Palavras

Time to think and to learn how to read the world

2026-03-19T16:35:11+00:00

With a redesigned graphic layout, this issue of the magazine brings together selected texts from the XVI National Meeting of the Association of the teachers of Portuguese, which took place at the University of Aveiro between July 3 and 5, 2025. Entitled "Orality and Literature in the Teaching of Portuguese," the meeting fostered reflection around the following question: What can we do in school, what can we do in the classroom so that our students learn to speak and listen thoughtfully, to read better, and to appreciate reading and love books, and if possible, go further, giving them the tools to learn to read the world?

There is always hope; Sebastianism is proof that hope never ends.

2026-03-19T16:35:47+00:00

"I seek to highlight the existence of traces of a Portuguese culture independently of different chronological moments"

Miguel Real

Canon and Teaching

2026-03-19T16:36:20+00:00

This article explores the close relationship between literary canon and education, highlighting how Academies, since Antiquity, have been responsible for selecting, fixing, and transmitting texts considered fundamental to culture. It begins by identifying some points of consensus, such as the structuring role of the canon in the study of literature and the influence of figures like Bloom, Eco, Calvino, and Aguiar e Silva. However, it underlines the existing controversy, both in the definition of selection criteria and in the divergences between national and international lists. Next, it delves into the relationship between identity and otherness, arguing that cultural self-knowledge depends on confrontation with the other. This process manifests itself in the artistic, cartographic, and symbolic expressions that shape the image of Europe and, in particular, of Portugal. Through maps, monuments, myths, and literary works, it exemplifies how the nation narrates and imagines itself, from the foundational cycle to the imperial and refoundational periods. Throughout the text, the symbolic construction of Portugal—the place, the hero, and the empire—is revisited through figures such as Afonso Henriques, Camões, Vieira, Pessoa, and Almada Negreiros. Heritage (both tangible and intangible) emerges as an encyclopedia of identity, reflecting dreams, prophecies, myths, and political projects. In the final part, these reflections are related to the teaching of literature, questioning the role of textbooks, the canon, orality, and academic freedom, and advocating for relational and interartistic approaches that allow students to deeply understand the complexity of Brazilian cultural heritage.

José Saramago and António Vieira

2026-03-19T16:36:59+00:00

This article proposes a comparative reading between José Saramago and Father António Vieira, highlighting the convergence between two authors separated in time but united by aesthetic, rhetorical, and ethical affinities. Based on Saramago's statements, in which he acknowledges the profound influence of Vieira's verbiage on his writing, they examine the multiple transtextual modalities that articulate this relationship: intertextuality, architextuality, hypertextuality, and ekphrastic echoes. Although criticism and textbooks focus mainly on linguistic aspects or on characters like Bartolomeu de Gusmão in Memorial do Convento, this study broadens the focus to less explored dimensions, highlighting structural and conceptual affinities between Vieira's parenetic rhetoric and Saramago's literary project. In both, the study observes the valorization of the performativity of the word, the conceptual play, the oscillation between light and shadow, the enunciative theatricality, and the spiral discursive construction. It is shown that Saramago conceives of language as an instrument of revelation and unsettling, akin to the sermon as an art of persuading and moving the listener. The structural orality of his prose, the rhythm marked by pauses and melodic inflections, and the sinuous phrase that advances in circles reveal a reinvented Baroque heritage. The analysis of works such as Memorial do Convento, Ensaio sobre a Cegueira, Levantado do Chão, or A Caverna reveals the persistence of the same central theme: the questioning of the human condition, the denunciation of injustices, and the affirmation of an ethical humanism. It is concluded that Saramago's production, although filtered through a secular and modern horizon, prolongs and transforms the Vieira legacy, demonstrating how certain literary dialogues remain alive and operative far beyond their time.

From the silence of books to the voice of readers.

2026-03-19T16:37:52+00:00

This article aims to provide a framework for questioning the status and place of literary reading in linguistic and literary education during the early years of schooling, focusing on literary texts and situated ways of reading them. Starting from the defense of the essential formative role of literature, it problematizes didactic methods of reading literary texts in school and points to reading itineraries supported, theoretically and methodologically, by the aesthetics of reception and the transactional model of reading advocated by Rosenblatt (1995). It also points to educational pathways rooted in proposals for intertextual and intermodal practices of reading literary texts and socialized writing, with a view to forming competent and cosmopolitan readers, within the framework of a literary education that is not limited to the teaching of literature.

