Didattica e inferenze: Uno sguardo alle attività di comprensione della lettura nei manuali di PLE

The present study is part of the wide-ranging interdisciplinary linguistic research committed to investigating the cognitive and metacognitive strategies involved in text comprehension processes, both written and oral, by foreign language learners. This article analyses some reading comprehension activities proposed by PFL (Portuguese as a foreign language) teaching coursebooks, and specifically their promotion of inferential processes, and the way in which they can foster higher quality reading skills. The aim of the research is, therefore, the unveiling of the cognitive processes involved in the interaction between learner and the text. To this end, psycholinguistic notions of reading and its teaching are adopted. Six PFL teaching coursebooks (competence level C1) are examined from this theoretical perspective, and textual interpretation activities are discussed qualitatively. The reference research model is that proposed by Applegate et al. (2002), which suggests a change of perspective in the elaboration of reading proposals and sets new goals that would lead readers to a profound reflection on what they are reading and on the use of the information in the text to reach their interpretation