A redação do Enem: representações e práticas de escrita de estudantes concluintes do Ensino Médio

Abstract

The essay is a school textual genre and is a mandatory stage of the National High School Exam (Enem). At school, writing can assume socio-communicative purposes and constitute an opportunity for authorial writing, due to the possibility of contemplating the student-author's opinion on a certain topic, of revealing their writing skills and construction of textuality typical of a speech genre. However, depending on school practices, writing may be limited to a concern with evaluation and approval and influence students' conception of the practice of writing and its functionalities. This is a situation that the essay fits into – a typically school genre. In this context, the problem of this research was defined: which images and meanings about the Enem essay are part of the representational universe and writing practices of students completing high school? The general objective of this research is to discuss images and meanings that constitute social representations and writing practices of high school students. The research has the following specific objectives: to reveal the social representations of Enem essay writing, produced by students preparing for the Enem; analyze the processes of anchoring and objectifying representations of writing, discussing what students understand to be a well-written text; analyze texts in the Enem essay model produced by students, presenting and discussing the social representations that materialize in their essays. The research was carried out using a qualitative methodological approach guided by the Theory of Social Representations (TRS). The works of Moscovici (1978), Jodelet (1989), Guareschi (1995), Marcuschi (1997), Lima (2010), Koch (2015), Rojo (2006) and official curricular documents served as the basis for the literature review. In the field research, students in the 3rd year of high school from the private network in Montes Claros responded to the questionnaires. The questionnaire and essays for analysis were used as data production instruments. This research is justified by discussing students' representations, by analyzing relevant aspects of their textual production and the way in which the logic of evaluation interferes in the elaboration of texts. The results of this research constitute the master's dissertation, consisting of three articles. The data showed that students anchor the act of writing an essay in the suggestions in the Participant's Guide and in the guidance received from their teachers, which constitute a standard model with a group of connectives and citations. They write thinking about the figure of the exam evaluator and also see the test as a surprise box, because they are unaware of its topic. For students, writing an essay is following a recipe for textual production to meet a requirement of selection processes such as Enem. However, this modeling exercise has provided them with opportunities to think about contemporary social and cultural issues.