O uso da consciência fonológica em crianças monolíngues em português ou bilíngues português/alemão na cidade de Saudades (SC)

Abstract

Phonological awareness is a widely discussed and investigated subject in school and academic circles, due to its crucial role in reading and writing acquisition in the early school years. This ability allows children to divide words into syllables and phonemes, subsequently facilitating the association of these phonemes with the corresponding graphemes. This research, based on the field of Diversity and Language Change, has the goal of describing the recurring phonological processes in written records by students in school literacy stage, specifically from 3rd and 4th grade, at Escola Municipal de Ensino Fundamental de Saudades (EMEF). Written data was collected through designed phonological awareness activities, where it was described the phonological processes in the written representation of complex syllabic structures, analyzed the incidence of those processes in the writing, and investigated if the presence of German language in the community interferes in the students’ writing production. Furthermore, it was compared, through the lens of phonological theories, the possible processes in the written representation of the complex syllabic structures, highlighting the divergences found. The investigated processes include the appropriate production of words with complex syllabic structures in Brazilian Portuguese, the absence of stated letters and the occurrence of epenthesis and metathesis. The investigation also focused on the complex attack combinations involving plosives and liquids (/l/ or /r/) /) or fricatives and liquids (/l/ or /r/), in codas containing the phonemes /r/, /s/, /l/ and /n/ (Bisol, 1999; 2010). This study comes from the hypothesis that substitutions or non- substitutions would occur in the writing of words with sonorous and deaf phonological pairs, due to the influence of German dialect predominantly in the municipality. This would be seen mainly in individuals who have listening comprehension skills, though they are not fluent in that dialect, but they only answer in Portuguese. The study also intends to analyze the frequency of the correct production of words with complicated syllabic structures in the Brazilian Portuguese and its phonological features as letters, metathesis and epenthesis omission. The choice of location and school where data were collected is due to the fact that the school can offer representative samples to elucidate the phenomenon and processes being looked at, as observed through reading of local historical, social and cultural context, as proposed in previous research conducted in the same or nearby region. The data collection instruments include cloze tests, written activities with gaps to be filled. Several phonological processes were identified in both groups: the accurate production of syllabic formations was representative both in bilingual and monolingual children; the process of non- production of segments was more frequent in bilingual children; the syllabic metathesis happened in a few cases, predominantly among bilingual children; and the epenthesis was not found. In complex attack combinations, devoicing records were more frequent in bilingual children, especially in the beginning syllables with plosive phonemes. This research aims to contribute to the comprehension of phonological processes in the writing of words with complex syllabic structures in Brazilian Portuguese, with significant implications for the pedagogical practice and the development of more efficient teaching strategies.