Written narrative of students with and without difficulty in syntactic awareness

Abstract

Introduction: Syntactic awareness is a metalinguistic ability defined as the child’s ability to reflect on formal processes relating to the organization of words in sentences and to manipulate them. This skill is still little explored in the context of school learning, and its importance in the school learning process of Portuguese-speaking children is poorly described. Objective: To compare written narrative between children with and without difficulty in syntactic awareness. Methods: The study was conducted on 60 children (mean age 9.4 years; SD: 0.9) enrolled in the 4th and 5th years of elementary school in a municipal school. The subjects were divided into two groups according to their performance in the task of syntactic awareness - G1 (children with medium/high performance in syntactic awareness) and G2 (lower performance). After the assessment of syntactic awareness each child elaborated a written narrative text based on a stimulus figure. This text was analyzed by judges in terms of spelling, grammatical errors, use of grammatical classes, and content. The Student t-test (α = 0.05) was used to compare the groups. Results: G2 children showed altered handwriting; greater occurrence of spelling mistakes, mainly of irregular phonographic relation type; oral support and difficulty with nasal markers; short texts with preference for the use of nouns and verbs, as well as difficulties with text structuring, use of punctuation and vocabulary, while G1 used more verbs and pronouns instead of nouns. Conclusions: Children with adequate syntactic awareness were able to elaborate written narratives with greater competence, demonstrating acquisition of orthographic aspects and development of textual coherence.

Relationship between symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and speech-language-hearing aspects

“…The performance in the syntactic awareness test was similar to that of the abovementioned tests -alike between the inattentive and combined profiles and a predominance of errors in the combined profile. The literature 38 shows that children with changes in syntactic awareness have written narrative deficits. Hence, it is essential to better investigate the consequences of such changes in children and adolescents with ADHD.…”

30 years of the Journal of Human Growth and Development: scientific communication in the several areas of knowledge

“…When comparing the written narrative between children with and without difficulty in syntactic awareness, there is an improvement in the elaboration of written narratives with greater competence, demonstrating acquisition of orthographic aspects and development of textual coherence 22 .…”

Habilidades linguísticas em pacientes com transtorno de déficit de atenção e hiperatividade

“…Com relação às alterações na prova de consciência sintática, a literatura mostra déficits lexicais sintáticos, como no estudo de Cohen et al (2000), além de outros estudos associando alterações em consciência sintática e déficits na narrativa escrita (SOARES et al, 2020;TIROSH;COHEN, 1998). A maioria dos estudos encontrados analisa as dificuldades sintáticas por meio de redações de textos, demonstrando dificuldades na narrativa e baixos níveis de complexidade sintática na escrita (GALLARDO-PAÚLS et al, 2012;LUO;TIMLER, 2008;SOARES et al, 2020).…”

“…Com relação às alterações na prova de consciência sintática, a literatura mostra déficits lexicais sintáticos, como no estudo de Cohen et al (2000), além de outros estudos associando alterações em consciência sintática e déficits na narrativa escrita (SOARES et al, 2020;TIROSH;COHEN, 1998). A maioria dos estudos encontrados analisa as dificuldades sintáticas por meio de redações de textos, demonstrando dificuldades na narrativa e baixos níveis de complexidade sintática na escrita (GALLARDO-PAÚLS et al, 2012;LUO;TIMLER, 2008;SOARES et al, 2020). Alguns estudos também apresentam resultados controversos no que se refere à frequência de alterações na consciência sintática para a língua avaliada, o que pode ser justificado pelas diversas línguas e pelos diferentes instrumentos utilizados (JONSDOTTIR et al, 2005;TIFFIN RICHARDS et al, 2008).…”