The purpose of this article is to reflect on the contribution of the notion of active responsive understanding to language teaching and to teaching in general, based on the experience with research and supervision of students' papers since 1995, in the study group entitled Teaching and learning languages (GP/CNPq). In such papers this notion is connected with other notions and with other studies related to the teaching and learning process. In this article, I reflect on the teaching and learning process in general, as well as on its needs in connection with the theme discussed. Then I address the notion of language from a dialogic perspective, and finally I analyze the active responsive understanding in several books of the so-called Bakhtin Circle. In the conclusion, I connect such reflections with theoretical and practical questions in the scope of the teaching and learning process, in relation to this analysis.
Active responsive understanding; Active responsive production; Teaching and learning