This thesis investigates learners’ reading practices and especially the processing of cross-linguistic similarities at the lexical level. The aim is to determine how learners proceed in order to understand text in French (L3). Data were collected using various reading comprehension tasks in combination with the think-aloud method. Reading comprehension was mainly assessed through a translation task while the reading practices were observed in think-aloud protocols. According to a reading comprehension score, 20 learners were divided into high level and low level groups. The majority of participants were Swedish learners who are also proficient in English L2. Another group of 10 Swedish learners and 10 French native speakers participated in a cross-linguistic word association task. Reading practices were defined as including skills, strategies and readers’ reactions to the text, the tasks and their own capacities. A typology of twelve reading practices was established including three categories based on intralingual and interlingual similarities. Results from the translation task and the think-aloud protocols show that interlingual processing is more important when learners have difficulties in understanding text content. The more learners in the low level groups relied on intralingual and especially interlingual similarities the less they understood the text content. The high level groups on the other hand used reading practices such as reformulation or translation procedures. The think-aloud protocols also show that learners believe that they compare words in the French text (L3) with English similar words (L2) although their interlingual processing during translation actually confirms the dominance of Swedish (L1). Moreover, results from a cross-linguistic word association task suggest that French Swedish/English cognates and false friends activate this type of words more often than French control words. Cross-linguistic stimuli actually triggered patterns of potential interlingual similarities, for example sacrifice (stimulus) – religion (response), even more than words that are similar to the stimulus diplomate – diplom ‘diploma’.

Submitted by Aline Batista (alinehb.ufpel@gmail.com) on 2018-07-17T19:12:39Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Dissertacao_Renan_Castro_Ferreira.pdf: 2147576 bytes, checksum: 576e918ce5169b06e2bd38124e8dd6e2 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Aline Batista (alinehb.ufpel@gmail.com) on 2018-07-17T21:25:35Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Dissertacao_Renan_Castro_Ferreira.pdf: 2147576 bytes, checksum: 576e918ce5169b06e2bd38124e8dd6e2 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-07-17T21:25:42Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Dissertacao_Renan_Castro_Ferreira.pdf: 2147576 bytes, checksum: 576e918ce5169b06e2bd38124e8dd6e2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-02-23 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / O presente trabalho buscou identificar as similaridades translinguísticas reais entre português e inglês em estruturas do tipo phrasal verbs e investigar a percepção dessas similaridades por aprendizes de inglês como língua estrangeira (LE) que são falantes nativos de português. Realizamos um levantamento em dicionários de verbos e regência com o objetivo de confirmar a presença, na língua portuguesa, de estruturas do tipo phrasal verbs. Depois, com base no referencial teórico de Kellerman (1977) e Ringbom (2007) sobre a importância das similaridades translinguísticas percebidas e/ou presumidas na aprendizagem de língua estrangeira, assim como no estudo de Sjöholm (1995) sobre o efeito delas na aprendizagem de phrasal verbs, utilizamos um teste de múltipla escolha e entrevistas semiestruturadas para examinar as percepções de aprendizes brasileiros de inglês e determinar se as similaridades entre as línguas em questão afetam o modo como eles compreendem e usam os phrasal verbs. O levantamento evidenciou que o português possui phrasal verbs e que muitos deles conservam similaridades de forma e significado com seus equivalentes em inglês. O teste de múltipla escolha mostrou que há uma tendência maior de escolha de phrasal verbs em inglês quando eles possuem equivalentes em português. Nas entrevistas, todos os aprendizes conseguiram identificar os equivalentes portugueses dos phrasal verbs apresentados, apesar de não terem estabelecido essa relação entre as línguas de forma consciente durante o teste. Os resultados indicam que a percepção de similaridades translinguísticas entre português-LM e inglês-LE na questão dos phrasal verbs leva à facilitação da compreensão e do uso dessas estruturas na LE alvo. / This work aimed to identify the real cross-linguistic similarities between Portuguese and English concerning phrasal verbs and investigate the perception of such similarities by learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) who are native speakers of Portuguese. To confirm that Portuguese has structures that can be classified as phrasal verbs, we carried out a survey in verb and verb collocation dictionaries. Then, based on the research by Kellerman (1977) and Ringbom (2007) on the importance of perceived and/or assumed cross-linguistics similarities in foreign language learning, as well as on Sjöholm’s (1995) study on their effect on the learning of phrasal verbs, we used a multiple-choice test and semi-structured interviews to examine the perceptions of Brazilian learners of English and determine whether the similarities between the two languages in question affect the way they comprehend and use phrasal verbs. The searches in Portuguese dictionaries evinced that Portuguese language has phrasal verbs and that many of them have similarities of form and meaning with their English equivalents. The multiple-choice test showed that the learners have a greater tendency to choose phrasal verbs in English when there are equivalents in Portuguese. In the interviews, all of the respondents were able to identify the Portuguese equivalents of the English phrasal verbs presented, in spite of not having consciously found that relationship between the languages during the test. The results indicate that the perception of cross-linguistic similarities between L1 Portuguese and FL English concerning phrasal verbs leads to the facilitation in the comprehension and use of those structures in the target foreign language.