A APROPRIAÇÃO DO TEXTO POR ALUNOS DO ENSINO DE SEGUNDO GRAU

Résumé

The reading process of secondary students in five public school classrooms was investigated and various problems of text comprehension and their possible causes were identified. The data, based on verbal protocols, written summaries of texts read, questionnaries and interviews, were analyzed in terms of the concept of text macroestructure, which is a formal aspect of global textual coherence ( van Dijk e Kintsch, 1983 ). The results show that the students experience serious difficulties in infering text macroestructure and suggest that this leads to the “appropriation” of the text. Two specific difficulties of superficial processing of textual elements were analyzed as potential causes of this “appropriation”: the presence of metaphorical expressions and unfamiliar words. During the reading process, the comprehension strategies used by the readers seemed to reflect concepts which were a result of educational practices.