Aquisição léxico-semântica em L2 por meio da leitura em inglês.

Abstract

The present study aimed to investigate the possibility of vocabulary acquisition in a context of reading of two short stories in English. In order to get to our experimental research, we have started our study writing about cognition, language, reading comprehension and lexical knowledge. In relation to teaching and learning of vocabulary in L2 through reading, we have Laufer (1997), Ur (2012), Nation and Waring (1997), Schmitt (2008), among others, which reveal important aspects about lexical knowledge and the importance of a rich mental lexicon for a better reading comprehension. Among the strategies of vocabulary acquisition in L2 cited, we stand out studies by Ur (2012) e Holden (2009), which affirm that establishing connections between word families, cognates between two languages and relationships between semantic fields, among other things, are relevant and effective strategies for a better vocabulary acquisition in L2. The participants were ten students with intermediate and advanced level of reading from a language school in the countryside of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, south Brazil. In our experimental research, we have carried out the application of a vocabulary pretest and a mediated reading of two tales by Edgar Allan Poe in English, during which students were able to negotiate meanings and build concepts about words. Right after, we have applied the vocabulary posttest, which presented a higher score of the definitions of the target words in relation to the pretest.The negotiation and experimentation of meanings and the mediated reading were effective in the process of vocabulary acquisition in L2. With the analysis of the transcription of the mediated reading, it is possible to notice the participants’ great cognitive effort to infer the definitions for the key words in the tests.