The verbal aspect category and teaching: what students reveal to know and/or to understand about this category

Abstract

Recent linguistic studies point to a gap in the work with the verbal aspect in Portuguese language classes. Travaglia (2016) highlights the little attention devoted to the study of this category in Portuguese. Given this scenario and the importance of the verbal aspect for the construction of meanings of the utterances, we investigate what students reveal to know and/ or understand about this category when they are stimulated to analyze certain verbal uses. The theoretical basis of this article is composed of studies developed by Castilho (1968), Comrie (1976), Vargas (2011), among others. In order to carry out the proposed investigation, we analyzed language tests made with students recently inserted in the academic environment. Through data analysis, we perceive the direct effects of the gap attested anteriorly, since many students associated the effects of meaning resulting from verbal uses only to the identification of verb tenses (present, past and future), which reveals little about the functionality of this class of words in a dimension of the language in use. Although certain students have identified aspectuality in verbal actions, certain limitations and objections in their responses do not reveal an effective knowledge and understanding of the aspectual category of the verb. Given these results, we highlight the importance of work with the verbal aspect, since the data suggest a shallow approach given this category in basic education.

Keywords: Verbal Aspect. Portuguese language teaching. Production of meaning. Textual comprehension.