O portefólio em faixas etárias precoces: potencialidades e constrangimentos

Mestrado em Ensino Precoce do Inglês

Inglês: atividade de enriquecimento ou disciplina curricular?

Mestrado em Ensino Precoce do Inglês

Phonological and articulation treatment approaches in Portuguese children with speech and language impairments: a randomized controlled intervention study

Background: In Portugal, the routine clinical practice of speech and language therapists (SLTs) in treating children with all types of speech sound disorder (SSD) continues to be articulation therapy (AT). There is limited use of phonological therapy (PT) or phonological awareness training in Portugal. Additionally, at an international level there is a focus on collecting information on and differentiating between the effectiveness of PT and AT for children with different types of phonologically based SSD, as well as on the role of phonological awareness in remediating SSD. It is important to collect more evidence for the most effective and efficient type of intervention approach for different SSDs and for these data to be collected from diverse linguistic and cultural perspectives. Aims: To evaluate the effectiveness of a PT and AT approach for treatment of 14 Portuguese children, aged 4.0–6.7 years, with a phonologically based SSD. Methods & Procedures: The children were randomly assigned to one of the two treatment approaches (seven children in each group). All children were treated by the same SLT, blind to the aims of the study, over three blocks of a total of 25 weekly sessions of intervention. Outcome measures of phonological ability (percentage of consonants correct (PCC), percentage occurrence of different phonological processes and phonetic inventory) were taken before and after intervention. A qualitative assessment of intervention effectiveness from the perspective of the parents of participants was included. Outcomes & Results: Both treatments were effective in improving the participants’ speech, with the children receiving PT showing a more significant improvement in PCC score than those receiving the AT. Children in the PT group also showed greater generalization to untreated words than those receiving AT. Parents reported both intervention approaches to be as effective in improving their children’s speech. Conclusions & Implications: The PT (combination of expressive phonological tasks, phonological awareness, listening and discrimination activities) proved to be an effective integrated method of improving phonological SSD in children. These findings provide some evidence for Portuguese SLTs to employ PT with children with phonologically based SSD

"Knock, knock! Is it english or portuguese sign language?"

A presente investigação mostra a importância do contacto de crianças muito jovens com línguas estrangeiras. Este trabalho concentra-se na tentativa de investigar, numa abordagem plurilingue, com enfoque para a Língua Inglesa e a Língua Gestual Portuguesa, a sensibilização de um grupo de alunos do 1º Ciclo do Ensino Básico para uma língua diferente da sua língua materna. Nesta pesquisa, adotou-se uma postura de investigação-ação, apoiando-se com grande particularidade numa metodologia qualitativa e com menor relevância numa metodologia quantitativa, onde os alunos, através das várias atividades que desenvolveram foram adquirindo diferentes competências nas duas línguas. Isto permitiu aos alunos despertarem todas as suas potencialidades para a aprendizagem destas duas línguas (Língua Inglesa e Língua Gestual Portuguesa), tendo como ponto de partida a sua sensibilização e a aprendizagem de alguns vocábulos. Acreditamos que esta abordagem plurilíngue poderá auxiliar os alunos no desenvolvimento de habilidades linguísticas, cognitivas e pessoais tais como: a intercompreensão, o conhecimento de características específicas de diferentes línguas existentes em seu redor, a comparação linguística entre elas, a sua compreensão lexical, e por fim a competência em relacionar as línguas a culturas, e acima de tudo, o respeito e valorização da diversidade linguística e cultural. Foram utilizadas nas aulas atividades de nível de compreensão e produção oral, num processo de sensibilização e aprendizagem de alguns vocábulos destas línguas, sendo que os resultados foram posteriormente analisados, através de grelhas de observação das atividades, de dois inquéritos por questionário e fotos. Das observações e conclusões retiradas desta análise, confirmou-se que a sensibilização quanto à Língua Inglesa assim como quanto à Língua Gestual Portuguesa promove o desenvolvimento da criança, assim como a valorização da respetiva diversidade linguística e cultural.

Construction of womanhood in the bengali language of Bangladesh

The subject-matter of this essay is gender justice in language which, as I argue, may be achieved through the development of a gender-related approach to linguistic human rights. The last decades of the 20th century, globally marked by a “gender shift” in attitudes to language policy, gave impetus to the social movement for promoting linguistic gender equality. It was initiated in Western Europe and nowadays is moving eastwards, as ideas of gender democracy progress into developing countries. But, while in western societies gender discrimination through language, or linguistic sexism, was an issue of concern for over three decades, in developing countries efforts to promote gender justice in language are only in their infancy. My argument is that to promote gender justice in language internationally it is necessary to acknowledge the rights of women and men to equal representation of their gender in language and speech and, therefore, raise a question of linguistic rights of the sexes. My understanding is that the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights in 1996 provided this opportunity to address the problem of gender justice in language as a human rights issue, specifically as a gender dimension of linguistic human rights.