O livro didático de português para estrangeiros: reflexões e análises a partir da sociolinguística

Abstract

This research has as object of study the textbook of Portuguese for foreigners. We understand that no textbook is a finished product. There is always something to be known, studied and investigated in its pages, texts and activities. In our specific case, we chose five manuals bringing in their titles and / or covers the issue of Brazilian Portuguese and Brazil as a market differentiator. All these books were made with a mission: to increase the students‟s language proficiency, especially in relation to speak Portuguese. It was from this bold proposal to make the student to speak Brazilian Portuguese that our concerns have emerged: was the book, in fact, presenting the Portuguese of Brazil? Was the grammar being presented in an innovative or just traditional way? What is the view of language that guides these materials? From this, we needed to elect what exactly to study in Brazilian Portuguese in order to investigate the manuals. From the reading of Bagno (2010) we chose four variants of contemporary cultured Brazilian Portuguese: the anaphoric resumption of direct object of third person, the verb ter (to have) with the meaning of existir (exist), relativization strategies verb ir (go) with sense of direction. In addition to these variants, we set out to examine books through other issues which were punctuated by a program of UEL (State University of Londrina) called ENPFOL (Teaching Portuguese to Speaker of Other Languages: further experience at graduation). The proposals in this program seemed quite positive since it was the teacher preparation to analyze and investigate textbooks for later select them. When analyze, thus, other issues in our books, such as cultural aspects, objectives and target audience, arrangement of different linguistic components, list of contents and nature of activities and context. The results show that mosto of the variants investigated in these manuals reflect a vision of language in a traditional way which is far from spoken Brazilian Portuguese.