Fiorin ’ s Didactic Project for the Teaching of Reading and Text Production

In September of 2014, a group of professors and researchers met to reflect on the contributions that the works published by José Luiz Fiorin bring to the study of discourse, text and to the progress of research in semiotics. This work, with which I joined in the Colloquium, aims to analyze how the didactic project established by this scholar of language’s manifestations is relevant for the teaching and reading of text production. Besides, it also reflects the progress made by Brazilian and foreign semioticians concerning the improvement of the methodological project held by this theory, which investigates the constitution of the meaning of texts.


José Luiz Fiorin's Didactic Project for the Teaching of Reading and Text Production / O projeto didático de José Luiz Fiorin para o ensino de leitura e de produção de texto
Arnaldo Cortina * ABSTRACT In September of 2014, a group of professors and researchers met to reflect on the contributions that the works published by José Luiz Fiorin bring to the study of discourse, text and to the progress of research in semiotics.This work, with which I joined in the Colloquium, aims to analyze how the didactic project established by this scholar of language's manifestations is relevant for the teaching and reading of text production.Besides, it also reflects the progress made by Brazilian and foreign semioticians concerning the improvement of the methodological project held by this theory, which investigates the constitution of the meaning of texts.KEYWORDS: Fiorin; Reading; Didactic Work; Text Writing; Semiotics RESUMO Em setembro de 2014, um grupo de professores e de pesquisadores reuniu-se para refletir sobre as contribuições que os trabalhos publicados por José Luiz Fiorin trazem para os estudos do discurso, do texto e para os avanços das investigações em semiótica.Este trabalho, com o qual participei do colóquio, procura examinar como o projeto didático estabelecido por esse estudioso das manifestações da linguagem tem uma importância significativa para o ensino de leitura e de produção de textos, ao mesmo tempo em que reflete os avanços realizados pelos semioticistas brasileiros e estrangeiros em relação ao aprimoramento do projeto metodológico realizado por essa teoria que investiga a constituição do sentido do texto.PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Fiorin; Leitura; Obra didática; Redação; Semiótica

Fiorin: The Teacher and the Researcher
Based on the analysis of two books by Fiorin, this paper aims to focus on the importance of the written work 1 of professor and linguist José Luiz Fiorin, which is concerned with the teaching of reading of text production.
Fiorin has published several books whereby he discusses different issues related to language, discourse, and text.Although many important aspects could be highlighted, I have chosen to approach the production that addresses the teaching of reading and text production.Even if some might say that it is a less academic production, in which supposedly there is no deepening of theoretical issues related to text analysis, I consider it important for two main reasons.First, because it is a way to disseminate the methodological-theoretical proposal of semiotics in the study of text beyond academy and relate it to other theories; second, because his textbooks eventually provide high school students and their teachers with a chance to approach issues related to reading and text production very differently from those proposed by many other textbooks, released by the Brazilian publishing market, for they only repeat traditional approaches, without incorporating the advances in research on discourse and text.In addition, it is worth mentioning something relevant in this introduction.The didactic work produced by Fiorin is not his sole authorship, because, as already stated above, the two books to which we will refer here were produced in partnership with Professor Francisco Platão Savioli.Since the person in focus is José Luiz Fiorin, because this text was produced at an event in his honor, I will try to show how his didactic production, made by four hands, reflects the making of his individual work, which means disseminating semiotic theory and reflecting on it.Thus, I also intend to justify the title given to this text: José Luiz Fiorin Didactic's Project for the Teaching of Reading and Text Production.Although the authors of the two books in question are Fiorin and Platão or Platão and Fiorin (the order does not establish hierarchies) and, recognizing that this didactic project is developed by both authors at the same time, I emphasize again that, because of the tribute to one of the authors, my eyes will be directed to the actions of one of them, namely, Fiorin, as a teacher, a researcher, an intellectual who reflects on questions of significance from semiotics perspective and who, in his reflections, was always concerned about teaching reading and text production.

Para entender o texto: leitura e redação [To Understand Text: Reading and Writing]
To start writing about his didactic work In first place, we will examine the preface of the book Para entender o texto [To Understand Text], (FIORIN; PLATÃO. 1990, pp.3-4), which is presented below: Dear Professor, Helping the student to become an autonomous reader and a competent producer of texts is the first commitment of our craft.
