A segmentação silábica no inglês por aprendizes brasileiros: Contribuições fonético-fonológicas para a formação de professores

Laynara B. Nunes; Leônidas Silva Jr

doi:10.22481/lnostra.v14i1.18452

Authors

Laynara B. Nunes Universidade Estadual da Paraíba https://orcid.org/0009-0000-7813-1033
Leônidas Silva Jr Universidade Estadual da Paraíba https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3728-9851

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22481/lnostra.v14i1.18452

Keywords:

Syllable segmentation, Phonetic-phonological aspects, Technology for L2 Teaching, Teacher education

Abstract

This study investigates syllable segmentation in the teaching of English as a foreign language (L2) to Brazilian learners, with a focus on the contributions of phonetic and phonological aspects to teacher education. The study assumes that segmentation difficulties stem, to a great extent, from the transfer of patterns from Brazilian Portuguese (BP)—a language with a largely transparent grapheme–phoneme relationship—to English, whose grapheme–phoneme correspondence is notably opaque. To account for these phenomena, we draw on phonological principles such as the Maximal Onset Principle (MOP) and the Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP), as proposed by Selkirk (1982, 1984), as well as phonetic–prosodic criteria based on the notion of the p-center (Morton et al., 1976) and V-V units (Barbosa, 2006). In the methodology, we carried out a pretest-posttest experiment with 28 undergraduate students from EFL Teaching Major (Letras-inglês). Explicit instruction phase involved the use of a computational tool developed to automatically segment English words into syllables according to orthographic, phonetic, and phonological criteria. After the intervention, participants completed a new syllable-segmentation task equivalent in complexity to the initial one. Results indicated a significant increase in segmentation accuracy after explicit instruction, as confirmed by a paired t-test and by the robust effect size indicated by Cohen’s d. The technological tool proved effective in promoting metalinguistic awareness, enabling students to visualize multiple segmentation possibilities and better understand the syllable boundaries of the target L2. It is concluded that integrating phonetic and phonological approaches with educational technologies can reduce L1 interference, enhance syllabic processing in L2 Englis, and offer promising directions for teacher education.

Keywords: Syllable segmentation; Phonetic-phonological aspects; Technology for L2 Teaching; Teacher education.

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Author Biographies

Laynara B. Nunes, Universidade Estadual da Paraíba

Graduada em Letras-inglês pela Universidade Estadual da Paraíba. E-mail: laynara.nunes@aluno.uepb.edu.br.

Leônidas Silva Jr, Universidade Estadual da Paraíba

Doutor em Linguística pela Universidade Federal da Paraíba; Pós-Doutorado em Fonética experimental e Fonética Forense pela UNICAMP. Professor Associado da Universidade Estadual da Paraíba. E-mail: leonidas.silvajr@servidor.uepb.edu.br.

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