Uma discussão acerca da consciência fonológica em LE: o caminho percorrido por aprendizes brasileiros de inglês na aquisição da estrutura silábica

• Ano de defesa: 2009
• Autor(a) principal: Aquino, Carla de
• Orientador(a): Lamprecht, Regina Ritter
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul; Porto Alegre
• Palavras-chave em Português: LINGUÍSTICA; INGLÊS - FONOLOGIA; PORTUGUÊS - FONOLOGIA; AQUISIÇÃO DA SEGUNDA LÍNGUA; INGLÊS - ENSINO
• Link de acesso: http://hdl.handle.net/10923/4025

Phonological awareness, the capacity to take the language as object of analysis, has been extensively studied in the mother tongue — Portuguese, even in its relations with writing, reading, memory and etc. In foreign languages, there aren't many studies realized or instruments designed for the evaluation of the learners’ abilities. Thus, we don’t know much about the order of phonoiogical awareness development in the foreign language and the path built by the learners until they can deal with L2 phonology. In this study, we evaluated phonological awareness abilities of undergraduate students attending English courses in a University in Porto Alegre. 40 subjects took a PA (phonological awareness) test of English as a foreign language, designed for this research. This paper aimed at discovering if Brazilian EFL (English as a foreign language) learners of intermediate level present high levels of PA in the syllabic and phonemic levels, consdering processes of L1 — FL transfer of knowledge; relating results reached by students in different levels of FL proficiency to establish the order in which PA develops in a foreign language; and comparing the results of this investigation with data about the phonological acquisition of Portuguese as a first language.The results of the test suggest that Brazilian students show high levels of PA since the early contact with English, probably due to transference of knowledge and abilities from L1 to FL. However, the great number of transferences found seems to indicate that explicit instruction on phonetic-phonological aspects of the FL and also about the differences between the languages involved is necessary. Data also showed that PA development in a foreign language follows the same patterns known in L1, firstly of more perceptually salient units — syllables — and later the minimal units — phonemes. This way, we believe that the order of development of such abilities is universal. And, finally, there was difference among the performances of N1, N2 and N3 — the three first groups of students — and N4 — the fourth group. The results indicate that time of contact with the language as well as instruction in courses of phonetics and phonology of the FL influence the development of PA abilities.