L'évaluation d'un objet est intrinsèquement liée à la définition que l'on pose de celui-ci. Si à un certain niveau de généralité, ce qu'est comprendre un texte semble aller de soi, une recension des travaux en psychologie cognitive, du développement, en didactique, en sociolinguistique, montre au contraire le caractère polymorphe de cet objet qu'on peine à définir. Dès lors, comment évaluer ce que l'on peine à circonscrire, même par exclusion ? Toujours dans le but de cerner ce qu'on entend par compréhension, nous avons mené quatre enquêtes. La première repose sur des entretiens avec des enseignants autour d'une épreuve (texte + questions), en vue de décrire leur manière de se représenter la compréhension et ses difficultés. La deuxième, centrée sur l'analyse des questions repose sur la constitution et une première analyse d'un corpus d'environ 200 questions proposées lors d'évaluations nationales sur la compréhension de textes narratifs. Analyser les questions ne pouvant se faire sans prendre en compte l'activité de réponse, nous avons proposé ensuite deux expériences. La première procède d'une sorte de raisonnement par « l'absurde »: peut-on répondre à des questionnaires de compréhension sans le texte y afférant ? La seconde a pour but de cerner les spécificités des épreuves, en proposant aux mêmes élèves quatre tâches (rappel, reconnaissance, jugement d'importance et QCM) sur deux textes différents. Ces analyses convergent pour montrer que chaque tâche donne un portrait différent de la compréhension et que l'on passe parfois rapidement d'une compréhension d'un texte à la compréhension de textes. / The evaluation of an object is intrinsically linked to the way one defines it. In seeking to define narrative texts comprehension, we have educed multiple facets of this process: cognitiv psychology, psychology of development, didactics, sociolinguistics, which each in their way clarifies an aspect of texts comprehension. This being the case, how can an object so polymorphous be evaluated? To properly understand the functioning of MCQs, the most common method for evaluating texts comprehension, we have undertaken four separate investigations. The first was based on interviews with teachers about a given examination (text plus questions), with the aim of being able to formulate how one depicts texts comprehension and its difficulties. The second investigation, centered on the analysis of questions, was based on the constitution of a corpus of about 200 questions used in nationwide tests of narrative texts comprehension , and a first-level analysis. Analyzing questions necessitates taking into consideration the activity of replying to questions, so we developed two further experiments. The first proceeded from a sort of "reasoning by the absurd": can one reply to questions without cognizance of the corresponding text? The second aimed to identify the specificities of tests, by proposing to the same students four tasks (recall, recognition, relative importance judgments and QMCs) for two different texts. These analyses converge to demonstrate that each kind of task generates a specific profile view of texts comprehension, and that sometimes one passes rapidly from the comprehension of a given text to the general texts comprehension reading competencies.

