Fragmentation and entanglement in the classroom: the criticism of an experience in the Portuguese language teaching practice

Abstract

In this article, we aim to expose, albeit minimally, the tension between two Portuguese Language teaching practices that permeated our experience of Teaching Portuguese Language and Literature II, mandatory for the Portuguese Language Undergraduate Program, from Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC). In teaching practice, we were faced with a splintered and normative teaching, and, for our own practice, we turn to integral and reflective teaching, anchored in the dialogical and social interactionist conception of language and in the historical-critical pedagogical conception, present in current public policies for education. Before exposing (critically and reflexively) this confrontation, we briefly revisit the history of educational theories, the parameterizing pedagogical documents, and the pedagogical proposals that are valid nowadays. Then, we synthesized the concepts in which our performance was anchored: social interactionist language – discourse genres – (BAKHTIN [VOLOSHINOV], 1995 [1929]; BAKHTIN, 2011 [1979]) and symbolic mediation instrument (VIGOTSKY, 1991); the pedagogical practice of teaching the Portuguese language under four axes – writing, reading, grammar and oral language – (ANTUNES, 2003); and an active subject in the learning process (VIGOTSKY, 1991). Within this scenario just exposed, we concluded that the reflection made, even in its limitation regarding the short time of implementation, adds to the discussions in the field of Applied Linguistics concerning the different Portuguese Language teaching practices that compete and co-occur in the classroom, which sometimes distance themselves from current teaching trends, thus associating themselves with aspects of the traditional and technicist conception of language teaching.