The Magic Of Reading

Trilha componente do jogo “Armas e Barões (http://www.loa.sead.ufscar.br/armasebaroes.html)” desenvolvido pela equipe do Laboratório de Objetos de Aprendizagem da Universidade Federal de São Carlos (LOA/UFSCar).

Reading comprehension in primary school: textbooks, curriculum and assessment

This study describes the reading comprehension processes present in the most widely sold textbooks at the fourth grade level in Portugal and discusses how they compare to international assessments of reading literacy. We adopted the Progress of International Reading Literacy Study framework to categorize the questions in the textbooks. Our analyses revealed that they focus heavily on the retrieval of explicitly stated information to the detriment of higher level comprehension skills. Portuguese fourth grade textbooks rarely challenge students to make connections between their knowledge and the ideas in the texts and to adopt a critical and evaluative reading stance. This is in sharp contrast to what students are asked to do in the Progress of International Reading Literacy Study, conducted every five years since 2001, and it may help explain the poor results Portuguese students have in national assessment and in PISA. The findings are discussed in light of the curriculum frameworks currently adopted in Portugal and suggestions are made as to how we can improve reading literacy achievement.

Autoria e escrita: uma reflexão acerca do autorar em memórias de leituras de alunos de 9º ano do ensino fundamental

This paper presents results concerning studies conducted during the master's research in the area of Applied Linguistics of the Graduate Program in Language Studies - PPgEL, linked to the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte. We approached this study the question of authorship, which has gained ground increasingly important in academic research, because the act of authoring, in view of the amount of circulating discourses socially, becomes increasingly questionable. We understand authorship as related to a positioning of the subject than to take responsibility, in the Bakhtinian sense, by its text, it makes their views, ideologies, beliefs and values, from ownership and restructuring of the speech of others. This research is methodologically inserted in a qualitative, interpretive in nature and has a corpus analysis of the ten productions written memoir genre of readings produced by students in 9th grade in elementary school. Research aimed to analyze the students' written productions held in the school environment, to identify these texts marks or evidence of authorship and investigate how the restructuring of ownership and voices of others in the process of authoring. We adopt a concept of language from bakhitinianas concepts and understand the text in a vision Geraldiana. The analyzes in this study showed that in most texts there is the strong presence of voices of others, either implicitly and/or explicit. That is, students, to build their sayings, if embraced the voices of others in various formats, in particular styles, namely, by what Bakhtin names as linear style and pictorial style. Some proved his statement highlighting their positions through direct quotes from authors of books, family, teachers, showing us that their voices are filled with voices of others with whom they approve, deny, analyze, think and reflect. We therefore conclude that students were constituted as subjects of their texts, authors, since they leave marked the voices of others so presentified and restructured voices of others who do not actually sounded like voices of others, but as present voices from a discursive restructuring producer

Conversion of web texts into Braille characters for real time reading through arrays of electromechanical actuators

This paper describes an electronic device conceived to convert common web texts into sequences of corresponding Braille signals, which are immediately reproduced onto an array ( keyboard) of electromechanical actuators. These actuators are reconfigurable in real time, displaying the Braille characters as matrices of points composed by small stems which can be lowered or raised according to the Braille code. The device, together with its conversion software package, can provide direct access to web texts in any personal computer, thus avoiding the use of complicated Braille printers.

Reading, equivalence, and recombination of units: A replication with students with different learning histories

First graders, preschoolers, special education students, and adults received a reading program in which they learned to match printed to dictated words and to construct (copy) printed words. The students not only learned to match the training words but also learned to read them. In addition, most of the students learned to read new words that involved recombinations of the syllables of the training words. The results replicate and extend the generality of a prior analysis of a reading program based on stimulus equivalence and recombination of units.

Observing documentary reading by verbal protocol

Verifies the applicability to research on indexers' reading strategies of the process observing technique known as Verbal Protocol or Thinking Aloud. This interpretative-qualitative data collecting technique allows the observation of different kinds of process during the progress of different kinds of tasks. Presents a theoretical investigation into reading and into formal methodological procedures to observe reading processes. Describes details of the methodological procedures adopted in five case studies with analysis of samples of data. The project adopted three kinds of parameters for data analysis: theoretical, normative, empirical (derived from observations made in the first case study). The results are compared, and important conclusions regarding documentary reading are drawn.

Is there any defence for matricide? A juridical reading of Sophocles' Electra

Based on an analysis of Electra by Sophocles, it is proposed that the central concern of the dramatist is not the matricide of Clytemnestra itself. Sophocles invites the audience to reflect, as though they were the jury in a law court, on the legality of the actions of Electra. The play is thus a contribution to the debate on Justice in Greek society initiated almost two centuries previously.

A redistricting problem applied to meter reading in power distribution networks

The capacitated redistricting problem (CRP) has the objective to redefine, under a given criterion, an initial set of districts of an urban area represented by a geographic network. Each node in the network has different types of demands and each district has a limited capacity. Real-world applications consider more than one criteria in the design of the districts, leading to a multicriteria CRP (MCRP). Examples are found in political districting, sales design, street sweeping, garbage collection and mail delivery. This work addresses the MCRP applied to power meter reading and two criteria are considered: compactness and homogeneity of districts. The proposed solution framework is based on a greedy randomized adaptive search procedure and multicriteria scalarization techniques to approximate the Pareto frontier. The computational experiments show the effectiveness of the method for a set of randomly generated networks and for a real-world network extracted from the city of São Paulo. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd.