We all know, however, that this task is difficult.To overcome this difficulty, there is no shortage of pedagogical proposals that, when they do not appeal to easy solutions, get lost in generalities and vague advice that do not give any support to the teacher's daily practice and any indicator of the steps that the student should follow.
This book, a result of studies and practice of several years in the classroom, was written to risk a concrete response to the challenge of teaching students to interpret and produce texts.
It arises from the belief that, at least in the context of our social reality, the school cannot allow itself to be carried away by the illusion that the learning of reading and writing will result from a competence to be spontaneously acquired throughout school experience.This book is first based on the assumption that the explanation of the production mechanisms of text meaning decisively contributes to improve student's achievement in reading and writing.
The expertise to read and produce texts is divided in three levels: knowledge of the linguistic system; knowledge of the socio-historical context in which the text was produced; knowledge of the mechanisms for structuring the meaning.This book deals with the last two, since grammars deal with the first.Thus, it seeks to explain how a text relates to others (narrative structures, themes, expedient of cohesion and of argumentation, expressive resources...).
Each lesson tries to focus on a text-building mechanism.All of them, except the last four, which illustrate the work of reading different types of text, consist of four parts: a. theoretical exposition of a construction mechanism of a text meaning.There was an effort, as much as possible, to avoid the specialized terminology.When its use became indispensable, the care to define the terms and illustrate them was taken; b. a commented text in which the studied mechanism in the theoretical part is applied.This comment was always intent on exploring the functionality of the explicit mechanism for the purpose of understanding the overall meaning of the text under consideration.The suggested comment can always be extended by the teacher or the students.As it is known, no analysis is complete and finished; c. a text is followed by a questionnaire.By applying the learned concepts, this exercise aims to lead the student to understand the global meaning of the text; d. a proposal of writing to encourage the student to produce a text with the use of a procedure studied/approached in the lesson.
We do not disregard that reading and text production require sensitivity.We believe, however, that sensitivity is not an innate gift, but a quality that is developed.On the other hand, only recommending the student to read the text many times is not enough, but you need to show him where to direct his attention.
As all education projects can always be improved, we look forward to the contributions of those who will adopt this book.
The authors5 Let us examine how the subject of enunciation is shown in the preface of Para entender o texto [To Understand Text].It is possible to immediately notice that on the preface's text, the enunciator is manifested through a directed address to the teacher, as we see in the opening expression "dear teacher."6This is, therefore, the referent to the listener's image, which is progressively built and with which the speaker dialogues.
In first paragraph, the enunciator is materialized in the form of a first person plural, through the pronoun 'we,' present in the expression "our craft," which closes this paragraph.The use of this pronominal form is due to the fact that the authorship of the text preface is twofold, once the book is written by two authors, José Luiz Fiorin and Francisco Platão Savioli.And these two subjects are materialized in the expression "the authors," which corresponds to the signature that finishes the text.In addition, in the first paragraph, the overall purpose of the book is presented.It aims at "helping the student to become an autonomous reader and a texts' producer."Thus, addressing the enunciatee-teacher, the enunciator makes explicit an action that will trigger the transformation of the being of the person whom this enunciatee teaches; in other words, this enunciator proposes to assist the enunciatee in making his student competent in reading and writing.
Assuming that the task of making students good readers and producers of proficient texts is not easy, the second paragraph of the preface introduces a central argument to prompt its enunciatee to believe that this book does not advocate a pedagogical proposal that calls for "easy solutions" or is lost in "generalities and vague advice."Then, it is in this paragraph that the enunciator stands in polemic opposition to that kind of book that is aimed at teaching reading and text production.The explanation of the competence of the authors and their work will be decisively presented in the third paragraph, when it affirms that the work in focus is "the result of study and practice of several years in the classroom."Thus, the proposal for the teaching of reading and text production results from scientific knowledge and the actual teaching practice, which means that this proposal ideally combines theory and practice, establishing itself as innovative.Thus, it establishes the process of seduction of the enunciator's discourse in relation to the enunciatee-teacher at whom it is aimed.
