A instrução explícita na aquisição das consoantes fricativas alveolopalatais e africadas do inglês por aprendizes brasileiros

Abstract

This research aims to investigate the effectiveness of explicit instruction activities in the acquisition of alveolopalatal fricatives - /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ - and africates - /dʒ/ and /tʃ/ - in English by Brazilian learners of English as a second language (L2). The study considers a variety of phonological and graphophonemic contexts that may pose challenges for students in producing these segments. Data on the acoustic production of three participants were collected at the Oral Language Emergency Laboratory (LELO) at the Federal University of Pelotas. Visual stimuli, including images and written words, were presented to elicit the production of target sounds within a sentence frame and analyzed guided by the Complex Dynamic Systems Theory. Data collection occurred at four distinct stages: i) pre-explicit instruction, ii) immediately post-explicit instruction sessions, iii) post-tests, and iv) one month after the final instruction stage. Three participants from the English-Portuguese Translation program at the Federal University of Pelotas were invited to engage in the research, undergoing explicit instruction activities across four sessions. The results showed that spelling plays an important role in the occurrence of accurate production. Furthermore, the phonetic-phonological acquisition of target segments in initial positions occurs more quickly than in medial positions in syllables. Regarding the role of explicit instruction, significant changes were identified to improve the informants' production, mainly for the segments that are in process of acquisition, emphasis to voiced alveolopalatal fricative /ʒ/. This study contributes to identifying the primary factors hindering the production of alveolopalatal fricatives and affricates in English by Brazilian learners regarding segment acquisition, contrastive pairs, syllabic constituent and word position as well as it analyzes the efficiency of explicit instruction activities in the L2 acquisition process.