclude that the knowledge of these demands can provide teachers with more efficient reading practices in the classroom based on the bakthinian concept of discursive genre and the sociocognitive concept of reading.