In fact, before continuing the examination of the text presentation discussed so far, it is worth inquiring about the innovative character of the proposal submitted by the authors of Para entender o texto [To Understand the Text], regarding the teaching of reading and text production.It stems from the fact that the book is designed under the perspective of the Paris school of semiotics, and thus it does not simply repeat the same speech present in most textbooks with their common purpose.All the book lessons will be planned from the theoretical-methodological basis of semiotics.And this is precisely the fact that makes Fiorin a researcher and a scholar of language, someone who is committed to the dissemination of a specific theoretical conception in teaching practice.
By extending his horizons, his theoretical conceptions will contribute to the dissemination and transformation of Brazilian semiotics, which is originated from the studies of Greimas and his group.
In the fourth paragraph of the presentation, the enunciator refers to his affiliation in semiotics, when he affirms that his work is based on the "assumption that the explanation of the production mechanisms of text meaning decisively contributes to improve student's achievement in reading and writing."It is exactly the search for this explanation of the production mechanisms of text meaning that the enunciator will pursue throughout the different lessons of the book.In the fifth paragraph, the reason why the authors decided to use the discursive semiotics as a theoretical-methodological support to their work is presented.The enunciator states that his discourse defends that the knowledge required to read and produce texts corresponds to the observation of the "socio-historical context in which the text was built" and to the examination of the "meaning of the structuring mechanisms." In the book O regime de 1964: discurso e ideologia [The regime of 1964: Discourse and Ideology],7 the view that for Fiorin a text always has a relationship with its socio-historical context is crucial in the way he sees discourse.However, it is important to note that the relationship of the text with its context should not be confused The last part of the division, proposed for the examination of the content shown below, corresponds to lessons 32 to 44.It resumes the classical description of text typology, which distinguishes narration, description, and dissertation.After that, a distinction between the plane of content and the plane of text expression and between the literary and the non-literary text is established.Then, an approach to the notion of non-verbal text is shown.To end the list of lessons, from 41 on, samples of analysis of four distinct texts are proposed: poetic, narrative, didactic, and journalistic.Thus, from the typological distinction between narration, description and dissertation, which is related to procedures of discourse structuring, the book will limit itself to the examination of different textual settings, when addressing the distinction between literary and non-literary text, the verbal and the non-verbal, abstract and review.The defense of the principle pointed out abovethat a text to be interpreted depends on the context in which it is producedis already present in the reproduction of the visual text that opens the book's first lesson.In other words, it does not match a pile of parts isolated from each other that dispense with the principles of cohesion and coherence.At the same time its 'saying' action reproduces or refutes other discourses with which it establishes relationships.It will be from this initial placement that the lesson discusses the notion of text, pointing out that the nature of text can only be understood if two fundamental considerations are observed: text "is not a cluster of sentences" and "every text contains a statement within a debate of a broader scale." To attend to the first consideration on the notion of text, which means, that it does not correspond to a cluster of sentences without any logical relations of implication between them, the lesson evokes an example.It To defend the second argument, the lesson introduces a text that narrates how the young John Hinckley Jr. bought a gun to a store in Texas with which he shot Ronald Reagan, the president at that time.The reference to this event shows how, behind the way the story is reported, there is a position taken by the enunciator on the risk that the US legislation takes to allow the action of selling firearms to anyone indiscriminately.
Therefore, it is thus that a reference is made to the premise that "every text contains a statement within a debate of a broader scale." As it has been pointed out previously, what comes after the understanding of the theoretical premises from which the word "text" is used in the book is the presentation of a text of Mário de Andrade, a questionnaire that allows the student to understand a text of Clarice Lispector and, finally, a production proposal that suggests a new writing for the initial paragraph of Clarice's text presented in the previous section.This activity has students write the continuation of the narrative so that it may maintain cohesion with the introduction and thematic-figurative coherence.This four-stage disposition will be repeated along the 44 lessons of the book.

Lições de texto: leitura e redação [Text Lessons: Reading and Writing]
Unlike Para entender o texto [To Understand the Text], Lições de texto [Text Lessons], published six years after the first, in 1996, is polychromatic, that is, all the images reproduced in it are not in black and white anymore, but always in color.This is already an indication that the visual text acquires greater evidence, because it is increasingly explored by textbooks that focus on communication.Another reason is that, in the center of semiotic studies, the examination of the visual texts and, consequently, of verb-visual ones, gains greater importance.It thus establishes the basic proposal of semiotics: to explain the process of producing meaning of any kind of text, not only written texts, as it was in the beginning of its research.
