Communiquer la description d’un itinéraire à autrui : notations produites entre 9 et 11 ans selon le contexte social de la tâche

Résumé Fr En

Cette étude examine la capacité des enfants d’âge scolaire à mobiliser spontanément les notations pour communiquer une information spatiale. Les enfants (9, 10 et 11 ans, du CE2 au CM2) disposent de matériel pour écrire et écoutent une première fois la description verbale du trajet ; à la seconde écoute, ils peuvent faire tout ce qu’ils veulent pour pouvoir aider un autre enfant qui ne connaît pas le chemin pour aller à l’école (situation A, interlocuteur fictif) ; dans la situation B, ils savent qu’ils rencontreront cet enfant deux jours plus tard. Les résultats montrent un effet du contexte sur la capacité des plus jeunes à noter spontanément : la situation B (interlocuteur réel) les aiderait à appréhender la finalité sociale des pratiques d’écriture. Ainsi, proposer des contextes « authentiques » d’apprentissage pourraient aider les jeunes enfants à s’approprier les fonctions pragmatiques et cognitives des systèmes d’écriture et à faire usage de ces derniers.

Communicate from the Ascribing of a Path to Each Other: Production of Notations between 9 and 11 Years Depending on the Social Context of the Task Nine to 11 years old students (from the first year of primary school and the second one) were asked to listen a recorded text in order to construct a spatial representation (an itinerary for going to school) and to communicate it with each other one. We studied their capacity to produce spontaneously written notations : paper and pencils were available on the table, but no suggestion was made to mark anything down. Firstly, the students were only required to listen to the text once. After a second reading, they were told they were free to do whatever they wanted in order to help each other, given the following situations : a) to give directions to an unknown child who doesn’t know a path ; b) to direct a child to the school but children were informed that they would actually meet this child in two days’ time. Although the notations became more functional with age, the context of communication appeared to be a more important factor for spontaneous use of written notations, especially with the younger children : When they knew that they would meet a social partner in the near future, they made notations more frequently. These results supported the premise that providing authentic contexts for learning helped students to better understanding pragmatic and cognitive functions of written tasks.