The production, development and results of work with a didactic sequence of letters to Pen Pal

Abstract

According to Bronckart and Dolz (2004, p. 39), the language teaching global goal is the textual genre knowledge development as an instrument of adaptation and participation in the social/ communicative life. An attempt to achieve this goal is through the work with didactic sequences which are a group of activities based on specific textual genres to the development of action, discursive and linguistic-discursive capacities. Based on these principals, a didactic sequence of the pen pal letter textual genre was produced and developed with 7th graders of a public school who would start a pen pal project with students from their sister city, Chesapeake, in the United States of America. In this article, the material is presented as well as the first letter written by a student in comparison to the second and last letters that she wrote. Eighteen classes were used to the development of the unit and the results are rewarding. But it is important to mention that this is only the first step of a longitudinal work that will be done as a doctoral research.