Besides its attention to chromaticism, one of the constitutional categories of the plane of expression of the plastic text, it is possible to notice that, in Lições de texto and exemplified in the previous two parts, and a proposal for text productionthe presentation contrasts with the particular practice of teaching writing that turns exclusively to the exploitation of grammatical aspects of language.At the same time, it introduces the perspective from which the text is set, which is better developed in the first lesson.This can be observed in the following paragraph, from the presentation: The responsibility for the teaching of reading and text production is not exclusive of the Portuguese language teacher, but it is his major commitment.And for the success of this project, it is not enough to provide students with a grammatical knowledge stock or to enable them to analyze and produce isolated sentences: it is necessary to take a step further, since the text construction involves more complex mechanisms than the mere juxtaposition of a sentence next to another.The 'step further' consists of describing the mechanisms of textual construction and empowering students to operate them (FIORIN; PLATÃO,1996, p.3). 13   13 In the original: "A responsabilidade pelo ensino da leitura e produção de textos não é exclusiva do professor de Língua Portuguesa, mas é seu compromisso prioritário.E para o sucesso desse projeto não é suficiente prover o aluno de um estoque de conhecimentos gramaticais, nem habilitá-lo a analisar e produzir frases isoladas: é necessário dar um passo além, já que a construção de um texto envolve mecanismos mais complexos do que a mera justaposição de uma frase ao lado de outra.O passo além consiste em descrever os mecanismos de construção textual e capacitar o aluno a operar com eles." As it can be seen in the excerpt above, the notion that the text is not a disordered jumble of phrases and that it obeys construction mechanisms is already mentioned in the introduction.And it is thus that the authors distinguish the approach of the analyzed book from the textuality of other textbooks.
The 44 lessons of the previous book are reduced to 25.However, in the same way as the previous ones, these new lessons can be grouped into distinct parts.Instead of three, I propose a division into five parts, according to a principle that unites them.
The first establishes what text is.Then it discusses the principle of constitutive heterogeneity of discourse through the presentation of the concept of voice and of the two ways that show it in texts, i.e., marked and unmarked forms.Part two includes lessons 5 to 14 and its purpose.Such as part one of the previous book, it consists of discussing the procedure of meaning production through the generative course of meaning proposed by semiotics.What can be seen in the exhibition of the steps of this path is that the semio-narrative level is less prominent than the discursive level, for the focus of most lessons centers on discourse materiality.As seen previously in the first lesson of Fiorin and Platão's book (1990), the concept of text was established from two fundamental considerations about its nature, namely, "the text is not a cluster of sentences" and "every text contains a statement within a debate of a broader scale." 19On the other hand, in Fiorin and Platão's book (1996), although this first lesson is also introduced by the visual resource of comparison between the detail of a photographic image and its whole as in the previous book, and although it performs this comparison with a different image from the previous one, the text design expands; as demonstrated above, when the themes of each of their lessons were examined, the incorporation of the concept of meaning's preconditions will change the understanding of what the text exactly is.Therefore, in the second work, Lições de texto [Text Lessons], the authors will state that the text is defined by three properties.
First, they ensure that it should have consistency of meaning; in other words, "it is not a cluster of sentences, that is, the phrases are not simply arranged one after the other, but they are related to each other" (FIORIN; PLATÃO, 1996, p.14). 20The second property is the one that points to the preconditions of meaning, since it establishes that any kind of text, whether verbal, visual or verbal-visual, is always "delimited by two white nomeaning spaces, one before the text starts and one after the text" (FIORIN; PLATÃO, 1996, p.17). 21The third property of the text is the one that states that it is produced by a person who is part of a particular time and a particular space.This asserts its historical nature in the "sense that it reveals the ideals and concepts of a social group in a given time" (FIORIN; PLATÃO, 1996, p. could be examined in Fiorin and Platão's didactic books is that they reflect the attitude of the researcher, who is attentive to the evolution of studies on language and who deals with his interlocutor's intellectual development, that is, with the subjects whom they address.
In conclusion, this text intended to show the importance of José Luiz Fiorin's didactic work, in partnership with Francisco Platão Savioli, not only to the study of language, but also to the dissemination of and reflection on advances in the theoreticalmethodological perspective of discursive semiotics, derived from Greimas's works.
