Metodologie didattiche inclusive per potenziare la competenza metalessicale. Proposte di intervento per studenti italofoni con DSA di portoghese LS

Considering the growing number of students with Special Educational Needs in Italian universities, which the 2022 ANVUR statistical survey quantifies in 36.816 enrolled, affected primarily by Specific Learning Disorders, this study aims to discuss “accessible” teaching proposals for metalinguistic reflection activities. This is an essential skill to master any communicative system to be implemented during learning sessions of Portuguese as a foreign language, to stimulate the development of meta-lexical competence, since these students show difficulties in the permanent memorization of words, tools that are essential to negotiate contents during the communicative act. As the cognitive processing of information in Working Memory is rather tiring, especially the retrieval of abstract notions and lexical labels through inferential procedures, we present examples of possible activities that can promote meta-lexical reflection, developed for dyslexic or dysgraphic Italian-speaking students who study Portuguese at an elementary level (A2) by observing the problems related to the disorder, the provisions of the current legislation in Italy on school and academic inclusion and the principles of the i) Metacognitive Teaching, ii) Competency-based learning and iii) Lexical Approach. Starting from the reading of an authentic text, made didactically accessible through a process of morpho-syntactic and textual simplification, we illustrate basic examples of meta-lexical reflection exercises, based on “chunks” analyses – in particular of “multi-words” and “collocations” –, on the dimension of synonymy and the formation of word families, activities which stimulate the transfer process.