DESEMPENHO DE LEITORES INICIANTES EM LÍNGUA INGLESA: TEXTOS DO GÊNERO ANÚNCIO DE UTILIDADE PÚBLICA - PSA

Abstract

This study investigated the performance of beginning readers with Public Service Announcement (PSA) texts. The participants in this research were twenty eighth grade students of a public elementary school, in the city of Guarapuava-PR, aged between 12 and 15 years. The performance of the participants was examined by the analysis of the reading strategies used when reading two texts from the PSA genre, in English. The first of the texts should be read with the purpose of entertainment, and the second, with the purpose of studying for a test. One of the research instruments was the Pause Protocol Procedure (CAVALCANTI, 1989), in the version adapted by Tomitch (2003), which made it possible to investigate the reading strategies used by the participants. Three other instruments were used in order to triangulate the data: comprehension questions for each of the texts, retrospective questionnaires and the participants` reader profile questionnaires, adapted from the PISA (2009). The verbalizations made while applying the Pause Protocol were transcribed, and the reading strategies were categorized according to the classification proposed by Block (1986) and adapted by Baretta (1998). The comprehension questions were elaborated taking into account the categorization developed by Pearson and Johnson (1987), and the responses were scored according to criteria developed by the researcher. Data analysis was qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed, through the analysis of the results obtained from the Pause Protocol Procedure, the comprehension questions, the retrospective questionnaire and the reader profile. On the whole, data indicate that the participants read adopting the bottom up mode, trying to extract information from the text, word by word. The strategies used for each of the texts showed no significant difference, indicating that participants did not read differently for each of the proposed objectives, i.e., read for entertainment and read to study for a test. The results corroborated the perception of the researcher, while collecting data, that participants did not attend to the objectives posed for each of the texts. Although participants used different strategies that can lead to comprehension, they often did not know how, when or why to use them, since the majority of the participants realized that they had trouble in understanding, but failed to use appropriate strategies in order to solve them.