Dialoguing with other theories, the work either incorporates some of their principles or examines the problems focused by them under the semiotic perspective.Moreover, I must emphasize how important it was for my professional and personal development to have met him and to be able to count on him as a mentor and friend.
By the time Fiorin wrote Para entender o texto: leitura e redação [To Understand Text: Reading and Writing] in partnership with Francisco Platão Savioli, 2 I was already his PhD advisee in the graduate program in Linguistics of Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas da Universidade de São Paulo [The College of Filosofy, Languages and Human Sciences of the University of São Paulo] and, from its inception, the book proposed to work the issue of discourse didactically by keeping the perspective of the semiotic treatment of the problem of teaching reading and text production.Since my Master's degree and Habilitation, my concern has always been towork on reading comprehension.Text production, in turn, must be understood as a consequence of the act of reading.There is no opposition between producing and reading texts.From the act of reading, a new text emerges.Therefore, one can say that the act of reading is an intertextual procedure.This is an issue that has always been associated with my research.However, beyond this comprehension about reading and writing, what are the other reasons that lead me to highlight Florin's didactic production in partnership with Platão?One of them is the fact that I consider him a person who has a very rare ability to diffuse theoretical knowledge in a way that it reaches different audiences.As a result of his continuous reflection and his vast knowledge, Fiorin has a quite heterogeneous production.In his work Elementos de análise do discurso [Elements of DiscourseAnalysis], 3 the basic theoretical principles of semiotics from Algirdas Julien Greimas' works are taught in order to provide the reader with an understanding of discourse treatment.In other words, in a simple way the authors say what seems so complex to us, what we read in theory and imagine how it would be possible to say it without resorting to repeating the words of the authors who created the theory.It is also for this reason that this work is considered an introductory textbook to discursive semiotic studies.Fiorin has this ability, because he simply does not reproduce the semiotic theory; he recreates it.Therefore, it is in this context that I have chosen to discuss the didactic work produced by the author, without, however, failing to consider the importance of all his writing production.However, my task will be to briefly introduce the concept on which Para entender o texto: leitura e redação [To Understand Text: Reading and Writing] was written and to compare it to another work produced by the author, entitled Lições de texto: leitura e redação [Text Lessons: Reading and Writing], for there is a very close relationship between them.

9
with the contraposition of text to a certain history to which it is aggregated.In fact, the socio-historical context is constituted of interdiscursivity and intertextuality.It is precisely because meaning obeys structuring mechanisms that it is possible to examine and demonstrate how the discourse that constitutes the text establishes a relation of repetition of other discourses or of opposition to them.Thus, after saying what the book's proposal is, contrasting it with that which is not and finally marking its theoretical-methodological position for the treatment of the issue of reading and text production, the enunciator begins to show how the book is organized, that is, the way each lesson is structured.Each lesson has a first moment of theoretical exposition; then a text analysis that focuses on the theoretical issue highlighted in the first part; an application of what was presented in the theoretical part by means of a questionnaire about a given text and, considering what was explained in the first part, observed in the second, and exercised in the third, a text production is proposed to encourage students to produce a written text.In the penultimate paragraph, what the enunciator states to his enunciateeteacher is that writing well, conversely to what is often repeated by several people, does not depend solely on the amount of reading students do.Although reading is important, written is only improved if students exercise it.Writing well means reading, but it also means producing.The act of continued production is important because only when students produce a text do they realize how to behave in writing and how their performance is developed in order to defend a point of view that they adopt for building the text.What these considerations indicate is exactly the confirmation of the theoretical-methodological