LETRAMENTOS: CONCEPÇÕES DE ESCRITA E PONTUAÇÃO

Abstract

One of the barriers to be overcome so that a society can achieve a reasonable level of literacy is the understanding on the part of the mediators of this process that the whole conception of teaching how to write, whether it is guided by a vision of literacy or alphabetisation, presupposes a concept of writing. To help facilitate this understanding, in this article we propose a review of the concepts of literacy, seeking to present, discuss and recognise the concept of writing present in these conceptions of literacy, as well as their representation in schools. To this end, we analyse the use of punctuation in texts written by two children in the early stages of schooling and also the proposal for the use of punctuation in a Portuguese textbook, adopted for the first grade, second year of elementary school. The results indicate that although the school and the school textbook continue to focus on an autonomous view of literacy, there are cases where children demonstrate traits of authorship in their writings, either because they have the opportunity to study in a school that understands the social functions of writing, or because they arrive from home with different interactional modes relating to written text than that which predominates in their school. The data also allows us to point to the importance of articulating more unique perspectives with social perspectives of writing, since distinctive features may be indicative of social constructions of literacy, such as a child's access to written text and the ways of interacting with the written text. In conclusion, we emphasise the importance for a teacher undergoing training to recognise the concepts of writing that are present in both theory and practice.