Oficinas de ampliação vocabular: recursos coesivos em foco

Abstract

This research started from the reflection and the finding that lexicon teaching in the classroom has received insufficient attention for the development of students’ communicative skills. In school practice, the teaching of cohesive elements has a secondary role, which results in significant difficulties in textual articulation by students who, in general, demonstrate vocabulary limitation by not knowing or not mastering the meaning and, consequently, the proper use of these articulators. By recognizing the urgent need for a change in attitude of teachers in relation to the teaching of the lexicon and especially to the increase in the number of cohesive elements, we aim to present the process of elaboration and application of diversified activities related to the vocabulary expansion of cohesive elements through workshops supported by the opinion article. For this purpose, we recurred to scholars who have given significant attention to this subject: in discursive genre, Bakhtin (2003); in reading and textual production, Geraldi (1995), and Possenti (1996); in lexicon, Antunes (2012), Barbosa (1989), Biderman (2001), Dias (2004), Coroa (2011), and Jungman (1974); in opinion article genre, Bräckling (2001), Köche, Boff e Marinello (2010), and Rossi-Lopes (2012); and in textual cohesion, Beaugrande and Dressler (1997), Charolles (1978, 1983), Halliday and Hasan (1995), Koch (2008), and Koch and Travaglia (2009). For the study of reading and text production strategies, we used the National Curricular Parameters (Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais – PCNs) (BRASIL, 1998), the National Common Curricular Basis (Base Nacional Comum Curricular – BNCC) (BRASIL, 2017), the Common Basic Content (Conteúdo Básico Comum – CBC) (MINAS GERAIS, 2012) and the National Textbook Program (Programa Nacional do Livro Didático – PNLD) (BRASIL, 2012). For the methodology, we adopted the action-research of Thiollent (2008), the didactic sequence of Dolz, Noverraz and Schneuwly (2004), and the pedagogical workshop of Vieira et al. (2002). The intervention proposal was applied to a ninth-grade-class of junior-high school, with the purpose of reducing of students’ difficulties in the interpretation and production of texts (opinion articles), caused by the unfamiliarity with part of cohesive elements. Another interesting activity was the production of lexicographic cards adapted from Grama (2016). For the development of the workshops, we carried out activities of introduction and contextualization, motivation, reading, interpretation of texts and observation of images and audiovisual resources, such as videos and films exhibitions. With the aid of school dictionaries, the students researched the meaning and function of cohesive elements ignored by them; thus, they were able to use coherently these resources in their textual productions. The results showed that there were involvement and motivation of the students in the group work, in addition to the importance of teachers making the printed dictionary available to them. Given the limitations and restrictions for the use of technology in school routine, students feel discouraged in consulting dictionaries, which suppresses their lexicon broadening. We hope that this research will stimulate the development of other studies in the area and motivate teachers to rethink the pedagogical practice, in order to meet this demand.

Keywords: Vocabulary Expansion. Opinion Article. Cohesive Elements. Reading and Textual Production. Dictionaries.