[The speech genres approach in a textbook of German as a foreign language for beginners]

Abstract

Teaching based on texts and textual diversity has been receiving increasing space in classrooms and textbooks. The Bakhtin Circle Theory of speech genres has founded several theories of analysis and it is the starting point of the theories of textual/discourse genres. This theory focuses on the study of discursive materiality in their socio-historical and ideological aspects, also considering the conditions of production and communicative situations. Given these considerations, the aims of this work are to verify the conception of genres in a book of German as a foreign language for beginners: Planet A1 and investigate how the activities are addressed in this material. The analysis is qualitative and there is no quantification of genres covered in the textbook. Therefore, three activities were chosen based on three genres, among the most current in the textbook: a telephone conversation, e-mails and a chart. The results show that the textbook aims to address the textual heterogeneity, but it rarely has characteristics related to the conditions of production and the communicative situation.