Mais que recuperar vias esburacadas: Desenvolvimento de um projeto de letramento e ressignificação da leitura e da escrita no contexto escolar

Abstract

This research develops and analyzes a Literacy Project (LP), with the aim of stimulating students’ interest in reading and writing texts in different textual/discursive genres. To this end, we focus on students’ reading and writing from the perspective of Applied Linguistics (Moita Lopes, 2009). In this context, LP make it possible to develop the social practices of reading and writing in real situations experienced by students (Oliveira; Tinoco; Santos, 2014), as they are based on an identified problem that is interesting to students. Methodologically, the investigation is qualitative and uses action research (Thiollent, 1996), which allows studying subjective perspectives of social phenomena and human behavior, by approaching a problem presented by the participants, in which the researcher develops strategies during the stages of the investigative process and develops them to observe how the interaction occurs to analyze the data. Theoretically, it starts from a researcher’s understanding about literacy concept, more precisely from the assumptions elucidated by new literacy studies from a sociocultural aspect (Street, 2014; Kleiman, 2005; Oliveira; Tinoco; Santos, 2014). In face of that, the concept of discursive genres was based on Bakhtin (1997), to consider its relevance in Portuguese Language classes. The research was carried out with 18 student participants in the eighth year of Middle School at a state public institution in Uberlândia, Minas Gerais, Brazil. In the case of the research corpus, we analyzed data obtained from activities and actions of the PL, which were developed from students' concerns about potholes in the streets of the school neighborhood. We point out some stages of a petition text production and a script of questions to interview community drivers. Then, we analyzed the activities carried out during the work and the results of which demonstrated that the LP enabled more effective participation of students in reading and writing activities, with the respective learning of requests to municipal public services – by using social practices, we are able to optimize the quality of the teaching and learning process. The final product of the master’s degree, a project and a small notebook with activity guidelines for dissemination.