Alfabetización y Exclusión

DIUK, B.

Congreso; 64 Congreso Anual de la International Linguistic Association.; 2019

International Linguistic Association - CELES/UNSAM

Around the world, 250 million children are illiterate. Half of these children attend school regularly (UNESCO, 2014). Given the high levels of inequality that are typical of Latin American societies, part of the population reaches adequate literacy levels, while many children growing up in poverty contexts do not learn how to read until they reach the higher levels of primary school (Abadzi, 2008). However, there is very little empirical information regarding this situation, and this fact contributes to the invisibilization of the process of exclusion in the educational system. This presentation summarizes the results of a study of the spelling skills of children from low-income backgrounds. A spelling test was administered to 1116 children (183 from 2°, 256 from 3°, 255 from 4°, 212 from 5° and 210 from 6°). The students were evaluated in the educational institutions they attended: a parochial school, three public schools and five community educational centers (these children attended 16 different public schools).The test comprised 20 high- and middle-frequency words: 13 of them only included simple syllables (CV structure) and seven words included one CVC syllable. No word contained more complex syllables. Children`s spellings were graded using a phonological criterion: words were considered correct and granted a point if the spelling recovered the whole phonological content of the word. No attention was payed to orthographic convention.Given the simplicity of the words and the lenient punctuation system, it can be assumed that a score below 12 points reflects an incomplete mastery of the writing system. Such results were obtained by 70 % of the 2° children, 41 % from 3°, 25 % from 4°, 13 % from 5° and 6 % from 6°. These results suggest that a process of exclusion is taking place in Agentina`s educational system.