Fala>Ala: mutual implications between speech and writing in the consolidation of phonological awareness

Abstract

This paper investigated the relationship between the learning process of writing and phonological knowledge of the speakers. Morais et al (1979) and Read et al (1986) observed the performance of individuals in word segmentation tasks and observed that speakers who had contact with alphabetic writing performed better in word segmentation tasks than non-literate speakers or speakers who had been exposed only to ideographic writing system. Cristófaro-Silva and Guimarães (2013) suggest that speaking and writing do imply each other, with the two modalities in constant interaction in the construction of mental representation and, consequently, in the emergence and consolidation of linguistic awareness. In order to investigate the relationship between learning alphabetic writing and the linguistic knowledge of speakers, word segmentation test with a methodology similar to that of Morais et al (1979) were applied to students of Youth and Adult Education (YAE) with different degrees of contact with writing. For the analyzes of the results, we adopted the assumption of Usage-Based Models, according to which the experiences of speakers have an impact on the construction of linguistic knowledge. The responses of the participants were submitted to a multinominal logistic regression model and the results showed a strong correlation between the level of education – taken as a parameter to measure the degree of contact and mastery of writing – and the response to the task of the test. Based on the results, one can argued in favor of the dynamics of linguistic awareness, and it is possible to admit that, just as speech interferes with learning to write, the construction of phonological awareness is affected by learning the alphabetic writing system. Thus, a greater mastery of writing favors not only the ability to segment words, but also the consolidation – and robustness – of linguistic awareness.