Since the alphabetic stage of reading acquisition the learner faces issues related to orthography, including the segmentation of the writing in graphic words. This study investigates the relationships between conventional segmentation of words, morphosyntactic awareness, orthography and reading comprehension of 4th and 5th year pupils from public elementary schools in Curitiba. The results reveal a greater difficulty in the oral identification of words than in the segmentation of writing. Statistical analysis show positive and statistically significant correlations between all investigated variables. The results indicate that morphosyntactic skills promote the establishment of the conventional word concept and suggest that teachers who encourage the development of these skills can warrant a greater ability of pupils in written language.
lexical segmentation; hyposegmentation; hypersegmentation; morphosyntactic awareness; reading and writing performance
