Compreensão textual em língua inglesa e deficiência visual: buscando caminhos para uma aprendizagem significativa

Abstract

After the advances in legislation, pedagogical practices and educational research that have occurred in recent decades, it is undeniable that the issue of inclusive education has drawn the attention of many teachers and researchers. In the scope of this theme, some research projects have been devoted to investigating the pedagogical processes for students with visual impairment (CERCHIARI, 2014) and highlighted that it is necessary to learn to live with and contribute to the teaching/learning process of this specific audience (DANTAS, 2014a; 2014b), in the most varied disciplinary fields. As regards to the English language, which is the focus of this work, it is observed that each student (with or without a disability) can use a variety of strategies during the teaching/learning process (MALTA, 2014), which serve as instruments to cater for the peculiar characteristics that each student brings and which are often reflected on the preference for certain styles of learning (MALTA, 2009; OXFORD, 2003). Thus, taking into account the styles and strategies mobilized by/for students with visual impairment, we investigated how the development of the capacity of textual comprehension in English by students with visual impairment occurs in a context of a specialized institution. The research was carried out through the analysis of texts, activities and procedures proposed in two English language classes, taught by the researcher and the English teacher of the class in an institution specialized in attending students with visual impairment. It aimed to map the learning styles covered by the activities, as well as the teaching-learning strategies offered to students with visual impairment throughout the classes to facilitate the process of textual comprehension, in a perspective of meaning-making. In order to investigate the strategies, we also analyzed the responses of three of the students to a questionnaire regarding specific aspects of the classes, so as to understand which elements they considered the most favorable to the development of their capacity of textual comprehension in the target language. The generation of data took place at the Instituto dos Cegos da Paraíba Adalgisa Cunha, an institution specialized in the care of people with visual impairment, located in the city of João Pessoa - PB. The results show that the texts, activities and procedures of lesson plans, while working on a variety of styles and strategies, seem to have facilitated the English language teaching-learning process for participating students with visual impairment, but also seem to have allowed the research collaborators to trigger their personal direct and indirect strategies (MALTA, 2014) to develop their textual comprehension capacity in the target language. With this work, we intend to contribute to other pieces of research, in order to offer better conditions of pedagogical accessibility, and thus facilitate the English language learning for students with visual impairment, allowing broader educational and social inclusion of that specific public.