Thinking for yourself and speaking your mind: the teaching of argumentation and the formation of autonomous individuals

Abstract

The act of arguing is an essentially social practice and it is evident in a variety of everyday actions, in which language is used in different activities. Specifically in the school environment, especially in High School, the argumentation is a subject enough explored, mainly in textual production classes, because, to obtain a good result in the essay of the Brazilian National Secondary School Examination (ENEM) and in other college entrance exams – great objective of the majority of students – it is necessary to master some argumentative techniques. In order that the teaching of argumentation is not restricted to some mechanical models to be successful in such evaluations, this paper, based on a socio-interactionist perspective, intends to show that there are other ways of teaching argumentation in Basic Education, with the purpose of forming critical citizens: exploring the oral genres and the verbal-visual texts present in the media. For this, it presents the experience of two Scientific Initiation projects that integrate a larger project developed by teachers, aimed at reading, analyzing and producing argumentative genres. Finally, we believe that by offering subsidies that enable students to experience the different reading and text production modalities, we can contribute to the formation of citizens who can express their opinions and who are able to participate effectively in social life.