Active reading and the timelessness of the canon

2026-03-19T16:38:30+00:00

When children listen to readings, they develop curiosity, imagination, and empathy, while simultaneously expanding their vocabulary and knowledge of the world. As readers, children acquire a love of reading and, through it, begin their literary education. Ideally, it is the family that creates reading habits, but it is the school that consolidates them, promoting reading-rich environments and encouraging reading for pleasure. It is expected, therefore, that when students begin studying the classics, they will already have developed reading skills that allow them to understand, interpret, and appreciate the literary canon. It is also important that the reading of the classics be done with a dose of pleasure and another of effort, as this is part of our cognitive and emotional growth. To this end, we need to invest in active and dynamic methodologies that promote change. As a historical and cultural repository that preserves values and humanizes us, literature dialogues with other forms of expression and knowledge. Literature as a collective project can also present itself as a meeting place capable of reclaiming its timelessness and relevance in the curriculum.

Rewriting the canon, reinventing teaching

2026-03-19T16:39:20+00:00

This article proposes a reflection on the place of canonical literature in higher education, based on a creative writing experience with undergraduate students in Basic Education, future teachers of the 1st and 2nd cycles of Elementary Education. The workshop, entitled "(Other) writings of the classics: between the canonical and the contemporary in Portuguese literature," held in the 2019-2020 academic year, aimed to promote active and creative contact with works from the Portuguese literary canon, challenging students to create stories based on characters, times, and spaces inspired by classic texts of the national literary tradition, reorganized into original narrative constellations. More than a technical exercise, it proved to be a space for aesthetic experimentation and critical appropriation of literary texts, allowing students to creatively reformulate canonical references, combining them with their own imagination and transforming the classics from untouchable objects into living material for creation. Based on theoretical assumptions by Harold Bloom, Gérard Genette, and João Barrento, among others, the activity highlighted the intertextual power of literary creation, which rewrites, reconstructs, and updates traditions, revealing how the canon is, above all, a living, malleable, and constantly reinterpreted heritage. By reimagining the classics, the workshop restored their formative power and revealed creative writing as a pedagogical strategy capable of crossing tradition and authorship, reading and experience.

When students write micro-stories

2026-03-19T16:40:18+00:00

This article analyzes micro-narratives produced by students of the Master's Program in Latin-Romance Translation Studies at the University of Bucharest in the project "Photographic Micro-narratives" (2022-2023). The study examines how the students assimilated the structural and aesthetic characteristics of the micro-narrative as an autonomous literary genre, starting from a theoretical characterization that addresses its origins in Hispanic-American Modernism, its consolidation in the historical Avant-gardes, and its distinctive features such as extreme brevity, verbal economy, elliptical nature, intertextuality, humor, and fantasy. The analysis of student productions is organized into four fundamental axes that demonstrate how ellipsis functions as a device for interpretative cooperation, the fantastic as a modality of mimetic transgression, intertextuality as a strategy of narrative economy, and humor as a mechanism of textual condensation and social criticism. Through Barthes' theory of punctum (Barthes, 2015[1980]), the pedagogical project combined photographic art with literary creation in Portuguese as a non-native language (PLNM), conceiving the textual production process as a long continuum of an interactive and recursive nature (Flower & Hayes, 1981).
The results reveal that the students effectively operationalized the fundamental narrative strategies of contemporary microfiction.

Dramaturgy based on literary text

2026-03-19T16:40:56+00:00

This article presents a theoretical and practical approach to applying the concepts of dramaturgy to literary texts. It distinguishes between dramaturgy and literature of the dramatic genre, as well as between dramaturgical processes based on literary works and the adaptation of texts. Readings and rereadings of texts from various literary genres, combined with notions of theatricality, performativity, and corporeality, are demonstrated here as a possibility for studying and understanding literature. The article also explores two practical examples of applying dramaturgical processes to two literary works: a novel by Isabel da Nóbrega (Viver com os outros) and an epic poem by Luís de Camões (Os Lusíadas). The dramaturgical processes described here were tested in a school context, in the Theatre subject (12th grade option), at the Camões Secondary School in Lisbon. The practice described here is fundamentally directed towards the educational context.

