School, family and prosodic perception: an experimental study of the hearing of students from the initial grades of Vitória da Conquista in Bahia

Abstract

When listening to the reading aloud of a text, it is expected that the complete comprehension of what is being heard comes from the perception of the prosodic variations present in this reading. The reading habit is an important factor for the development of this skill which is an important feature in the constitution of the critical reader. Based on this assumption, our work seeks to investigate the prosodic perception level of students in the initial grades of public and private schools in the city of Vitória da Conquista / BA, considering the educational level of the parents of these students, as well as considering the reading habit of parents and students. Our hypothesis is that private school students, children of parents with a full degree status have a higher level of prosodic perception. Our objective is to describe the relationship between the type of school (public or private), educational level, reading habit and perception of prosodic variation. In order to account for the objective proposed here, an experiment was carried out, which consisted in the hearing of the early grades by the recording of the text Cinderella, prepared with the presence of lexical prosodic volume markers, namely, said high and said low. After hearing the recording, the students performed a perception task that aimed to ascertain the level of perception of the volume variation present in the recorded recordings. In a previous analysis, it was verified, through a questionnaire, the educational level and the socioeconomic level of the parents of the participants of this research and the reading habits of parents and students. The results are discussed considering the role of public and private schools and the students' family socioeconomic level in the constitution of subjects as proficient readers.