Cultural and linguistic context and didactic cognition of

Cultural and linguistic context and didactic cognition of youth literature Brigitte Marin Denis Legros Med Makhlouf IUFM de Créteil, France IAIMTE Congress Albi 10 – 13 mai 2005 A Kabyle tale The Cicada and the Little Rat Here is the story of a cicada, little and quite pretty, who wanted to find a husband. One morning, the cicada gets up early, smoothes her wings and sprays herself with perfume. Her mother brushes her hair, then she puts on her most beautiful necklaces, her rings and bracelets. Adorned with all these jewels, the cicada goes out in front of the door of her house: - - “If I sit down here, everybody will be able to see me and admire me. Maybe I’ll find a husband I like. " She sits down very straight, crosses her six legs and begins to wait. It is then that a camel comes along. He sees the cicada and stops: - - "Hello little cicada, you’re quite pretty today!" - - “I’ve made myself beautiful because I’m waiting for a husband. " - - “It’s true, you are beautiful and your jewels shine! Do you want to marry me? " The cicada thinks. - - "What can you do? ” - - "I know how to sing. I go: Ron! Ra! Ron! " - - "Go away!” says the cicada. “You’re too big for me: ! You frighten me. " And the camel goes away, his head hung low. n ……………. . Theoritical framework n The comprehension of text proceeds by demanding cognitive operations q Hierarchical organization of the causal relations (Bourg, Bauer & van den Broek, 1997) q Model of “true-consistency” q Process of referring, variable according to the cultural context of the individual (Legros & Baudet, 1996) n In a multicultural context, the difficulty increases, because the hierarchical organization of the information is intensified by the difficulty of deciphering the a priori semantics (Hoareau & Legros, 2005). n The competence to be processed with the different kinds of information exercise the multimodal questioning of the different kinds of information in the text. Methodology n Subjects : 42 pupils from 2 classes n Selected from the fifth year of elementary school belonging to A French cultural environment A multicultural environment n Divided in two experimental groups n Experimental protocol Reading of a tale in both groups G 1 and G 2 First recall of the tale Listening to the tale on a CD (class G 1) Reading the tale a second time (class G 2) Second recall of the text ……

Cultural and linguistic context and didactic cognition of youth literature Hypotheses n 1 - Amongst the pupils of both classes, those belonging to the multi-cultural class will favour mention of events or descriptive parameters anchored in the universe of references in the Kabyle tale. n 2 – During the analysis of the second recollection, we expect to record a great improvement of the performances of the pupils of the class 1 and the pupils of the class 2. n 3 – At the conclusion of the second recall, we predict superior performances from the pupils of multicultural origin having had the additional benefit of listening to the CD. Quantitative analysis The Cultural Origin factor, considered only on its own, does not show itself to be significant in the statistical test. Similarly, the interaction of the Group and Culture factors doesn’t show itself to be significant in the statistical test. The pupils who listened to the story realized better performances than the pupils who wrote their account after the second visual recall. Qualitative analysis Kamel, a pupil from Class 2 belonging to a multicultural environment and listening to the CD before the second recall. The cognitive capacities mobilized by this pupil during the rough draft, after reading the tale, seem to be making of an inventory. After listening to the CD, we notice a double tendency between the two strata of written performance : If a certain number of pieces of information have disappeared, it is because it turns out that they are unnecessary and redundant. On the other hand, they have been added to the essential information which justifies itself by the wise choice of the little cicada. Discussion and conclusion n The intermingled effect of the auditory presentation of the anchorage of the text with its cultural roots allows us to involve the pupils more assuredly. n We considered as strongly probable the rate of improvement compared with the different levels of readings. n It specially concerns the pupils in difficulty with processing the hierarchical organization of the information. These directions allow us to envisage the study of the development of the literacy in the era of the learning and the co-learning with computer technology.