EFFECT OF EXPLICIT TEACHING ON LIBRAS PERFORMANCE: A STUDY WITH FOUR L2 LEARNERS

ABSTRACT

Explicit teaching, according to Alves (2004), Gauthier (2014) and Rodrigues and Preuss (2018), is a pedagogical facility for the acquisition of L2 linguistic elements. For Silva (2018) the performance in Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) can be examined from the use of spatial mapping which is constituted by elements of nominal referencing, morphosyntactic production and referencing through the body. The present study aimed to investigate the effect of explicit teaching on performance in Libras as L2. The action research was characterized by the intervention with two groups of Libras apprentices of intermediate level, in one of which there was explicit teaching of spatial mapping. Participants performed the pre and post-test, which consisted of signaling a narrative. The account presented reports the data of two participants from each class. The results show that there was no effect of the explicit instruction in the use of nominal referencing and referencing through the body. Regarding the morphosyntactic production, there was not enough evidence to confirm the improvement in performance. In general, we did not observe the effect of explicit teaching on performance in Libras as L2, which can be partially explained by the lack of interaction resulting from the virtual modality with which it was implemented.

Keywords:
explicit teaching; spatial mapping; Libras