A mediação docente como estratégia para o aprimoramento da competência leitora

Abstract

This study consists in an alternative to change the ways literature has normally been taught in schools. The historicist view the discipline took has added little results to the development of reading competence of students (tests such as PISA and SAEB confirm these data), not favoring the expansion of their universe through aesthetic experience, which can be reached by classical literature. It is believed that, among other factors, the lack of complex readings and the habit of thinking are elements which directly interfere in the student´s development. Therefore, the objective of this investigation, inserted in the research line Education, Languages and Technology, at the Graduate Program in Education at Universidade de Caxias do Sul, lies on the offer of methodological contributions to the approach of literary language reading in secondary schools, based on a reading proposal with short-stories by Anton P. Tchekhov, via reading workshops. These workshops were planned under the methodological assumptions of Método Recepcional (BORDINI e AGUIAR, 1993) and the Roteiros de Leitura (SARAIVA e MÜGGE, 2006), which conceive the literary text as a work of art and place the reader as the focus of the comprehension process, taking his assumptions, expectations and experiences into consideration and aiming at the alteration of his horizons from the literary reading. To be carried out, pre, during and post reading activities were planned based on four Tchekhov short-stories (whose work is part of PNBE/2009), in order to examine the alteration of students´ perceptions before and after the mediation done in the workshops. The research results, collected from the written tasks designed for the short-stories and through the direct observation technique, have confirmed the scenario of literature in schools nowadays and have showed the improvement of some of the students´ reading abilities, provided by the experience with classical reading. The four individuals, students from the third grade of a private secondary school in Veranópolis, have demonstrated the comprehension of the short-stories and were also able to read the "unrevealed", trait of the classical literature, creating meanings based on the mediation of the researcher-teacher, which is essential for students not having done a superficial reading of the narratives. This way, it seems that directing the text to the student´s own life and helping him realize the wealth of classics as something which reveals a lot of the human condition has been a relevant orientation and maybe a starting point to rebuild methodological principals to teach literature in schools, as well as to revise the current educational concepts in this environment, since literary education develops the individual in an widely civilizing perspective. The strategies developed in this workshop, mainly based on the survey and confirmation of hypothesis and the open discussion on the polysemic issues of the texts, can certainly be adapted to literature classes in secondary schools, considering they are a teaching offer which privileges reading texts in the classroom instead of studying literary theory. It is also relevant to mention that the teacher s mediation, seen as the elaboration of the reading strategies and the permanent questioning on the readings been done, had the role of evidence details and gaps of the text, which, maybe, could not be noticed by the students, inserted in a proposal which understands the individual as the receptor of the text and as an active producer of meanings.