La promoción de letramento académico en una disciplina de escrita de una universidad Brasileña

Publish or Perish times demand academic writing skills from researchers of all fields throughout the globe. Despite it, few disciplines of an even fewer number of Brazilian universities have academic writing courses in their syllabus, which raises the discussions about whether this type of course should be implemented by every discipline, and whether it represents a useful and efficient way of preparing students to academic communication. The present research aimed at investigating the potentiality of the course Metodologia Científica – Redação e Documentação Técnica in promoting academic literacy of Computer Science undergraduate students from a public Brazilian university. To do so, a quantitative/qualitative investigation was conducted through a questionnaire, answered by 30 ex-students from the discipline. The results showed a need of deepening the qualitative investigation, by means of interviewing the Professor and of analyzing theoretical and institutional documents, which regulate the discipline. Data analysis was grounded on New Literacy Studies and Sociorethoric Approach to Genre; and it showed little potential from the course to promote students´ academic literacy, since it is based on traditional approaches to teaching writing.