Jornada legendária: o jornal escolar como ferramenta de ensino de língua portuguesa

Abstract

The Brazilian Curriculum (called PCN) proposes an education focussed on a holistic approach to the schooling of citizens. Following such prerogative, the development of learners discursive competence has been established as a goal when it comes to the teaching of the Portuguese language, so that learners become able to participate in different communicative practices that permeate social life. According to the PCN, such an objective requires a reformulation of traditional teaching methods, which focus on the analysis and classification of decontextualised chunks of language. Considering that, the text has been established as the unit to be approached. Therefore, the notion of discursive genres, constitutive of texts, becomes the teaching object of the mother tongue. Despite such directives, there are still many doubts concerning the practical application of the propositions contained in the PCN among teachers of the aforementioned discipline. Consequently, one notices the permanence of traditional activities focussing on classification and grammatical accuracy. Considering such situation, the objective of the present dissertation is to offer practical alternatives that may increase the viability to the teaching of the Portuguese language as conceived of by the PCN. In contemplation of that, we present advantages regarding the use of the school newspaper as a tool for teaching, stemming from data collected from bibliographical research as well as from a concrete experiment applying such pedagogical resource. The results point to the viability and productivity of such a tool for the teaching of the mother tongue.