RIBEIRO-VELAZQUEZ, Silvanne    TEBEROSKY, Ana. Saying Words Backwards: Word Games and Language Acquisition among Brazilian Preschoolers. []. , 28, 98, pp.703-728.   02--2023. ISSN 1405-6666.

This article analyzes the responses of Brazilian preschool children when they are presented with a game situation with words. The situation implied, implicitly, a metalinguistic response in the consideration of formal aspects (morphological and/or phonological). The proposal consisted of asking the children to say “the reverse” of some words. The research took as reference a previous study (Blanche-Benveniste and Ferreiro, 1988) carried out in Spanish. The methodology consisted of a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the children’s justifications; a relationship of the answers with their writing level was also established. The results showed that the children paid attention to both semantic and formal aspects; some even became interested in metalinguistic aspects. A relationship was found between the writing level and metalinguistic knowledge.

: preschool education; language development; oral language; writing; metalinguistics.

        · |     · |     · ( pdf )