As Perguntas da Menina do Ó in defense of a restless spectacle

2026-03-31T14:35:27+01:00

Successive national arts programs, in line with the values of the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, have defined their mission as an (infinite) task of liberating life from destiny and promoting transformation through the arts. In the context of the 16th National Meeting of the Association of Teachers ood Portuguese, in 2025, specifically dedicated to the theme of Orality and Literature in Portuguese Language Teaching, we propose to analyze the structure of the workshop-performance "The Questions of the Girl from Ó", aimed at children in the first cycle of basic education, as well as the combination of questioning, theatre and poetry, decoding its place of indiscipline and restlessness.

Discovering Women Writers in Portuguese

2026-03-31T14:35:13+01:00

If memory is a central criterion of the canon, and this can be described as a retrospective list (Tamen, 2020), and knowing that, until the mid-20th century, few Portuguese women writers entered this list (Klobucka, 2020), it is fundamental to update it by recovering forgotten authors from memory. The project “Discovering Women Writers in Portuguese” (DEP), by the Teachers of Portuguese Association (APP), aims to do exactly that, recognizing the contribution of forgotten women writers in Portuguese with regard to literary and journalistic genres, with a particular focus on the Estado Novo period in Portugal. Emphasis is placed on short stories, published regularly in the press, as well as novels, short stories, poetry, and plays, among other genres (travel memoirs, diaries, or autobiographical fragments). Many of the texts authored by women were published in the press, primarily between the 1950s and 1970s; Others have also been published in volume, but in most cases, without reprints for many years. The objective of this communication is twofold: firstly, to present the DEP and the initiatives already carried out and underway; secondly, to open the possibility of future collaborations within the scope of the project.

They (the women) deal the cards

2026-03-31T14:34:57+01:00

The didactic approach “They Write Letters” starts with the work New Portuguese Letters, by Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta, and Maria Velho da Costa, and also considers other works by the “three Marias”. The presented proposal is part of a broader project to value women writers, “Discovering Women Writers in Portuguese”, which seeks to promote a more significant presence of texts written by women in curricular documents. The “unusual originality and relevance, from a literary and social point of view” of Novas cartas portuguesas, as Ana Luísa Amaral observes (Barreno et al., 2010, p. XXI), makes this work ideal not only for addressing important concepts in the field of literary education, but also for reflecting on various themes in the field of Citizenship. For the selection of the individual works of each author, we followed the clue of the subtitle of New Portuguese Letters (or how Maina Mendes put both hands on her body and kicked the ass of the other legitimate superiors). In a rather ingenious way, the main theme of the Novas cartas portuguesass is presented, linking the titles: Maina Mendes, by Maria Velho da Costa, Ambas as mãos sobre o corpo by Maria Teresa Horta, and Os outros legítimos superiores, by Maria Isabel Barreno. The activities that make up this didactic path, despite the evident connections, are autonomous, easily allowing for spacing throughout the year and articulation with Reading and Citizenship and Development projects. The choice to analyze excerpts rather than entire works is justified for two reasons: the first is related to the complexity of the novels in question, catering to the age range of the high school students to whom the proposals are directed, and the second to the difficulty in integrating complete works into already full school curricula.

The illustrated epic

2026-03-31T14:34:42+01:00

This article presents the work carried out in the project "The Illustrated Epic," which, in the 2024/25 school year, was developed by 9th-grade students at Grande Colégio Universal in their Portuguese and Visual Education classes. The didactic initiative focused on creating images representing different moments from Luís de Camões's Os Lusíadas, as a strategy for studying the epic poem. The students' drawings revealed a clear understanding of passages from the poem and allowed them to develop creativity and critical thinking. Thus, in addition to describing the methodology and the various steps of the project, the article explains the objectives and theoretical assumptions of the approach followed. In a second part of the text, the products generated by this initiative (a digital book, an exhibition, and a presentation) are indicated, and some of the drawings created by the students are reproduced, in addition to presenting the results of a questionnaire answered by the students about the relevance of the activities to the study of Os Lusíadas.

