Words database for reading by students from Basic Education I, E-READING I

To present the process of elaborating a words database appropriate for the reading proficiency level of elementary school students.

Words from Portuguese language textbooks used in the public school system of São Paulo, Paraná, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais states of Brazil were selected. We opted for those belonging to the class of nouns and adjectives. Were excluded: homophones; other languages; abbreviations; adverbs; adverbial phrases; prepositional phrases; months of the year; numerals; diminutive or augmentative forms; proper names; misspellings; slang; and words composed by juxtaposition. The words were then categorized according to frequency of occurrence in the textbooks. For this purpose, the tertiles of the distribution, the mean frequency and cutoff point of the tertiles were used. To detect possible mistakes in the words selection, 50 students from the 1st to 5th year, 10 per school year, were selected for individual reading from the database for 20 minutes.

A total of 286,290 words were typed. After analyzing the inclusion/exclusion criteria and categorizing by frequency of occurrence, the database amounted to 4,195 words. Following the students reading, the E-READING I comprised 4,190 words classified according to frequency: low (n = 3735), medium (n = 374) and high (n = 81).

The development of a low, medium and high frequency words database, to serve as a linguistic stimulus, was achieved and made available for clinical and pedagogical practice.