The articles in this portfolio provide a detailed account of how educational drama enhances language and literacy development, and in particular the reading of narrative texts, in a range of Australian Primary (K-6) classroom settings. The research for this portfolio was positioned within the interpretive research paradigm. A combination of both action research and case study methodology was used to investigate how the researcher's teaching practice influenced children's language and literacy development, and how the student's responses during drama sessions influenced the researcher's subsequent practice. The theoretical underpinning for these investigations was based on socio-psycholinguistic theory and critical reading theory. Both theories explain why literature as opposed to basal readers is a better resource for the development of critical reading practices and both maintain the need for teaching/learning activities that attend to the distinctive features of narrative texts. As a collection, these articles illustrate how drama strategies and/or forms such as still image, questioning in role, parallel improvisation, teacher in role, Reader's Theatre and play-building enable participants to interpret and reconstruct the meaning of a text. Furthermore, and through the process of metaxis, children reflect upon universal themes and issues through the enactment of their own stories within a fictional context. Educational drama is thus positioned as a pedagogically appropriate teaching/learning methodology for enhancing language and literacy development in primary classrooms. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Parue entre 1940 et 1993, l’œuvre d’Henri Thomas se remarque par sa qualité et par sa profusion. L’auteur a abordé les différents champs de la création littéraire (romans, récits, nouvelles, poésies) mais aussi la critique, la traduction et le domaine autobiographique. Il reste pourtant un écrivain quasiment inconnu pour le grand public et cela en grande partie parce que son œuvre résiste à la lecture et ne se laisse pas facilement intégrer dans les canons littéraires. Limpides au premier abord, ces textes nous donnent pourtant la vive sensation d’un mystère innommable que le lecteur ne peut approcher que par détours. La thèse ci-présente interroge dix récits de l’auteur – des romans et des nouvelles écrits dans de différentes périodes de sa vie –, et part de l’hypothèse que la réticence est la figure dominante de ces textes qui oscillent en permanence entre le dit et le non-dit, entre le montré et le caché, entre la précarité et la surabondance discursive. Dans la première partie, nous analysons deux situations occurrentes dans lesquelles la réticence apparaît (l’épiphanie et la disparition) et l’inscription paradoxale de la réticence dans l’œuvre sous la forme d’un discours lacunaire ou d’un discours digressif. La deuxième partie est consacrée à la dialectique du plein et du vide qui est repérable notamment au niveau de la conception sur l’image et la mémoire. Enfin, la troisième partie est consacrée à la dimension performative de la réticence. Elle s’inscrit textuellement dans le récit par les points de suspension, les tirets et l’italique, donne lieu à une identification problématique des instances narratives et implique un rapport particulier entre l’auteur et le lecteur. / Published between 1940 and 1933, Henri Thomas’ work stands out for its quality and quantity. The author approached different spheres of the literature (novels, short novels, poems) but also critic, translations or autobiographies. Despite all this, Henri Thomas remains a writer almost unknown to the large public, mostly because his works resist reading and are not easily integrated in the literary canons. Transparent at a first sight, his texts give us the strong sensation of an unnamable mystery that the author can only approach indirectly. Our thesis starts from the hypothesis that reticence is the dominant figure of these texts – which are permanently oscillating between told and untold, between revealed and unrevealed, between austerity and discursive superabundance. The analyzed corpus consists of 10 narrative texts – novels and short novels written by the author in different periods of his life – that allow us to have a wider view of his narrative creation. In the first part of the thesis, we describe 2 occurrence situations in which we find the reticence (epiphany and disappearance) and the paradoxical ways in which this appears in the form of an incomplete speech or a digressiv speech. The second part is dedicated to the dialectics of the full and the empty, two faces of the reticence, especially when it comes to the conception of image and memory. Finally, the third part is dedicated to the performative dimension of reticence: beyond its textual characteristics such as the ellipsis, the hype or the italics, the reticence determines o problematic identification of the narrative instincts and a special relation between the author and the reader.

The aim of this thesis is to study the conditions surrounding young students’ text production in the subject of History. The study, which was performed within a class in grade 4, describes a project where the students produced individual books about the Middle Ages. The study analyzes the educational resources that the students were offered to produce a chapter on the Black Death and how nine students made use of these resources in their texts. Three resourses were analyzed: the teachers’ oral storytelling, the instructions and the designated chapter in the textbook. The material, which was collected through an ethnographic approach with participant observation and interviews, consists of field notes, films, photographs, student texts and teaching materials. The resources were analyzed through sociocultural and socio­semiotic methods. The results show that the oral communication is dominated by the teachers’ storytelling which is perceived as interes­ting and engaging by the students. This is especially true for the dramatized parts that seem to have a potential for providing a deep contextualization of the content. However, the students opportunities to formulate and discuss the content before producing their own texts are limited. The history textbook provides subject-specific knowledge as well as typical features of school history texts, but as the text is mainly processed individually the students are not made aware of this. The results indicate that both the students and the teacher perceive the project as an exercise in writing and that the content subsequently appears to be secondary. This is likely due to the fact that the instructions are general writing instructions rather than content-based or subject-specific. The texts produced by the students show a variation in length, number of headlines, images, and use of resources (written and oral, or just written). The instructions urge the students to retell the designated text ”in their own words" and explicitly forbid copying. The results show that the instruction is perceived in two different ways. Five students use the textbook as their main resource avoiding copying by developing various strategies such as exchanging or skipping words, summarizing paragraphs or combining chunks of existing sentences into new ones. Four students take a different approach and base their texts mainly on the oral storytelling, which might be seen as an example of retelling in one’s own words. The existence of two different strategies can be explained by the fact that the resources are part of two simultaneous but contradictory aspirations: the oral classroom practice which maximizes engagement and the pursuit of empathy and the written practice which aims at critical training where source awareness and avoidance of copying are stressed as important. Since there are few links between the two classroom practices the students are put in a position where they have to transform either the text book or the oral story into a new text. Previous research shows that learning in History is promoted by the ability to generalize and understand the connection between events, the ability to draw conclusions from multiple sources and the ability to relate to the content with historical empathy. Writing and text production in History therefore need to take account of the subject specific ways of communicating and creating knowledge. The results from this study also underline the importance of using and recognizing semiotic resources such as images and drama as an important part of young students’ learning in History.

