The intrinsic relationship between language conceptions and didactic reading activities: contributions to the mother tongue teacher training

Abstract

Considering the intrinsic relationship between the conceptions of language and the reading work in mother tongue, we discuss the main conceptions of language and how they affect reading activities. Specifically, we analyze, under the perspective of Applied Linguistics, exercises based on textbooks in order to provide subsidies to teachers in the process of evaluating the available material they have to work with, and those they elaborate by themselves. We argue that assumptions of different conceptions of language may complement each other to achieve pedagogical objectives. Thus, classroom work based on a discursive approach to language, which seems, in our view, to better serve the pretension of critical reader teaching, does not necessarily exclude linguistic analysis activities from a structuralist tendency. We conclude that language conception and reading activities are inherently related. Therefore, the teacher needs to learn such theories in order to offer a more coherent and conscientious teaching practice, according to each pedagogical reality.