Estudo da competência oral semântica de alunos de português língua não-materna que frequentam o ensino regular

Abstract

The semantic competence refers to the ability to recognize and use meanings and lexicon. It refers to the meaning of linguistic expressions and overall to the awareness that speakers have of the meaning of words and utterances of a language. The allocation of new meanings is not plain and simple because of the great flexibility of linguistic expressions, especially when it comes to learners of a second language, in this specific case students, children of foreign parents who learn Portuguese As Second Language (PASL). This paper aimed to verify the existence of differences in the levels of semantic listening comprehension within PASL students, children of foreign parents who attend regular education and their Portuguese As Mother Language (PAML) peers; check for significant relationship between listening semantics of students PASL, the number of years of residence and years of education in Portugal. The sample consists of 38 students: 19 PASL students, 19 PAML students, between 9 and 14 years of age, attending schools within Lisbon’s metropolitan area. A socio-linguistic characterization questionnaire was performed, together with semantic association tests of words of high and low imageability and listening comprehension of verbs and adjectives. It was possible to determine that PAML students came to significantly higher scores in the three tests, resulting into higher scores and fewer semantic errors, which resulted in statistically significant differences in all the tests. PASL students obtained more semantic errors in test A, unrelated errors in tests A and B, and no-response errors in both tests, but with no statistically significant differences. There was a significant connection between listening semantics of PASL students and the number of years of residence in Portugal in Tests B and C. A statistical interference of parental education was registered in semantic errors by PASL students.

Date of Award	28 Oct 2015
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Maria Emília Santos (Supervisor) & Hanna Jakubowicz Batoréo (Co-Supervisor)