O rotacismo na produção oral e escrita de alunos do ensino fundamental

Abstract

This research aims to describe and analyze the rotacism; a phonological process in which there is a change in production from the lateral alveolar /l/ to the flapping [ɾ] in elementary school students‘ speech and spelling at public school in Caldas Brandão-PB. As for the theoretical framework, we grounded on studies such as the ones of Cagliari (2002), Cristófaro-Silva (2003), Bortoni-Ricardo (2006), Lamprecht (2012) for the phonetic and phonological characteristics of rotacism and its transfer from speech to spelling; as well as in the use of phonological awareness for its softening; Barbosa & Madureira (2015), regarding to the acustic phonetic description of rotacism, and so. As for the methodology, this research is qualitative (regarding the acoustic analysis of rotacism in students' speech productions and spelling transfer) and quantitative (regarding the application of inferential statistics - two-sample t-test) in order to check whether there was a difference between the means of speech and spelling productions of rotacism in the syllabic tonicity factor (pretonic, tonic and postonic syllable). This research was developed to be carried out into three stages (Pre-instruction, Application and Post-instruction). However, by virtue of COVID-19 pandemic, it was only possible to carry out the Pre-instruction stage and develop the Application one. The research corpus was composed of twelve informants. Speech data were obtained by the Reading of a carrier phrase containing the target words susceptible to rotacism. These data were recorded for later acoustic treatment. Spelling data were extracted from activities such as texts and dictations in which the students wrote target words susceptible to rotacism as well. As for the Application, we developed the rotAppcismo, a mobile app with phonological-educational activities that enhance the phonological awareness of these students about the subject in question. As for the preliminary results, students perform significantly more rotacism in speech than in spelling in tonic and postonic syllables, and non-significantly more in pretonic syllables. Our expectations are that the use of this mobile app will help softening rotacism in students' spelling. For future work (already under development) the app is undergoing updates in which we intend to include activities that enhance the speech reduction of rotacism from students.