O uso das palavras cruzadas como elemento facilitador para ampliação do léxico

Abstract

The teaching of the Portuguese language, as well as its methodology of application, became a great challenge with regard to didactic practices. This work was guided by the objective of presenting an intervention proposal that promoted situations that facilitated the student's vocabulary expansion and the comprehension of the existence of linguistic variation through crossword puzzles. We did not intend to solve the lexical difficulties that are routinely evidenced in the training of our students, but to contribute, in a profitable way, by pointing out or suggesting ways to better use our practices. We are based, among others, on concepts disseminated by Antunes (2012), which advocates the untying of the current positions adopted by teachers in the classroom, and ideas of Travaglia (2005) and Bagno (2012), which methodologies for the creative potential of students. Concepts of synonymy / parassinonymy were present throughout the study and intervention, based mainly on the studies of Bechara (1977) and Barbosa (1981). We focus on the use of crosswords as a guiding and continuous element, not only for greater knowledge of the lexicon, but also for a better perception of linguistic variations and their innumerable possibilities of use in the most diverse communicative situations. After elaborating the intervention proposal, which proposed to explain a possibility of reaching objectives without being attached to classic and paradigmatic positions, it was applied to students of the final series of Elementary School of the public network of the Federal District. With the analysis of the results, we could conclude that although we can detect gains related to lexical knowledge on the part of the research participants, crosswords alone contribute, but they are not enough to solve a picture as broad and unexplored as the lexicon and not are configured as the only solution to a problem that is already widely diagnosed and so present in our classrooms.