proposal of semiotics for the study of text.In the last paragraph, the enunciator interacts again with his enunciatee, inviting those who adopt the book to contact the authors to discuss what they consider necessary to improve in the work so that its objectives are achieved more effectively.When we look at the content of the book, which lists the 44 lessons that comprise it, it is possible to notice explicitly how the theoretical-methodological assumptions of semiotics support each of the planned activities.In order to show the architecture of this semiotic textbook and the extent it dialogues with other theoretical postulates for the study of text, I propose that we examine, from the observation of the content, how the lessons are organized.For this reason, I divide it into three parts.The first, reproduced below, which includes lessons 1 to 12, corresponds, as we can see from the title of each lesson, to the presentation of the generative course of meaning, which is a central tenet of standard semiotic theory.Lesson 1 -Considerations on the Concept of Text Lesson 2 -Relationships between Texts Lesson 3 -The Text and its Relation with History Lesson 4 -Reading Levels of a Text Lesson 5 -Deep Structure of the Text Lesson 6 -Narrative Structure (I) Lesson 7 -Narrative Structure (II) Lesson 8 -Themes and Figures: The Apprehension of the Theme Lesson 9 -Themes and Figures: The Concatenation of Figures Lesson 10 -Themes and Figures: The Concatenation of Themes Lesson 11 -Themes and Figures: The Lexical Selection Lesson 12 -The Various Possibilities of Reading a Text 8 8 In the original: "Lição 1 -Considerações sobre a noção de texto; Lição 2 -As relações entre textos; Lição 3 -O texto e suas relações com a História; Lição 4 -Níveis de leitura de um texto; Lição 5 -Estrutura profunda do texto; Lição 6 -Estrutura narrativa (I); Lição 7 -Estrutura narrativa (II); Lição 8 -Temas e figuras: a depreensão do tema; Lição 9 -Temas e figuras: o encadeamento das figuras; Lição 10 -Temas e figuras: o encadeamento de temas; Lição 11 -Temas e figuras: a seleção lexical; Lição 12 -As várias possibilidades de leitura de um texto."Thesecond part of the division proposed to the book content, also shown below, comprehends lessons 13 to 31; in it the discursive level of the generative course of meaning is further explored.Starting, then, from a distinction between denotation and connotation in lesson 13, the book proposes, in the next lesson, the examination of the difference between metaphor and metonymy.Returning to the specific semiotic terminology that defines the theme and the figure as instances of discourse, lesson 14 examines how the combination of the themes and the figures produce distinct meaning effects that provide specific discursive organizations.To demonstrate that, the lesson examines four discourse procedures: antithesis, oxymoron, prosopopoeia, and synesthesia.This way, we observe that the book dissociates the concept of "figure of speech," characteristic of school grammars, from the semiotic theory's concept of "figure."These considerations concerning the rhetoric of the text are followed by a discussion on argumentation, and subsequently by the exam of the concept of linguistic norm.They end with the explanation of the concepts of coherence and cohesion, always explained from the semiotic perspective for the treatment of each of these discourse aspects.Lesson 13 -Denotation and Connotation Lesson 14 -Metaphor and Metonymy Lesson 15 -Ways to Combine Figures and Themes Lesson 16 -Ways to Narrate Lesson 17 -Ways of Ordering Time Lesson 18 -Text Segmentation (I) Lesson 19 -Text Segmentation (II) Lesson 20 -Argumentation Lesson 21 -Ways of Quoting the Speech of Others Lesson 22 -Saying One Thing to Mean Another Lesson 23 -Argumentation Defects (In the original: "Lição 13 -Denotação e conotação; Lição 14 -Metáfora e metonímia; Lição 15 -Modos de combinar figuras e temas; Lição 16 -Modos de narrar; Lição 17 -Modos de ordenar o tempo; Lição 18 -Segmentação do texto (I); Lição 19 -Segmentação do texto (II); Lição 20 -Argumentação; Lição 21 -Modos de citação do discurso alheio; Lição 22 -Dizer uma coisa para significar outra; Lição 23 -Defeitos de argumentação (I); Lição 24 -Defeitos de argumentação (II); Lição 25 -Norma linguística e argumentação (I); Lição 26 -Norma linguística e argumentação (II); Lição 27 -As informações implícitas; Lição 28 -Viés; Lição 29 -Coerência; Lição 30 -Coesão textual (I); Lição 31 -Coesão textual (II)." Not to limit myself only to the examination of the general aspects of the proposal of Florin's didactic work, as it has been done until now when I covered his preface and the items in the content, I propose a more specific examination of the treatment of the notion of text, central to the semiotics perspective, as presented in the first lesson of the book.

