Práticas de letramento de estudantes surdos em português escrito em um curso de letras-libras

Abstract

The Letters-Libras course represents an achievement for the Brazilian deaf community, as it legitimizes and deepens the studies of Brazilian Sign Language in the context of higher education and qualifies professionals to work in this area. From this, it is questioned, in this research, whether the degree course in Letters/Libras will be developed in this perspective, foresees a need to develop reading and writing skills of Portuguese in studies and what literacy practices. Therefore, the objective of this research is to describe the academic literacy practices in written Portuguese that deaf students undergo in a course of Letters/Libras, in order to analyze the perceptions that the deaf build from this process. As specific objectives, we seek to: i) analyze the Pedagogical Project of the Course (PPC), in order to verify if there is any prediction for the development of the deaf in Portuguese; ii) discriminate the academic literacy practices in written Portuguese of the selected course, pointing out the discursive genres produced and the didactic treatment given to such practices; iii) analyze how students conceive the practice of writing in the course, determining the perceptions built by the research participants. The theoretical contribution that supports the reflections on literacy practices was based mainly on Street (1984), Soares (1995, 2004) and Fernandes (2008, 2012, 2017). To carry out the research, the following methodological procedures were adopted: i) document analysis of the PPC, in order to analyze the structure of the course in relation to literacy practices; ii) survey of the sample group: questionnaires on literacy practices were sent to teachers, students and tutors of the course, which they proposed to answer: 08 (eight) deaf students from the 8th period of the Letters/Libras course, 04 (four) professors of the course subjects and 02 (two) tutors (face-to-face and distance learning). In the end, the research revealed that in the perception of the research participants there was medium reading and little writing during the course. Deaf people read and write in Portuguese from the proposed activities, such as forums, practical and evaluative activities and seminars, demonstrating different feelings (insecurity, overcoming or challenge) when experiencing them. Although it is not expected that literate practices in Portuguese will increase too much in Letters/Libras courses, it is expected that students can also develop in Portuguese in an undergraduate course in Libras, given the autonomy provided by reading and writing the majority language.