440 Romanische Sprachen; Französisch
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The currency of writing research includes terms with which we believe we are all familiar. But frustration can quickly dominate cross-cultural exchange when the meanings of these apparently obvious terms seem to be just beyond our collective reach. The contribution uses translation theory, linguistic analysis, and educational theory to present key terms apparently shared by academic writing researchers and teachers in France and the United States, but in fact serving as obstacles to understanding because of their culture-specific, discipline-specific or institution-specific uses.
The study of the role of language activity in higher education in France has been evolving, in the past few years, out of the larger field of ‘la didactique du français,' the field of L1 teaching and theory across all grade levels. This larger frame has provided several themes that are now being explored in higher education writing: language activity as a mode of co-construction of knowledge in school settings rather than a transparent medium, writing, reading and speaking as intimately disciplinary activities, writing as a recursive process, speaking and writing as complementary, and the reconfiguration of the discipline of L1 French as a result of these explorations.
This issue offers a preliminary yet in-depth introduction to research about the teaching and learning of literate activity across the disciplines in higher education in France and the United States: its academic values, educational principles, and genres. The contributing authors represent the forefront of research in each culture; the contributions identify history and evolution, current frames and questions, and a glossary of relevant terms. The issue thus foregrounds convergences across the cultures in terms of the rejection of a "transmission" model of literate activity and a symbiosis between language and disciplinary content. It foregrounds divergences in terms of theoretical frames, disciplines informing the research, and degree of attention paid specifically to higher education. The contributions lay out valuable future research paths.
This article presents a research project conducted in a class of secondary school (first year) which linked reading, writing and acting. In this project, the teacher attempted to provide a support system for both first and second language acquisition. The idea was to use Greek tales published in a simplified version to look for ideas, vocabulary, routines, in other words what students were able to use when they acted then wrote the text of their own play. This constant back and forth between the oral and written format under the guidance of the expert formed the backbone of the system designed to help them discover a language beyond the daily contacts and a deep displeasure at school. With the help of the adults and of the mediating tools such as literature and acting they were able to collectively write a play that integrated many aspects of written French. In books they discovered worlds beyond their own that they can access when they open and use them. These crucial lessons, not only for students who are considered unable to study with a standard curriculum but also for teachers who are to work with them or similar students, serve to question notions such as creative drama and literacy.
Based on a comparison between 11 year old students who are monolingual French and bilingual French and Kabyle (one of the Berber languages) our research aims at showing how two specific factors influence understanding narratives: the first is the mode of presentation (oral vs written). It is combined with cultural aspects of the 1st language (from now on L1) in which children have been socialized; the task was a written recall of a Kabyle text. Our results show facilitating effects of the oral mode to access meaning and the positive role played by culture in mediating understanding, hence founding potential solutions to improve literacy in standard French in areas where the cultural diversity in the school population is very often associated with difficulties in learning the school language. Teaching should switch from an ethno-centered model to a multicultural one since to build knowledge requires explaining the symbolic systemic relations languages and cultures have with one another.
In France, literature has been for a long time the basis for the teaching of French as mother tongue. Today, however, its role and position are being questioned because of both empirical difficulties linked with its daily teaching and disciplinary changes in French didactics. Its formerly obvious use is now giving way to doubts. While some firmly stick to their old positions, as expressed in press pamphlets and media discussions (« C'est la littérature qu'on assassine rue de Grenelle », Le Monde, 4 March, 2000), others try to « remodel » the teaching of French in redefining the functions of its various components (literature ranging at the top) and in finding new ways to link them. These are the issues at stake in the current debate that we hope to clarify through an analysis of the Education Ministry's new instructions on secondary teaching.
This contribution attempts a partial synthesis of a large international study (Collès, Dufays & Maeder 2003), which explores the teaching and learning of Romance languages in France, French Belgium, French Switzerland and Quebec. Each author analysed in their country or region the official instructions related to primary and secondary school and the plans of action related to teachers' training. All dealt with the same questions. Considering those data, the analysis here focuses particularly on the section of the report concerning the teaching and learning of literature in French mother tongue lessons. Specifically, I address three questions:
1. Over the last 50 years, what place and value has been given to literature in the official programs for primary and secondary schools in the 4 countries or regions, compared to the other subjects considered as part of teaching French?
2. What are today's prescriptions as far as literature is concerned? In relation to the contemporary debate between different paradigms, is literature first handled in terms of skills or in terms of knowledge? Which values are these knowledges and skills bound to?
3. What about the teachers' literature training? Are there important changes in this field which might be similar to the changes in the official prescriptions? Where were and are the teachers trained? What were and are the nature of, the level required and the relative weight given to this particular training?
This article is the synthesis of research focused on the history of the Romanian mother tongue language and literature curricula of the second half of the 19th century and the 20th century. The curricula I analysed comprise a history with complex syncopated rhythms, periods of re-constitution and recrystallisation alternating with periods of deconstruction and repression. The changes of rhythm are the result of the dialogue between the institutional policies of the Ministry of Education and the language, literature and education sciences. This dialogue was a positive and constructive one in the periods of socio-cultural and economic evolution of the country and absent or extremely tense during the communist period. The article presents a history of the curricular projects for the study of the Romanian mother tongue language and literature by middle and secondary school pupils.
Many studies note the difficulties experienced by young children in learning deep writing systems (such as English and French) compared to those for which the link between the spoken and the written is shallower (e.g., Spanish and Italian). A large percentage of these studies are focused on English. As such, more research needs to be conducted with other first languages such as French. The present exploratory study seeks to understand the effects of these kinds of linguistic variable, along with the impact (which has received little attention) of instructional factors, on the competencies of first-grade, Frenchlanguage writers. Two kinds of instructional context are examined (integrated approach vs code-oriented approach) in two countries (France and Quebec, Canada). The main findings for invented spelling situations within an integrated-approach framework reveal that French and Quebec pupils construct a more complete view of the writing system. This construction includes both units involving the transcription of phonemes by phonograms and units involving the treatment of inaudible, semiographic information by morphograms.
Linguistic factors and invented spelling in children: The case of French beginners in children
(2007)
Most studies in the field of first writing experiences in kindergarten have focused on the behaviour of young English-language writers (Treiman & Bourassa, 2000). By considering increasingly acknowledged linguistic factors in spelling development (Seymour, Aro & Erskine, 2003), the present study seeks to contribute to existing studies of young French-language children in Europe by examining the case of young French-Canadian writers (North America). Drawing on 202 kindergarten children, this study seeks to provide a better understanding of the impact of linguistic characteristics on the production of graphemes in an invented spelling task involving the writing of six words. Firstly, it analyzes the "word" effect on the participants' capacity to produce the appropriate graphemes to represent the phonological information of words (exhaustiveness of the graphemes). Secondly, there is an analysis of unconventional graphemes in order to identify the causes of the deviation from the expected norm. Generally speaking, the findings support the relevance of taking into account the particularities of written French in the spelling development of young French-language children as well as the constructivist view that deviations from the norm are often indicative of difficulties arising from the nature of the writing system to be learned.