Dialogic reading of a novel for children: effects on text comprehension

Estudos experimentais têm demonstrado efeitos positivos da leitura dialógica de livros ilustrados (leitura em voz alta intercalada com prompts e feedback para verbalizações por parte do ouvinte) sobre o vocabulário e a expressão verbal de crianças pequenas. Este estudo verificou o efeito da leitura dialógica sobre a compreensão textual de um romance infanto-juvenil por três crianças de 7-8 anos, utilizando um delineamento de sujeito único. Na Condição A, o texto era lido sem intervenções. Na Condição B, a leitura era intercalada com intervenções dialógicas baseadas nas funções narrativas presentes no texto. As medidas de compreensão mostraram um desempenho superior na Condição B para os dois participantes submetidos ao delineamento B-A-B, mas não para o participante submetido ao delineamento A-B-A. São discutidas possíveis interações da leitura dialógica com características do gênero textual e a necessidade de replicações sistemáticas com um maior número de sessões e reversões das condições.

Reading strategies - from L1 to L2.

This paper intends to present a selection of the most useful reading strategies for the typical ESP students in Brazilian universities, showing whether the readers use them in their native language or not, the way the teacher should develop these strategies in the classroom, the problems involved in their use and the reasons for using them.

Uma leitura de 26 poetas hoje / A reading of 26 poetas hoje

Este trabalho procura identificar selecionadas produções poéticas da antologia 26 Poetas Hoje as faces da resistência indicada por Alfredo Bosi no ensaio “Poesia Resistência”. Do “grito de alarme” pessoal de poetas pertencentes a gerações diferentes, emerge uma poesia espontânea, autêntica e, sobretudo, resistente, como produto da renovação da expressão poética, impregnado de afetividades e de intimismo e que incorporou o coloquial e os recursos da grande poesia brasileira desde 22. This reading presents a sample from this anthology and tries to identify in it the faces of resistance indicated by Alfredo Bosi in his essay: “ Poesia Resistência”. In the several manners the poets of different generations chose for their personal cry of alert we find a poetry wich is spontaneous, authentic and, above all, “resistent”. This is due mainly to the renewal of the poetical expression, impregnated with affective ness and intimism, which included colloquial language and devices used by all great Brazilian poetry since the modernism of 1922.

Construction and validation of an instrument to assess the reading comprehension of students from the third to the fifth grades of elementary school

Objetivo:Este estudo teve como objetivo construir e validar um instrumento de avaliação da compreensão de leitura a fim de caracterizar o perfil de leitura e detectar dificuldades de compreensão em escolares do terceiro ao quinto ano do Ensino Fundamental.Métodos:Participaram 378 escolares divididos em trés grupos para avaliação da compreensão de proposições literais e inferenciais de micro e macroestruturas de dois textos expositivos e dois textos narrativos por meio de questões de múltipla escolha.Resultados:Os dados analisados estatisticamente indicaram valores do teste alfa de Cronbach apresentando consisténcia interna nos quatros textos aplicados para os trés grupos.Conclusão:Foi possível constatar que os escolares apresentaram menor número de erros com o aumento da escolarização e que cada tipo de texto apresentou uma dificuldade específica para os escolares.

Accuracy in dictation after improvement of reading and copying skills in a student with learning difficulties

The aim of this study was to use systematic teaching in a clinical setting using software to teach reading and writing in one boy with learning difficulties and obtain accurate performance in dictation. In the pre-test, the student showed good performance in matching-to-sample tasks (96% in matching printed words to dictated words; 88% in matching pictures to dictated words), although he obtained a low percentage of correct answers in the dictation of constructed responses (52%) and manuscripts (24%). The teaching strengthened the selection of printed words matched to dictated words and copying words. The student obtained 100% correct answers in the teaching tasks. In post-tests of dictation, he obtained 100% correct answers in constructed response and 96% correct answers in manuscripts. The results indicate that carefully teaching copying may promote accuracy in the performance of responding to minimal units in dictation tasks.

Phonological working memory and reading in students with dyslexia

Purpose: To investigate parameters related to fluency, reading comprehension and phonological processing (operational and short-term memory) and identify potential correlation between the variables in Dyslexia and in the absence of reading difficulties.Method: One hundred and fifteen students from the third to eighth grade of elementary school were grouped into a Control Group (CG) and Group with Dyslexia (GDys). Reading of words, pseudowords and text (decoding); listening and reading comprehension; phonological short-term and working memory (repetition of pseudowords and Digit Span) were evaluated.Results: The comparison of the groups showed significant differences in decoding, phonological short-term memory (repetition of pseudowords) and answers to text-connecting questions (TC) on reading comprehension, with the worst performances identified for GDys. In this group there were negative correlations between pseudowords repetition and TC answers and total score, both on listening comprehension. No correlations were found between operational and short-term memory (Digit Span) and parameters of fluency and reading comprehension in dyslexia. For the sample without complaint, there were positive correlations between some parameters of reading fluency and repetition of pseudowords and also between answering literal questions in listening comprehension and repetition of digits on the direct and reverse order. There was no correlation with the parameters of reading comprehension.Conclusion: GDys and CG showed similar performance in listening comprehension and in understanding of explicit information and gap-filling inference on reading comprehension. Students of GDys showed worst performance in reading decoding, phonological short-term memory (pseudowords) and on inferences that depends on textual cohesion understanding in reading. There were negative correlations between pseudowords repetition and TC answers and total score, both in listening comprehension.