“To write explaining is more difficult”: adult students’ hypothesis on the production of written texts

Abstract

This article reflects on the ways in which youths and adults who are students of basic education (EJA) appropriate school literacy practices that require the production of certain genres and how they participate in those practices. Investigations in this field have reiterated the need to consider the sociocultural dimension of school practices in order to understand the teaching and learning processes of reading and writing. EJA students construct ways of dealing with language that sometimes get close to and sometimes move away from school forms. In the study presented here, the positions taken by students in a situation of text production enabled us to compare their ways of communicating – that occur mainly through informal oral texts which are produced daily – with the forms of written communication from the school context – that often operate with hypothetical situations and are seen as governed by principles and procedures that are different and distant from oral practices. The research project indicates that becoming familiar with the students’ literacy practices and their relations with school practices helps us to understand the teaching process of reading and writing in its sociocultural dimension and to have a better dialogue with the learning processes that students experience. 

Key words: literacy, appropriation, youth and adult education.