SPEAKING EXPRESSION IN PORTUGUESE AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSES

CONFRONTING THEORIES AND COURSEBOOKS

Abstract

This article discusses briefly some key issues that concern the challenges faced by teachers with regard to the learning-teaching of the communicative skill known as "speaking". To this end, we briefly review the literature on the treatment and any value given to this ability within different methodological perspectives throughout the history of the languages didactics. Then, we confront these theoretical proposals with teaching materials (BIZON, A. C., & FONTÃO, E., 2005; MENDES, 2013a, 2013b; LIMA et al, 2014) available to teachers of Portuguese as a Foreign Language (PLE)/Portuguese for Speakers of Other Languages ​​(PFOL). The PLE/PFOL manuals used for this analysis are mentioned in the basic bibliography of Portuguese as a Foreign/Additional Language courses at the Federal University of Technology – Paraná (UTFPR), Curitiba (UTFPR-CT) and at the Federal University of Latin American Integration (UNILA). In the discussion of the data, we observe that such manuals do not have a systematic and thorough work on oral discourse genres, even though they are presented as part of communicative-intercultural approaches. Thus, we raise some reflections on the practices of the oral expression in classes of PLE / PFOL, fruit of our own teaching experience and this action-research contextualizing the importance of this reflection in initial and continued training of professors of PLE / PFOL in those universities.