Personal reading exercises on textbooks from Brazil and Portugal

Abstract

The study analyzes the incidence and the manner in which personal reading is covered by the literature sections of textbooks from Brazil and Portugal. The corpus consisted of 73 reading comprehension exercises belonging to two Portuguese language manuals, one from each country, of the 4th year of basic education. Grounded on content analysis, the study comprised mapping and categorization of the samples, while the results were organized and discussed quantitatively and qualitatively. The results indicate that exercises requiring subjectivity are lacking. In both cases, personal reading activities focused on taste, agreement/disagreement and expression of opinion are preponderant. On the other hand, questions regarding the identification/non-identification with the text are rarely proposed. The largest point of contention between the Brazilian and Portuguese textbooks concerns the role filled by personal questions in the didactic sequence, which raised reflections over the implications of promoting subjectivity before and/or after reading.