Topical organization and skill in the development of the text subject

Abstract

This paper considers the development of the text subject as a skill that characterizes good performance in writing, although it is still insufficiently explored both theoretically and in pedagogical applications. In view of this, subject development is approached as a relevant issue in studies on school writing, with the aim of proposing a procedure for identifying and understanding the processes of construction and development of the subject in school texts, based on the category of discourse topic as proposed by the Textual-Interactive Perspective (Jubran, 2006a). To achieve this purpose, we conducted an exploratory study focusing on the analysis of topic organization in a sample of 10 texts produced by basic education students and obtained from online repositories. The first step in the procedure is to identify the process of topical organization in students’ texts. The second step involves identifying regularities in this process according to criteria such as centering, hierarchical topical organization, linear topical organization, and topical articulation. Finally, we argue that this procedure may support the design of teaching proposals that enable students to develop different levels of skill (more complex or less complex) in the development of the text subject.