Morphological knowledge in the service of understanding (literary) texts.

Abstract

This article proposes a reflection on the relevance of morphological knowledge for text comprehension. After initially exemplifying how morphological knowledge and metalinguistic reflection on lexicon and morphology (especially through semantic analysis of bases and affixes) can contribute to the understanding of a (literary) text, a didactic approach (Jorge, 2019) structured in three stages is presented: i) comprehension of a predominantly descriptive text (portrait of Sören – a character from the short story Saga, by Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen); ii) metalinguistic reflection (analysis of the morphological constituents of constructed nouns, consisting of base + suffix -ity); iii) text production (description of Hans, Sören's son, or: mobilizing the morphological knowledge developed in the second stage). This didactic approach is relevant to the role of self-regulated morphological awareness as an instrument for reading comprehension (Reading and Literary Education), metalinguistic reflection (Grammar), and text production (Writing), based on the Essential Learning Objectives in Portuguese currently in force, and considering, in particular, one of the strategic teaching actions aimed at the Student Profile: "comprehension of literary texts from a reading path that involves…using knowledge of the language... to interpret expressions and segments of text"