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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2021

Engaging children in activities and in verbal interactions: a typology of the strategies by early-childhood professionals in child-care centers

Résumé

This paper addresses the strategies developed by infant-toddler educators in daycare centres in order to engage children in verbal interactions. According to an interactionist framework, involvement in various activities provide children with the communicative and linguistic experience that is necessary for their language acquisition and its usages (Bruner, 1983; François, 1990; Veneziano, 2005). In childcare centres, not all children participate in the same way in the different interactions. One of the challenges for professionals is to succeed in integrating every child into these activities and, thus, allowing her to benefit from this experience for her language acquisition (Dickinson & Porche, 2011; Rhyner et al., 2012). This goal is all the more crucial when we consider early communicational and linguistic disparities among children and their repercussions, later, in literacy and school learning skills (Rescorla & Dale, 2013). Our study was conducted on a corpus of video data of professional-children interactions (50 hours) in four childcare centres. Children were aged from 0;4 to 3. Professionals had different educational backgrounds and skill training. The analysis focused on those sequences where one or several children stayed in the background with respect to an ongoing activity. These sequences were categorized according to the interactional frame (dyadic or polyadic), the type of the activity (whether involving discourse or not) and the linguistic-practices entailed (e.g. description of the world, language and/or task scaffolding, involving the child). The interactional moves aiming to facilitate those children’s involvement into the activity were analyzed according to their modality (verbal, non verbal, bimodal) and their functions (e.g. invitation, questioning, explanation, phatic moves, demonstration, attention getter, back channel and the crossing of pragmatic cues). The outcome of these strategies in terms of children’s participation was also assessed. These analyses lead to the definition of a typology of the strategies developed by the early-childhood professionals. The discussion will focus on the role and impact of these linguistic practices on children’s participation in verbal interactions with adults and with other children. The results of this study will also be discussed for their applied implications since it aims to offer professionals elements of reflection on their own practices and representations (Davis & Torr, 2016). DICKINSON, D. K. & PORCHE, M. V. (2011): Relation Between Language Experiences in Preschool Classrooms and Children's Kindergarten and Fourth-Grade Language and Reading Abilities. Child Development, 82-3. 870-886. FRANÇOIS, F. (1990): Dialogue, jeux de langage et espace discursif. In : FRANÇOIS, F. La communication inégale. Heurs et malheurs de l'interaction verbale, Neuchâtel : Delachaux et Niestlé, 33-112. RESCORLA L.A., & DALE, P. (2013): Late Talkers: Language Development, Interventions, and Outcomes, Baltimore : Paul H. Brookes Publishing Company. RHYNER, P.M., GUENTHER, K.L., & al. (2013): Child caregivers’ contingent responsiveness behaviors during interactions with toddlers within three daycare contexts. Communication Disorders Quarterly, 34-4, 232-241. VENEZIANO, E. (2005): Effects of conversational functioning on early language acquisition: When both caregivers and children matter. In : BOKUS, B. Studies in the psychology of child language. Essays in honor of Grace Whales Shugar, Warsaw : Matrix, p. 47-69.
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hal-03771568 , version 1 (07-09-2022)

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  • HAL Id : hal-03771568 , version 1

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Tiphanie Bertin, Karine Martel, Caroline Masson, Anne Salazar Orvig, Chartier Eloise. Engaging children in activities and in verbal interactions: a typology of the strategies by early-childhood professionals in child-care centers. 17th International Pragmatics Conference, Jun 2021, Winterthur, Switzerland. ⟨hal-03771568⟩
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