Competência lexical: uma experiência de ensino explícito de vocabulário com alunos do 9º ano de uma escola pública

Abstract

In our educational reality, students in the last years of elementary school have a marked lack of knowledge of the vocabulary that appear in the texts used in the practice of reading in the classroom. This is worrying, since it is known that reading comprehension depends on the reader‘s ability to recognize words and their meanings, as well as their ability to make lexical inferences from the activation of prior knowledge. Furthermore, as teachers of English as well, we realize that the explicit teaching of vocabulary is very present in the teaching of foreign languages, but its very scarce, and even neglected in the teaching of the mother languages. The action research presented here carried out an experience of didatic intervention with 9th grade students in order to expand the lexical competence of the paticipating students through the explicit teaching of elements of morphology (structure and word formation; Greek and Latin radicals), conversion mechanisms (word family) into phrases and textualizations (nominalization), elements of lexical semantics (synonymy, antonymy, hiperonymy, paronymy and homonymy), beyond the notion of polysemy. In this perspective, handouts, tests and application exercises were prepared, in addition to other significant and even playful activities (games); also using activities involving phrases, missing texts, and other exercises already tested and approved in the teaching of English and perfectly adaptable to the teaching of Portuguese. As formal methodological procedures, at the beginning of the research, a questionnaire was used to survey the students' profile and a test to diagnose the students' situation regarding the specific issue - domain of vocabulary / lexical competence – in this test, the students obtained 64% of hits, distributed as follows: synonymy - 67%, antonymy – 70%, polysemy – 51%, hiperonymy – 82%, and structure and word formation 42%. Other procedures included an interview with the participants, at the intermediate moment of the research, to evaluate the progress of the intervention experience and to conclude and evaluate the didactic unit, a final test and a satisfaction questionnaire were applied. The basis and theoretical rationality of the research are located in studies of Lexicology (ABDABE, 2011); Lexical Semantics (CANÇADO, 2016; POLGUÉRE, 2018; FERRAREZI Jr, 2008); on Vocabulary Teaching (BEZERRA, 2004); and lexical competence (LEFFA, 2000; GIL, 2016), among others. The result of the research was collected through the application of a final test in which the students obtained 81% of hits, (distributed as follows: synonymy - 85%, antonymy – 60%, polysemy – 87%, hiperonymy – 91%, and structure and word formation 85%), and a satisfaction questionnaire, in which the performance of the students and their opinions on the contribution of the research to the increase of their lexical competence were verified. According to the questionnaire, about 85% of the participating students stated that the activities developed contributed to improve their performance in reading and text production.