From DiG!T@L to DIGITAL

2026-03-31T14:34:28+01:00

Young people today live immersed in a fragmented, superficial, and hyper-connected digital world, which creates serious challenges for literary education, which has always been based on deep and linear reading. Neuroscientists and linguists such as Wolf (2007, 2018), Baron (2021), and Desmurget (2021) have warned about the cognitive impact of accelerated digital consumption, showing how it affects the ability to concentrate and read deeply. This article starts from these concerns but explores the potential of multimodality as a way to overcome obstacles. We argue that, instead of viewing students' digital culture as a threat, we can integrate it pedagogically to lead them to the reading of literary texts, promoting contact with great canonical works. This article describes several concrete pedagogical projects developed in secondary education, in which students recreated works from the Portuguese literary canon—such as Crónica de D. João I, Os Maias and Mensagem —in narrative video game formats, using tools like Twine or RPG Maker. The description aims to demonstrate that this strategy requires a comprehensive, critical, and creative reading to construct the digital artifacts and proves effective in promoting in-depth reading, interpretive autonomy, and critical thinking. We thus intend to suggest multimodal work methodologies that leverage digital skills and students, emerging as fundamental allies in revitalizing the pedagogy of literature in the 21st century.

Literary voices in teaching Portuguese as a Foreign Language at advanced levels, didactics and AI fecundidade

2026-03-31T14:34:14+01:00

In these first decades of the 21st century, language teachers have seen their own classrooms, involuntarily and silently, "invaded" by technology, notably Artificial Intelligence (AI), which significantly impacts the teaching-learning process. It is in this context that LPE teachers find themselves, progressively becoming aware that digital literacy itself is essential, whether for the transmission of knowledge, the development of programs, or the programming of interactive strategies aimed at acquiring reading, speaking, and writing skills. The promotion of the use of new technologies, in fact, aims to facilitate this process, making it more accessible through the combination of computers, cell phones, smartphones, iPads, with digital or non-digital educational programs, through interaction with websites, podcasts, videos, blogs, or forums, leading to the re-elaboration of daily teaching methodology, allowing the development of creative and dialogical activities. Thus, incorporating AI-powered digital tools into language programs and practices, such as ChatGPT, the Talkpal mobile and web application, or the Duolingo platform and mobile application, has become indispensable for achieving the desired results in classroom work. This work reflects on the challenges, advantages, and new opportunities offered by AI and interweaves literary (hyper)texts with didactic strategies aimed at reinforcing and valuing knowledge of the cultural spaces inherent to the Portuguese language, illustrating a methodological segment of subsidiarity between literature, language, and the digital world.

The station rotation model as an active methodology in 6th grade Portuguese classes

2026-03-31T14:33:57+01:00

This study aims to understand the impact of active methodologies, especially the station rotation model, on the development of socio-emotional skills, such as autonomy and collaborative competence, by students in the 2nd Cycle of Elementary Education, based on the complete reading and exploration of the dramatic work Os Piratas (The Pirates). Within the context of Supervised Teaching Practice, this study adopts a qualitative approach, using participant and non-participant observation and questionnaires for students. In general, it is possible to verify that the station rotation model appears to develop autonomy and promote collaborative work practices, increasing communication skills among peers, as well as engagement in language activities centered around the exploration of a literary work.

Morphological knowledge in the service of understanding (literary) texts.

2026-03-31T14:32:59+01:00

This article proposes a reflection on the relevance of morphological knowledge for text comprehension. After initially exemplifying how morphological knowledge and metalinguistic reflection on lexicon and morphology (especially through semantic analysis of bases and affixes) can contribute to the understanding of a (literary) text, a didactic approach (Jorge, 2019) structured in three stages is presented: i) comprehension of a predominantly descriptive text (portrait of Sören – a character from the short story Saga, by Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen); ii) metalinguistic reflection (analysis of the morphological constituents of constructed nouns, consisting of base + suffix -ity); iii) text production (description of Hans, Sören's son, or: mobilizing the morphological knowledge developed in the second stage). This didactic approach is relevant to the role of self-regulated morphological awareness as an instrument for reading comprehension (Reading and Literary Education), metalinguistic reflection (Grammar), and text production (Writing), based on the Essential Learning Objectives in Portuguese currently in force, and considering, in particular, one of the strategic teaching actions aimed at the Student Profile: "comprehension of literary texts from a reading path that involves…using knowledge of the language... to interpret expressions and segments of text"

Orality, oral genres, and literature.