The topic of the dissertation is the communication of the deaf in written Czech. The theoretical part presents the studies of written Czech for the deaf which have been carried out in the Czech Republic so far, considers the causes of difficulties the deaf encounter when making Czech written texts, and deals with the position of written Czech in the education of the deaf. The next part is devoted to the Czech sign language, the characteristics of its specifics and its role in the communication and education of deaf pupils, especially in connection with the currently valid legislation. Attention is also focused on the components and construction of narrative texts and on the acquisition of narrative competencies in spoken and sign languages. The research part is focused on the qualitative analysis of narrative texts in Czech, the authors of which are deaf pupils of two primary schools for the hearing impaired aged 14 to 16, and which were created on the basis of a picture story. As part of the analysis of written narratives, attention is focused on the specific features which make the written texts of the deaf different from the texts written by hearing Czechs. The phonic structure of words, vocabulary, the morphological and syntactic level, the ways in which deaf authors construct narrative texts...

SAMMANFATTNING Tidigare forskning har visat att elever i de lägre årskurserna som arbetar med att skriva sig till läsning, kan skriva längre texter eftersom det är fysiskt lättare för dem att skriva på datorn än för hand. Dock har vi inte funnit några belägg för hur elever organiserar och planerar sina texter vid skrivandet av berättande texter på datorn. Syftet med denna studie blev därför att undersöka vilka möjligheter elever i årskurs ett ges för att producera och organisera berättande texter, i en klass som arbetar med datorn som verktyg och en som inte gör det. Undersökningen utgick från två lärares beskrivningar av undervisningen och elevtexter. I studien utgick vi från ett sociokulturellt perspektiv eftersom vi tror att språk och skriftspråk konstrueras i en social kontext. Genom samtal kring texter, användningen av olika verktyg och stöd av en mer kompetent kamrat finner vi att elever kan utveckla sitt skrivande. Genom intervjuer har lärare fått beskriva sin undervisning. Denna undervisning jämfördes sedan med elevtexterna. Elevtexterna från de olika klasserna jämfördes också med varandra. I resultatet framkom det att båda undervisningssammanhangen möjliggör elevers skrivande, planerande och organiserande av berättande texter, fast undervisningssammanhangen ser olika ut. Klassen som arbetade med datorn skrev längre texter med ett bättre ordförråd än den andra klassen. Dock skrev den andra klassen med en mer sammanhängande röd tråd i sina berättande texter. I studien framkom även likheter mellan undervisningens stödstrukturer och hur eleverna organiserade sina texter. / ABSTRACT Previous research has shown that young children, who work with writing to reading, write longer texts because it is physically easier for them to write on the computer than by hand. However, we have not found any evidence of how pupils organize their texts when they write narrative texts. The aim of this study was to explore which possibilities the pupil gives to produce and organize the narrative texts, in the lower grades. One class worked with the computer as a tool and one did not. The survey was based on two teachers' descriptions of teaching and student texts. In this study, we assumed a sociocultural perspective because we think that language and written language is constructed in a social context. Through conversations about texts, the use of various tools and the support of a more competent person, we think that students can develop their writing. Through interviews with teachers who described their teaching and through pupil texts we found some interesting things. The result showed that both educational contexts allow students' writing, planning and organization of narrative texts. The teaching contexts were different from each other. The pupils who worked with writing through computers, wrote longer texts with a better vocabulary than the pupils who wrote by hand. However, the pupils who wrote by hand, had better support structures for the narratives red line and then wrote a more coherent text, than the pupils who worked on the computer. The study also showed similarities between the education support structures tours and how the students organized their text.

