"If you put those letters together, write ball": a study about what children think about reading and how they perform it

Abstract

This work considers reading as complex cognitive process, which involves several intrappsychic activities, such as perception, attention, memory, inference, among others. Discussions about the process of apprehension of reading often appear linked to studies and research on the acquisition of writing, not being as explored or commented as aspects of the child's cognitive development in the area of education. Therefore, this research aims to understand what the psycholinguistics discuss about the cognitive processes of reading, in order to identify the evolutionary phases and what are the predominant characteristics in each of these stages. The study is based on the application of reading activities with children aged 5 years, from a class of early childhood education. For this, we conducted a qualitative research, having as data collection procedure the application of reading activities and records of the children's statements during the activities. The analysis, it is mainly based on the studies of Blacksmith and Teberosky (1999), Solé (1998), and Smith (1989) on the perspective of reading as a cognitive process. When analyzing the activities it was possible to identify characteristics of the reading phases; from one phase to another in the development of children, according to the studies of the authors selected for this work, and the relationship between the stages of reading with the stages of the writing hypothesis considering the studies of Blacksmith and Teberosky (1999).