In this article, we analyse the definitions of literacy, text, discourse and genre of discourse presented in the document National Curriculum Guidelines _ Portuguese Language, published by the Brazilian Ministry of Education in 1997 for the first and second cycles of Primary Education. One of the main objectives of the document is to offer guidelines to organize education at this level and help teachers to change their practice. Our aim is to analyse how academic concepts are transferred to the educational sphere. The article compares the definitions as presented in academic texts with the retextualized forms presented in the official document in order to discuss its legibility taking into consideration its main audience, that is, the teacher at the fundamental level.