2026-03-31T14:32:30+01:00

This article aims to reflect on a possible articulation between the teaching of orality and oral genres and literature. Official documents in Brazil, since the 1990s, have already pointed to the need to work with orality and oral genres as essential parts of Portuguese language teaching. However, teachers point out that one of the difficulties in doing good work with orality and oral genres lies in the scarcity of good teaching materials or other sources of resources that can assist them. Reflecting on this, we have carried out practical actions in both initial and continuing teacher training to show how orality and oral genres can be articulated with other teaching objects already traditional in schools, such as literature. In these practical actions, we start from the theoretical-methodological framework of Sociodiscursive Interactionism, especially in the discussions of oral didactics by Dolz and Schneuwly (1998), Schneuwly and Dolz (2004), and articulate them with Candido's (1989) conception of literature. In this article, we will focus on three actions: two for initial training and one for continuing education. The results of the actions allow us to perceive that students advance in literary literacy and simultaneously in understanding how they can develop good work with orality and oral genres.

On orality in a research and training program for teachers and educators

2026-03-31T14:32:45+01:00

Although long neglected in the teaching and learning process of the mother tongue, orality is an important dimension of verbal communication and a relevant element in the exercise of critical and active citizenship. Moving beyond the idea that developing oral communication skills in students of any educational level simply requires having them speak in the classroom, it became necessary to create a didactics of orality that would allow teachers to involve students in oral communication situations and assess their performance in this area of the mother tongue, considering both comprehension and expression. In this text, we intend to analyze the path we have taken in this field, as a researcher and trainer in the area of Education, combining the didactics of orality with the transversal approach to teaching and learning the mother tongue and the promotion of education for global citizenship and sustainability.

Multimodal text genre: video review

2026-03-31T14:32:17+01:00

This article analytically models the video review as a multi-modal textual genre, examining its socio-interactional dimension, its compositional planning, its enunciative and discursive mechanisms, and its multisemiosis. Anchored in the socio-interactionist tradition of genre studies, especially in the contributions of Luiz Antônio Marcuschi and the Geneva School, represented by Dolz and Schneuwly, the study starts from the understanding of genres as socio-discursive practices materialized in concrete texts and conditioned by spheres of activity and technical devices of circulation. The corpus, consisting of video reviews produced in the field of Literature, is analyzed from a categorical matrix that articulates three levels: compositional, enunciative, and socio-technical. The research demonstrates that this genre is not merely a modal transposition of the written review, but a generic reconfiguration that redistributes the evaluation throughout the text, intensifies the presence of the enunciator through performative resources, and integrates engagement strategies conditioned by the algorithmic logics of the platforms. The results highlight the need to refine the analytical categories applied to multimodal genres and point to the expansion of modeling studies in the digital realm.

Traditional Literature in the 2nd Cycle of Basic Education

2026-03-31T14:32:01+01:00

It is well known that literature contributes to the integral formation of the human being. But what are we talking about when we talk about literature? What kind of literature moves within the school context? Is literature taught? Is it learned? Do you educate yourself? Although ancient, these questions, whenever revisited, keep relevant the reflection on the subversive and destabilizing character of the literary text and on the role of the school as a space of restlessness, liberation, and transformation in a society increasingly subjugated to neoliberal interests. In this context, irony, characterized by a markedly optimistic and democratic register, is presented as a reference strategy for questioning, the development of critical thinking, and subsequent resistance to the domestication of knowledge. Considering that traditional literature constitutes fertile ground for the germination of irony, what is proposed here is an analysis of the place of this literature in current textbooks, a problematization of the work guidelines presented by them, and the outlining of an alternative route for the 2nd Cycle of Basic Education. Taking the fable "The Fox and the Stork" as an example, this study seeks to embrace the communicative specificity of literature, to reclaim the oral essence of traditional literary texts fixed by writing, and to promote the potential of irony in literary texts as a pedagogical tool for the exercise of a humanist citizenship, consistent with the values sought for the 21st century.

"I order you to yawn."

