This article represents a preview of the research study,Discourses and evaluative practices in the native language classroom: a case study (2012) . It analyzes, on one hand, certain directions (instructional discourses in teaching-learning environments) and, on the other, evaluative practices used repeatedly in the language classroom. The data is taken from students’ notebooks, and the tools of analysis correspond to the principles of classification and framing, proposed by Basil Bernstein. The partial results indicate that discourses and evaluative practices prioritize regulation (controlling) over instruction (developing abilities of the discipline).