This article aims at showing that the presence of the concept of genre in mother tongue classrooms may transform the reality of teaching written text production. The proposal of working with genres that we defend departs from the socio-discursive interactionism theory. We pointed out that each genre must be dealt with for a certain period of time, with emphases in its specific contents, which makes it different from the other genres, without forgetting its communicative purpose. This proposal understands the text genres as a way of articulating linguistic practice, which can be learnt, but above all, as ways of interaction. It also makes it possible to include linguistic structure items, without harming students' appropriation of a certain text genre. Empirical data will be presented and discussed in order to exemplify the proposal.
Genre; mother tongue teaching; linguistic structure items; socio- discursive interactionism