O surdo do contexto rural: desafios e implicações no processo de apropriação da Libras

Abstract

This master thesis developed a qualitative and descriptive action research that discusses the process of language appropriation of a deaf teenager student who lives in a rural area and did not have knowledge of neither Brazilian Sign Language- Libras nor written Portuguese until then.Thus, our aim was to develop an Educational Intervention Project (EIP) able to benefit the deaf student in the beginning of his appropriation of both Brazilian Sign Language and written Portuguese. In this perspective we defined further specific objectives: (i) to promote the interaction between the deaf student and other deaf people from Guaraciama and Bocaiuva cities. Planned and programmed activities were scheduled for them in order to take the student to live Libras and gradually develop it; (ii) to get to know and mobilize the deaf people from Guaraciama and Bocaiuva in order to motivate them to form a local deaf community and create an Association of Deaf People; (iii) to apply pedagogical methodologiesalong with the Libras interpreter in order to reinforce the interaction and communication in Libras, so that, progressively these elements could motivate written Portuguese acquisition; (iv) to promote the interaction school/family through planned activities to the effective linguistic developing of the deaf student and his family. The EIP lasted for about 13 months and it involved the deaf student transportation between at least three nearby cities and also the support of different partners/ contributors to develop the strategies. Sometimes the strategies were cancelled (due to lack of meaningful results) and other times continued (due to their valuable social contribution). The interventional práxis allowed confirming that although contextual elements made the deaf student’s process of language appropriation difficult (a late process), we could see progress on his linguistic and social behavior.Therefore, we consider that Libras has opened possibilities for the deaf student to interaction, leading him to the beginning of understand ding his identity as a deaf person, his identification with the community and making it possible for him a sociolinguistic development.