Figure 1 -
Figure 1 -Fiorin; Platão (1990, p.10) refers to the declaration by the secretary of Industry and Commerce of the State of São Paulo, Mr. Otávio Ceccato.At the time, he was one of the suspects in the corruption case involving the proposal of creating a game lottery called Raspadinha [Scratch Card].According to a report in Veja magazine published in June 1988, in order to defend his innocence, the secretary reaffirmed that he had no relation with the corruption scheme.He invoked a phrase said by St. Peter in the New Testament in which he denied to know Jesus Christ three times before Jesus was arrested and sentenced to crucifixion.Ceccato said, "Like St. Peter, I deny, I deny, I deny." 12 What the Veja reporter highlighted, however, was the fact that when invoking that phrase to plead his innocence, the secretary had forgotten that, in the New Testament context, it perhaps represented the only lie that St. Peter had pronounced throughout his life.That is exactly what the lesson emphasizes, that a repeated phrase in isolation from its context has its meaning distorted.

[
Text Lessons], there is a change in the ethos configuration of the enunciation.The book no longer begins with a "preface," as it could be examined in the previous item, when I discussed about the book Para entender o texto [To Understand the Text], but by a "presentation."The presentation is not formally addressed to the "dear teacher" as in the other book, although it is still signed by "the authors."This introductory text is characterized by greater effacement of the manifestation of the enunciator's voice, which, while is still expressed in the form of a "we" (Platão and Fiorin), is more formal, almost reproducing the tone of a scientific text.Keeping the same format of the previous book, that is, each lesson is divided into four distinct partstheoretical discussion; text analysis with theoretical exploration seen in the first part; textual interpretation exercises, focusing on what has been seen

Lesson 1 -
Considerations on the Notion of Text Lesson 2 -Voices Present in the Text Lesson 3 -Voices Shown and Demarcated in the Text Lesson 4 -Voices Not Shown and Not Demarcated in the Text 14 7). 22 Thus, what is verified by comparing Para entender o texto [To Understand Text], published in 1990, and Lições de texto [Text Lessons], in 1996, is that the progress of research either in semiotics's theoretical-methodological proposal or in other text theories determine the didactic project designed by José Luiz Fiorin in partnership with Platão Savioli with regard to the processing of reading and textual production.Unlike some textbook authors, who continually repeat their lessons in the course of time, producing only formal changes in the composition of the books, what

Fiorin's ability
to explain and teach stems from his assumed position as a researcher and thinker, as someone who reflects upon his time and is, simultaneously, still a teacher.These characteristics are all crucial to the way he can communicate with different audiences in different situations.In turn, the great knowledge that he possesses is still the engine that makes him continually reflect on and retrace his own work.That is exactly what I tried to show when Para entender o texto [To Understand Text] and Lições de texto [Text Lessons] were compared, making it possible to envision this path, this transformation of the continuous reflection on the object of his study, viz., language and text.
adds, to the didactic language, a specific proposal for the treatment of certain contents.What is meant, then, is that the book, by inserting itself in the textbook market, should provide students with the skills they need to produce texts in Portuguese and to read proficiently, according to the requirements of high school syllabi.Therefore, the importance of Fiorin's work in partnership with Platão, referring to this work, consists precisely in presenting high school content in an innovative way, which is based on a theoretical perspective that obeys a scientific coherence, unlike what is done in other didactic books used in Brazilian high schools.
Lição 37 -Recursos gramaticais e disposição das palavras no texto; Lição 38 -Texto literário e texto não-literário; Lição 39 -Originalidade; Lição 40 -Texto não-verbal; Lição 41 -Análise de um poema: Tecendo a manhã (João Cabral); Lição 42 -Análise de uma narração: O corvo e a raposa (La Fontaine); Lição 43 -Análise de um texto didático: Domínio de validade (H.Moysés Nussenzveig); Lição 44 -Análise de um texto de jornal: Astrônomos e astrólogos mantêm divergência (Folha de S. Paulo); Apêndice -Resumo e resenha." and What can be noticed by examining the titles of each of the 25 textbook lessons, released in 1996, is that the proposals to work with reading and textual production elaborated by Fiorin and Platão follow the developments of the research produced by scholars in semiotics.At the same time that they produce this movement within semiotic investigations, they also maintain a dialogue with other theories that produce certain explanations of or reflections on text and discourse problems that may contribute to improve their didactic project for the teaching of reading and writing.To finish this assessment about the didactic works written by José Luiz Fiorin in partnership with Francisco Platão Savioli, I propose to verify how the first lesson of the Lições de texto [Text Lessons], compared to the first lesson highlighted above from Para entender o texto [To Understand Text], reflects what has been demonstrated so far, that is, that the authors' teaching project concerning reading and textual production is the work of a researcher and a thinker of language.