Avaliação da riqueza lexical em manuscritos escolares de alunos recém-alfabetizados: uma análise comparativa Brasil-Portugal com o auxílio do lexicanalytics web

Abstract

The assessment of lexical richness can reveal valuable information about students' proficiency in their native language. However, this evaluation can be challenging, especially in a context of multiple texts, such as in a classroom, requiring the aid of computational resources to facilitate this process. Therefore, this work aims to assess lexical richness, based on lexical density and diversity, in school manuscripts produced by newly literate Brazilian and Portuguese students, using a collaborative writing methodology. The analyzed corpus consists of a set of 186 fictional narratives produced by dyads of newly literate Brazilian and Portuguese students, aged between six and eight years. The Brazilian students attended the first and second years of Elementary School in a school located in the city of Maceió-Alagoas, while the Portuguese students attended the second year of Basic Education in two public schools in Aveiro, one located in the urban area and the other in the rural area. For the measurement of lexical richness, the total number of words written, lexical density, and lexical diversity were considered as parameters, which were extracted with the aid of the Lexicanalytics Web software. Characterized as exploratory research, a qualitative and quantitative approach was adopted for data analysis. In the analysis of the results, it was found that the dyads of the first year wrote their texts with an average of 107 words, lexical diversity of 72.06%, lexical density of 56.14%, and a lexical richness of 91.53. In the texts of the dyads of the second year, on the other hand, the average number of words written was lower, approximately 86 words, with a lexical diversity of 71.12% and a lexical density of 56.97%, reaching a lexical richness of 91.23. As for the results of the Portuguese dyads who attended the same school year but in different schools, the texts were produced with an average of 113 words, with an average density of 57.82%, diversity of 71.59%, and richness of 93.15. In the overall comparison between the dyads, it was observed that, although the texts of the Portuguese dyads showed slightly higher lexical richness than the texts of the Brazilian dyads, the hypothesis test did not find a statistically significant difference between the two countries. Therefore, even considering that the texts were produced by students from different schools and nationalities, the obtained lexical richness was similar, indicating the same lexical domain in their texts. Finally, we hope that the results obtained in this work contribute to the production of knowledge about lexical richness in Portuguese language texts, revealing important aspects of the writing of newly literate Brazilian and Portuguese students. Furthermore, we hope to open new paths for the evaluation and monitoring of students' lexical knowledge, highlighting the relevance of tools such as Lexicanalytics Web in these processes.