Grammar in the classroom: conceptions of High School teachers and pedagogic implications

Abstract

We deal with the conception(s) of grammar that guides the teaching of Portuguese in High School. From this, we aim to understand in what way(s) this(these) conception(s) may or may not promote the development of students’ communicative competence. For that, we selected a group of teachers who work with the Portuguese language discipline, in two high schools, located in the city of Mauriti-CE. We applied a questionnaire to the selected professionals, through which we obtained an overview of the conception(s) of grammar that guide their classes. The data obtained were analyzed and discussed in the light of different theorists, such as: Franchi (1991); Azeredo (2000); Trava- glia (2009); Antunes (2007, 2014); Faraco and Zilles (2017), among others. Among the results, we highlight that, in the speeches of the professionals inter- viewed, the concepts of normative and internalized grammar predominate, the latter being extremely important to develop a more productive work with the Portuguese language in the classroom. After all, it is through the conception of internalized grammar that space is opened for working with the language in use – a fact that requires the analysis, understanding and production of the most varied oral and written texts, thus contributing to the expansion of communicative competence of language users.