“Contos para morrer de rir”: uma abordagem de letramento crítico e argumentativo para o ensino fundamental

Abstract

This research addresses the teaching of argumentation as an object of instruction in Portuguese language classes from a discursive perspective. The objective of the project was to allow the student to recognize the strategies used in humorous stories and, based on this understanding, develop argumentative abilities in their discourse produced in interactive situations. This proposal arises from the fact that a large number of students enrolled in the school where this research was conducted complete elementary education without the consolidation of various capacities. Therefore, an educational project was designed to contribute to the enhancement of the abilities of ninth-grade students in elementary education. The research problem sought to answer the following question: How can humorous stories contribute to the realization of argumentative purposes? To obtain answers to this question, the research was planned as an intervention work of a qualitative nature, since an educational project was designed with the purpose of contributing to the solution of a practical problem: students lacked motivation in school practices related to text production. The product of this Professional Master's degree is the constitution of a set of didactic modules organized into workshops that allowed for the study of content and procedures enabling students to produce a "hyper-story" after participating in four of these modules, which consisted of reading, comprehension, and text production workshops focused on the discursive genre of humorous stories. The theoretical framework is mainly based on studies of argumentation and rhetoric in conjunction with the relationship between discursive genres and multiliteracies. The results indicate that, in order to alleviate the writing difficulties of elementary school students, it is advisable to combine linguistic-literary and rhetorical strategies, as literary production contributes to the improvement of students' argumentation, especially when they are immersed in real language use situations. The conducted experience also reinforces that moments of language interaction allow students to enhance textual production and develop reflective and critical positions, even within a school context.