Estratégias cognitivas utilizadas por alunos ingressantes de letras-inglês para minimizar entraves na produção linguística.

Abstract

The linguistic production in a foreign language in the academic context can be a difficult activity for the learner due to some external factors, such as social and economic factors, and internal factors, like psychological factors; that may cause interference in the linguistic production (GOMES, 2018). Considering these factors, it is possible to use cognitive strategies to help to deal with difficulties in the oral and written production (OXFORD, 1990). Considering this scenario, this study investigates to what extent cognitive strategies may contribute to deal with psychological factors that may block the linguistic production in a foreign language. To carry out this research, a questionnaire was applied to freshman students of Letters – English Language at UFCG in order to: 1) identify and describe the psychological factors that interfere in the oral and written production of the mentioned students; and 2) map the cognitive strategies used by them to deal with the difficulties in the mentioned context. After analyzing the results, it was possible to identify that anxiety, fear, pressure, shyness, tension, nervousness, and lack of motivation were the factors mentioned by the participants as possible obstacles in the linguistic production during academic activities. As a result, to deal with those factors, the strategies of practicing, repetition, annotation, reading and listening to contents in the foreign language worked as facilitators in this process. Finally, according to the participants of this research, using the mentioned strategies can help to deal with psychological factors that block the oral and written production.