Abstract

Deaf people use Sign Language (SL) for intellectual development, communications and other human activities that are mediated by language—such as the expression of complex and abstract thoughts and feelings; and for literature, culture and knowledge. The Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) is a complete linguistic system of visual-spatial manner, which requires an adequate writing system. The specificities of Libras pose a challenge for alphabetisation/literacy in the educational process of the Deaf, which allows for meaning attribution by the Deaf learner only when the SL is the central pedagogical tool. This process vastly differs from the pedagogical strategies used to teach the written form of the oral languages. The alphabetisation relies heavily on the phoneme-grapheme relations—therefore, not accessible to the Deaf learner. SignWriting is a writing system deemed to be adequate represent Libras, and has been used in literacy processes of Deaf learners. This article presents a visual pedagogical tool, a narrative in the genre of a comic book, to be used for meaningful learning and acquisition of SignWriting. The methodological approach of this research involved the creation of a comic book tool to provide the context and communicational situation where the enunciation in Libras occurs, thus presenting an opportunity to introduce SignWriting. The utterances are then presented in the form of writing activities. Results show that the use of the proposed Visual Narrative approach is an adequate educational strategy to inform the design of pedagogical practices for teaching the writing system of SL.

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