Portuguese as a foreign language textbooks: Framing the discourses on the teaching and learning of writing

Abstract

Textbooks are a resource that is widely used in language classes. For this reason, they are also one of the principal topics in research on the field of didactics. Several studies were conducted about Portuguese as mother tongue textbooks, but there is a lack of researches and information concerning the textbooks of Portuguese as a foreign language. In this study, the researcher analyses the discourse of the authors/editors in the ‘opening texts’ of textbooks for (European) Portuguese as a foreign language, for levels A1 and A2 of the Common European Framework of Reference. The study shows that writing competence is relatively neglected by the authors, and infers that might reflect the way that teaching and learning activities for writing are put into practice. Further research will allow to verify if there are indeed activities for learning to write and how they were thought out and organised.

Keywords: Language teaching, writing competencies, Portuguese, foreign language, textbooks, writing competencies.