Didactic texts are often used in schools.
A text is a coherent set of signs that, encoded in a system, forms a unit of meaning and has a communicative intention. Didactics, for its part, is the area of pedagogy linked to practical teaching methods.
The didactic text , therefore, is one whose purpose is teaching . This type of text has an educational orientation and tries to capture the guidelines of pedagogical theories.
History of the didactic text
In a general sense, literature was born with a didactic intention, since the origin of writing is linked to the desire to compile knowledge that, until then, was transmitted orally from generation to generation.
As a genre, the didactic text had a specific development after the classics (drama, lyric and epic). Initially these texts were developed in code or chronicle format and intended to record historical events and establish the rules of coexistence between peoples.
Little by little, the didactic text began to appropriate other forms to transmit knowledge, with the inclusion of dialogues and monologues. From then on, didactics was divided into various subgenres, such as the essay (which includes the author's personal approach), the treatise (where a topic is analyzed exhaustively) and oratory (which seeks to convince through oral language). .
There are different kinds of didactic texts.
School education
Currently, most of the teaching texts are used in the field of school education and serve as support for the contents taught by teachers based on curricular plans.
One of the fundamental points that must be met when preparing a didactic text is the balance between the volume of information provided to the reader and the incentive to continue learning and researching that is generated in it. This is a very difficult goal to achieve; In general, study books tend to be saturated with content , or to vaguely present the topics and propose their expansion with the help of complementary material.
Types of didactic text
It is worth mentioning that a distinction can be made between books for self-taught and those that will be used with the guidance of a teacher. The first group is expected to use language that is pleasant and close to the reader, taking into account that their level of technical knowledge may be very low, or non-existent; Self-taught people tend to be very determined and intuitive people when it comes to learning, but a poorly designed text, with impractical advice or a lack of essential information can result in poor learning.
When a teacher intervenes in the educational process, he or she must commit to taking advantage of the tools and content that the texts provide, relying on their strengths and knowing how to make up for their shortcomings, so that the concepts generate an indelible impact on the lives of the students. It is known that forced memorization of dates and events is useless; Likewise, few people are attracted to a book written in a language whose complexity is beyond their reach.
In recent years, a fusion has taken place between educational texts and the resources offered by computing , which began by complementing the information with simple interactive applications included on floppy disks or CDs, and evolved to include multimedia content updated through the Internet. , with access to online forums and tutorials. This is especially useful for language learning, as it allows the student to listen to audio recordings of the correct pronunciation and intonation of the sentences and dialogues in the book, essential practice for developing a correct accent.