A facultatividade da concordância: português formal real versus gramática escolar

Abstract

In first language teaching, topics related to verbal agreement present a high degree of difficulty for students to master, mainly because of optional rules that only emphasize a strictly grammatical teaching and disregards reality in the stantard use of language.Through the analysis of a language corpus extracted from O Globo and Folha de São Paulo, the two most notorious newspapers in Brazil, this work aims at verifying trends in the standard use of language as to verbal agreement, comparing the corpus data with rules prescribed by traditional grammarians. The final goal is to demonstrate that it is possible to minimize the overwhelming number of optional rules whose main application is to establish paradigms that hinders the performance of students proficient in their language.In short, the research was conducted both qualitatively and quantitatively, and is based on prescriptive and descriptive approaches to language teaching and also on the author's experience in educational institutions. The conclusion is that, with the help of this comparative study, the construction of a quality teaching can be achieved through more interaction