Performance of students in gaping texts with the use of pictures and words

Abstract

The objective  of this study was to verify the performance of students in the 2nd year of Elementary School in the use of text with pictures and text with words. The study included 21 students from the 2nd year of public education, without learning difficulties. The initial stage of the research proposed to carry out the adaptation of two texts. In the first text, words were replaced by gaps to fill in, with the selection between two figures of the one that best represented the meaning of the sentence and, subsequently, the word was written in the gap. In the second text, words were removed and gaps were formed to be filled in with a written word, selected between two semantically different response options. In the next stage, the texts were applied in two individual sessions. As a result, there was an average of 6.95 out of a maximum of seven gaps in the first text and 8.3 out of a total of nine gaps for the second text. Reading time was longer at T2 compared to T1. In the classification of misunderstandings to fill in the gaps, most exchanges were identified as close co-hyponyms. Regarding spelling errors, the students had a higher number of errors in the first text compared to the second. It was concluded that it was possible to verify the performance of students in the 2nd year of Elementary School in the use of lacunated texts, both with images and words. The analysis of the answers by successes and errors helped in the reflection on the processes acquired in this educational phase and on measures that can help the learner, since the rate of correct answers was high.