<b>Academic literacy: a portuguese perspective</b> - DOI: 10.4025/actascilangcult.v30i2.2334

Abstract

Current analysis deals with modes of literate constituency of undergraduate students in an academic environment. Study has been undertaken in Portugal in 2006. Data for analysis hailed from half-structured interviews with students in a Language and Literature graduation course at the University of Minho, Portugal. Samples of responses by four students were selected for specific discussions and with the proposed objective of this study, or rather, to analyze the way students constitute themselves as literate subjects in the academic environment. Literacy theory as social practice guided the discussions and analyses of results from the interviews. Approaches related to academic literacy are crucial for the understanding of the literate practices in this social context. According to the students-subjects, experiences prior to their admission in the undergraduate course, and mainly, the different types of interaction in the academic milieu interfere in the skilled use of language and in their teachers’ training. Interviews revealed the constant tensions between their role as students and as future teachers which indicates a conflictive literate constituency in language learning in the above-mentioned course