Texts of Students from University and Primary School: The Maintaining of Writing Problems

Abstract

In the academic environment, since the mid 1980s, studies and debates point to the existence of a crisis in the teaching of Portuguese (both in the writing and reading skills). Such claim has also been discussed in the media (newspapers, magazines, newscasts, websites, etc). In order to analyze the so-called crisis in writing, we will undertake a comparison between the writing of students from first year of the first cycle — elementary school — (essays written in class in 2008) and from college students (internship reports for the Language Degree from a public University, presented in 2008 and 2009). The objective of this comparison is to ascertain, in the mentioned texts, how two important factors of textuality are constituted: cohesion and textual coherence. This article aims at a reflection supported by the following initial hypothesis: there is a possible culture, in the anthropological sense of the term, which tolerates the spread of precarious texts in different environments, among which are the most formal — such as the University — where, supposedly, no one would admit a written text that does not fulfill the formal rules of the Portuguese language.