Orthography: Contradiction Between Concepts And Procedures

Abstract

The present study has as purpose to verify the occurrence of mistakes and rights in graphic accentuation of isolate words in written papers from 30 fifth grade students of a public school in Maringá city. In order to do that, a graphic accentuation test with ten words was applied: two accented oxytones, two not accented oxytones, two accented paroxytones, two not accented paroxytones and two proparoxytone. The test was applied in two moments: first in a balloon of words whose words were written without any graphic accent, asking the students to put or not the accent. On the second, the same words were dictated on the phrase’s context. The results showed that the students accent in a distinct form the same words presented in different exercises. This contradiction emphasizes the conceptual and procedural confusion of the students in relation to the oral and written language, and it shows that students do not understand the graphic accentuation process as an orthographic norm. These data emphasize the importance of investigate the nature and features of the orthography learning and teaching process, because the school seems not to be benefiting the differentiation between orality and written language in the investigated contents.