O efeito da instrução explícita de sândis externos da língua inglesa no desenvolvimento da percepção auditiva de aprendizes brasileiros

Abstract

The aim of this work is to analyse the effect of explicit teaching of sandhis in English for Brazilian students of English as a foreign language. This study has, as its perspective approach, the teaching of sandhis according to Phonology of Use and its representational template, the Exemplar Theory, along with Explicit Instruction (BYBEE, 2001; ELLIS, 2009; JOHNSON, 1997; SILVA; GOMES, 2016). This research proposes a quali-quanti study of groups of English learners, from both basic and intermediate levels, in which there are two experimental groups, who had received explicit instruction, and two control-groups. In order to raise the corpus of this work, we applied a pilot test and, right after, an official research that consisted in a perception task in which there where occurrences of elision and other kinds of sandhis. For that purpose, a pre-test, interventions and a post-test were applied with the experimental classes, checking the development of the groups that went through the instruction method and, on the other hand, comparing these results with the control classes. The interventions were grounded on expositive and straight classes that taught the English language’s phonological aspects – the sandhis – and controlled technique with the learners’ experimental groups. The results of the SII group, for example, had showed to be positive on the official data, when, with the experimental classes, demonstrated an enhancement e.g. on the perception of the elision sandhi of /d/ on an intervocalic context, like shoud be [ʃubi]. On the pre-test we had an outcome of 18,18% on the a item from the first question. After the intervention period and post-test application, the class perception has risen to 27,27%. When we compare the SII both control and experimental classes, the control group SII, on the pretest as well as on the post-test, remained with a rate of 16,67%, whereas, like said before, the experimental class presented a considerable betterment. The same is told to the SVII experimental class, regarding to the perception of the elision of /h/ on the intervocalic context of let him go [letim]. When compared to the pre-test on the experimental class (whose outcome was 0%) has an increase on the post-test results (whose percentage was 33,33%). It can be concluded that the explicit teaching of sandals allowed students to have a better auditory perception, as it presented them with more specific aspects of pronunciation in suprasegmental contexts. Learners internalize, through metalanguage, the fact that words can lose sounds, be twinned, modified, put together, and by guided practice they can be better prepared to hear them.