Desenvolvimento da realização inferencial : em busca de um caminho para uma melhor compreensão leitora.

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the inferential process based on the results of reading obtained by Brazilian students in “Prova Brasil 2011”, focusing on the inferential process in students of 1st year of high school. For that purpose, we initially conducted a literature review and then developed an experimental research. We begin with a theoretical research of inferences. We approach the reading and cognitive processes involved, conceptualizing the notion of context, through the concept of world mental representation schemes. We use concepts of inferences from different authors and the knowledge representation scheme of van Dijk (2004) to create theoretical basis for our classification on inferences. We investigated the inferential process defining what are inferences, types of inferences and we detailed the classification adopted. We understand inference as a cognitive activity performed on a particular context, so our classification was based on inference and context relationship. Finally, we ascertained the approach of inferential process on issues of “Prova Brasil”. In the second chapter, we present the experimental research. The data collection was performed at the José Alfredo Kliemann State Secondary School , with students of the 1st year of high school, attending the morning and night shifts. Students were divided into 4 groups, two groups of the day shift and two groups of the night shift. On each shift, we had an experimental group and a control group. Four instruments were applied, each one containing texts and 8 questions for participants to answer and justify. In the experimental groups, the reading of the texts was performed by the researcher and students could raise doubts about lexical meanings. The collected data were analyzed in the light of the theories previously described. The results presented confirmed the hypothesis that the inferential processing disability directly influences the reading comprehension, as well as highlighted the difficulty of performing inferences on the part of students investigated. This difficulty, as we supposed, focused on contextualizing the inferences. Much of the errors presented were due to failure to perform contextual inferences, which met our previous assumptions. Our inferential classification was adequate for the analysis of the data.