Formação inicial e o processo de ensino e aprendizagem do português como L2 para surdos: o discurso dos licenciandos surdos

Abstract

This work, based on an exploratory research with a qualitative approach, aims to analyze the discourse of Deaf undergraduate students from the integrated course of Letters-Libras (Brazilian Sign Language)/Portuguese Language at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte about their initial training and the process of teaching and learning Portuguese as a second language. This study arises from the lack of academic discussion related to the initial training of Deaf teachers to teach Portuguese as a second language to Deaf people. Since Portuguese regularly is not the Deaf person's comfort language, this study focus on this training, problematizing the academic literacy practices to these training teachers. To this, it discusses the main concepts of this research, dialoguing in the light of the theoretical references of Deaf Studies, New Literacy Studies, Historical-Cultural Theory and teacher training. To achieve this goal, data collection, in Libras, consisted of three stages: (i) documentary research; (ii) semi-structured interviews; (iii) focus groups. In order to analyze the data, which evokes the signaled voices of the four deaf undergraduates, the theoretical approach is the Dialogical Discourse Analysis based on Bakhtin Circle (2011), electing, subsequently, two categories of alterity: signaled voices from experiences: individual perceptions related to the proficiency in Portuguese and teacher identity; and signaled voices from experiences: perceptions related to the other person: speeches about training and the teacher. To ensure anonymity, this study used planet names as nicknames to each undergraduate. Results showed that: (i) there is no academic papers related to the training of the Deaf teacher to teach Portuguese as second language; two undergraduates value negatively the pedagogical practices of the Basic Education, in contrast, there was a mixed valuation (positive and negative) in the speeches of two other undergraduates related to the learning of Portuguese; (iii) although they consider themselves good readers and writers in Portuguese, they have some barriers to read and write academic texts in Portuguese, for this, they seek to improve their practices; (iv) barriers with reading and writing in Portuguese intensify when they have activities in subjects whose teachers are not bilingual; (iii) the subjects Portuguese Language Teaching for Libras Users, one of the areas of this course, are not effective to their training curriculum, resulting in restricted grammatical knowledge; (iv) they do not feel prepared to teach Portuguese as second language; teachers from this course are positively valued when they are bilingual and they have knowledge about Deaf culture; (viii) they think is important to have pedagogical support to undergraduates to teach Portuguese, in a very thorough way, contributing to their future teacher practices. This study concludes that teacher training and academic literacy are linked dimensions, and it is necessary to reflect on the literate practices of Deaf undergraduates and their implications for teacher training, (re)signifying the academic curriculum to receive their training needs. This work aims to stimulate more researches related to this theme, bringing a further understanding to its complexity.