2026-03-31T14:31:47+01:00

This article analyzes Chapter X of The Little Prince (2008) as a tool for developing linguistic pragmatics, focusing on politeness, forms of address, and speech acts in asymmetrical interactions. We highlight the literary genre as a valuable resource for exploring how language integrates power relations, respect, and cooperation, promoting critical reflection on language use in real communication situations. The selected examples allow for classroom work on identifying and understanding pragmatic resources, connecting theory and practice for the development of fundamental communicative skills. The existence of translations of the work into different varieties of Portuguese further enriches the intercultural discussion and highlights the relevance of pragmatics in mediating communicative expectations. Thus, Chapter X proves to be a valuable space for teaching pragmatics, articulating theory and practice and promoting the development of essential skills for effective communication.

Orality in Portuguese as a Non-Native Language

2026-03-31T14:31:32+01:00

This article reflects on the challenges of teaching Portuguese as a Non Native Language, with a particular focus on oral competence, in school contexts characterized by linguistic and cultural diversity. Based on a literature review, the text aims to: (i) explore the concepts of multiculturalism and interculturality within the scope of language education and (ii) analyze challenges and discuss pedagogical implications for inclusive practices in Portuguese as a Non Native Language teaching. Orality is understood as a central axis of linguistic, school, and social integration for students who speak other mother tongues, in close articulation with the development of writing. It concludes that the promotion of intercultural pedagogical practices requires investment in teacher training, creating educational environments that recognize and value linguistic and cultural diversity as both a resource and an end.

Digital technologies and the teaching and learning of speech

2026-03-31T14:30:50+01:00

This work aims to verify to what extent the pedagogical and curricular guidelines for teaching and learning Portuguese in the 2nd Cycle of Basic Education recommend strategic teaching actions focused on the use of digital technologies in oral language teaching and learning practices, and to propose reflections that pave the way for Portuguese language teaching practices mediated by technological resources, meeting the interests and motivations of students currently attending the 5th and 6th grades, promoting more interactive, critical and meaningful pedagogical practices, in accordance with the Bakhtinian perspective, which presents solid theoretical support for the integration of technologies in the teaching of Portuguese.

Deixis and the teaching of orality

2026-03-31T14:31:19+01:00

In this text, we present a brief reflection on how deixis can be approached in the Portuguese language discipline: not only as a grammatical topic to be addressed in 11th and 12th grade classes, but also as a theoretical concept serving the development of oral competence in its dual aspect (comprehension and production). We therefore start from the following question: how is it possible to stimulate the teaching of orality through the explicit work of deixis in high school classes? First, we provide a theoretical framework for the phenomenon of deixis based on the contributions of linguistic pragmatics, which we consider essential learning in the teaching and learning of Portuguese as a mother tongue, because it looks not only at what is said, but also at the context. Next, we analyze a corpus of six textbooks for the subject, seeking to ascertain the complexity of the cognitive operations activated by the items on this content and verifying the presence/absence of proposals on orality. Finally, we highlight the potential of this grammatical notion. Based on the fundamentals of Text/Discourse Pedagogy, we explore the enunciative coordinates of a letter from Fernando Pessoa to Ofélia Queiroz, which can be integrated into teaching materials dealing with deictic reference.

Grammar in action

2026-03-31T14:31:07+01:00

“Grammar in Action: Clitic Games” is a set of playful activities for teaching and learning grammatical content within the context of teaching and learning Portuguese as a Mother Tongue. It is based on an action-research project carried out at the Aurélia de Sousa Secondary School in the 2023/2024 school year. This study, within the scope of Educational Linguistics, aims to address the gaps that students in a 9th-grade class showed in activities involving the placement of clitic personal pronouns in Contemporary European Portuguese and, simultaneously, to develop their linguistic awareness. This article presents the theoretical foundations underlying the design of the physical games, which were combined with the implementation of two grammar laboratories in the aforementioned class. Finally, it outlines the conclusions and future research paths within the scope of grammar didactics.

Emília Amor

2026-03-19T16:56:41+00:00

Emília Amor was a founding member and leader of the Portuguese Teachers Association (APP). As a way of recognizing and honoring her work, the Teachers of Portuguese Association created the Emília Amor Prize for research in Portuguese Language Didactics.

Palavras 64

2026-03-19T16:57:34+00:00

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