Aprendizagem de ortografia: uso de atividade sistemática e atividades reflexivas voltadas para alunos dos anos finais do Ensino Fundamental

Abstract

This work shows the results of a research on the efficacy of the use of a traditional strategy and a reflective strategy concerning the orthographic learning process. The research was conducted in a public school in Fortaleza with eighth grade students, specifically, who were invited to write using their native language in a formal register but showed difficulty in understanding the ortographic rules. Because of this result, two intervention acts were proposed: orthographic training, which is a traditional systematic strategy; and didact sequence, which draws attention to reflection and clarification of thought. By means of comparison, we aim to examine the processes of appropriation of writing conventions. The proposed activities focused on inadequate spellings motivated by irregularities on the correspondence between graphemes ‘s’, ‘x’, ‘z’ and the phoneme /z/. In our research, these inadequacies are constructive and important to the learning process once they helped us establish our main goals, following qualitative and quantitative procedures. In this sense, our work aims to: a) describe and analyse inadequacies motivated by irregularities on the correspondence between letters and sounds from the orthographic system; b) evaluate the effects of systematic activities and reflective ones concerning the spelling performance of those eighth grade students. Our investigation is descriptive, has an interpretative basis and is delineated by the experimental model, which justifies the division of two groups: a control group and an experimental group. Initially, a dictation activity was done as an initial diagnosis allowing us to observe the quantity of those inadequacies previously mentioned. Then, the control group did an orthographic training activity while the experimental group did reflective activities. Finally, another diagnostic dictation activity with the same words was applied, enabling us to verify the writing development after the referred strategies have been applied. The results of both strategies have shown a positive influence of both approaches, meaning that students’ knowledge about spelling has been increased, although reflective activities have been shown to be more effective.