Digitaliseringen av grundskolorna öppnar för breda multimodala möjligheter. Tidigare forskning visar inte hur verksamma svensklärare hanterar multimodala texter i undervisningen för elever i årskurs 4–6. Denna studie berör hur lärare uppfattar multimodala och berättande texter och hur dessa kan vara skrivutvecklande för elever i årskurs 4–6. För att uppfylla syftet med denna studie valdes tematisk analys som metod. Det finns också ett fokus på aktiva svensklärares uppfattningar om att arbeta med multimodala och berättande texter i klassrummet. Resultatet visar att lärarnas uppfattningar är att när man skapar multimodala och berättande texter måste en interaktion ske. Genom interaktion i klassrummet kommer eleverna att utveckla skrivfärdigheter. Slutsatser som presenteras är att multimodala texter ofta erbjuds via interaktiva medier som YouTube.com. Berättande texter måste produceras med förutbestämd struktur för att kunna bedömas och oavsett vilka texter elever skapar, måste det göras i sammanhang där interaktion ges utrymme. Klassrumsdialogen främjar en berättarglädje. / Primary schools digitalization makes broad multimodal opportunities. Previous research does not illustrate how active teachers who teach the subject Swedish handle multimodal texts in teaching for pupils in grades 4–6. This study illuminates how teachers perceive multimodal and narrative texts and how these texts can develop pupils writing skills in grades 4–6. To fulfill the purpose of this study thematic analysis was chosen as the method. There is also a focus on the conceptions of teachers concerning working with multimodal and narrative texts in the classroom. The result shows that the teachers' conceptions are that when creating multimodal and narrative texts, an interaction needs to happen. Through interaction in the classroom, pupils will develop writing skills. Conclusions presented are that multimodal texts are often offered through interactive media such as YouTube.com. Narrative texts must be produced with predetermined structure to be assessable and regardless of what texts pupils create, it must be done in contexts where interaction is given space. Classroom dialogue promotes pupils to feel a joy in to tell narrative stories.

Föreliggande studie syftar till att undersöka hur elevers berättande texterpåverkas av att skriva med bild som inspirationskälla och utan. Elevernastexter genomgår en textanalys där de två texterna analyseras utifrån dess längd,röd tråd och struktur samt formord och innehållsord för att vidare jämföras. Vidare lyfts sex elevers tankar och åsikter gällande de två metoderna genomintervjuer. Utifrån studiens frågeställningar sammanställs texternas analyseroch elevernas transkriberade intervjuer för att senare presenteras i resultatet. Studiens teoretiska ram har sin utgångspunkt i intermediala studier som vidarekopplas till det resultat studien presenterar. Det framkommer i resultatet att detexter eleverna skriver utan bilden innehåller fler formord och innehållsordsamt att en högre procent av eleverna uppvisar en tydlig struktur och en rödtråd. Vidare visar resultatet att eleverna skriver längre texter med bilden. Tvåelever hade valt att skriva med en bild som inspirationskälla igen om de fåttchansen, detta för att utmana sig, dock ansåg alla intervjuade elever att det varsvårare att skriva med en bild som inspiration.

This research addresses the issue of narrative texts in the teaching of Spanish. Narrative texts and literature in general can be instruments of great value teaching and learning a language when used appropriately. Therefore, it is interesting to know how teachers use this didactic tool and how narrative texts can motivate students. To answer these questions, data is collected through surveys answered by 17 students of Spanish as a mother tongue. In these surveys, students answer questions about their experiences with narrative texts in and out of class. There are also 5 interviews with two teachers and three students of Spanish as a mother tongue. The responses obtained are analyzed with quantitative methods (with the help of software such as Minitab and Excel) and qualitative methods. The analysis of the responses to the surveys suggests that students with greater curiosity for narrative texts have a greater increase in the vocabulary obtained. There are also positive relationships between interest in narrative texts, frequency of language use, and frequency of dictionary use. The responses of both teachers and students in the interviews show that the narrative texts provide different knowledge. These results support the idea that narrative texts are effective for mother tongue teaching and learning.

Den svenska skolans undervisning i det svenska språket har för avsikt att göra eleverna narrativt kompetenta, det vill säga, de ska kunna förstå och skapa berättande texter. Inom läroplanen finns dock en öppning för ett mer vidgat textbegrepp där det inkluderas visuell litteracitet, att eleverna exempelvis ska kunna förstå filmiska berättelser. Denna studies syfte är att undersöka på vilka sätt mellanstadieelever kan arbeta med en dokumentär filmberättelse om fyra skolbarn för att utveckla sina förmågor att skriva berättelser och vidga sina vyer av omvärlden. Begreppet narrativ fantasi, myntat av den amerikanska filosofen Martha C. Nussbaum, är framträdande i undersökningen. Med det menas en slags förmåga till inlevelse, att läsandet av olika texter vidgar läsarens förståelse för sin omvärld. Eleverna är uppmanade att välja karaktär och typ av berättelse. Genom både kvalitativ och kvantitativ textanalys visar deras berättelser på en varierad, men ändå utbredd narrativ fantasi. Denna förmåga är dock beroende av både visuell litteracitet, att förstå filmen, och narrativ kompetens, att skapa en egen berättelse.