O papel do computador no ensino da leitura : um estudo comparativo entre duas estratégias

Abstract

Os estudos realizados no âmbito da leitura têm-se multiplicado de um modo muito significativo, nos últimos tempos. O interesse por esta competência tem a ver com o facto de a leitura avocar um papel fundamental na aprendizagem e no sucesso educativo. A leitura é considerada como um utensílio indispensável que possibilita aos leitores aderir a um conjunto de experiências e saberes. O insucesso na aquisição da leitura influencia, por vezes, a aprendizagem noutros campos disciplinares e desinteresse escolar. Como o domínio desta competência emerge desde logo nos primeiros anos escolares, é necessária a aplicação correcta de actividades neste campo e um treino sistemático.

Studies on the reading process have multiplied in a very significant way in recent times. The interest on this skill has to do with the fact that reading plays a key role in the learning process and in the educational success. Reading is considered to be an indispensable tool that enables readers to join a set of experiences and know ledges. Sometimes failure in reading acquisition influences the learning process in other subjects and leads to a situation of no interest at school. As this competence is supposed to emerge in the first school years, it is necessary the correct implementation of activities in this field and a systematic training. Thus, and because of its relevance, this study aimed to certify the contribution of phonological processing in reading and understand which of the two forms of education (one conventional - exercises with pencil and paper and the other nonconventional - exercises with the computer) was responsible for the best school results, with children with problems in the reading learning process. It is a fact that new technologies have the power to changing the educational reality; however they shouldn’t be faced as the only changing way, as this would be a reductive and simplistic perspective. So exercises with a pencil and on paper used to do the comparison in our empirical study, of the two forms of education - conventional and non-conventional. The empirical work has happened for five months in two 1st cycle schools. Data collection was done through the analysis of evidence from pre-test and post test, a an observation grid, where short comments from students were registered, as well as from involved teachers and parents, and also through the analysis of the survey grid on students motivation. For data treatment and analysis, SPSS software was used. The results show that students with learning difficulties benefited from two strategic situations, once gains in the intervention groups were higher than the ones in the control group. Thus, one can conclude that the implementation of activities to develop phonological processing and the principle of alphabetical domain were essential for the above referred gains.