RESUMO
Resumen Existe consenso en la literatura acerca de la importancia del andamiaje del adulto en el desarrollo de la cognición y, particularmente, de las habilidades lingüísticas de los niños (Bruner, 1986; Nelson, 1996; Vygotsky, 1978). En este sentido, el presente trabajo tuvo por objetivo examinar la incidencia de la intervención del adulto, según su metodología de enseñanza, en el desempeño narrativo de niños de primer grado. Para ello, se evaluó el rendimiento en una tarea de recuento de relatos de dos grupos de niños que concurrían a primer grado en escuelas del distrito de Quito que sostenían una metodología diferente: mientras que una de ellas se atenía exclusivamente a los lineamientos del diseño curricular planteado por el Ministerio de Educación, en la otra se incorporaban, además, estrategias de los libros Letras y sonidos I (Jara de Torres, 2001) y Aprendo y escribo (Jara de Torres, 2003) -adaptados de la propuesta integral de la editorial Abeka- y principalmente se recurría a la lectura dialógica y a la enseñanza explícita de habilidades de producción de relatos. Se analizaron las narrativas producidas por los niños a principio y a fin de año y se comparó el desempeño de ambos grupos atendiendo tanto a la cantidad de información recuperada como al tipo de información y los recursos lingüísticos puestos en juego. Se observaron diferencias significativas en las variables mencionadas, lo cual brinda evidencia acerca de la incidencia positiva de la lectura dialógica y la enseñanza de habilidades de producción de relatos en el desarrollo narrativo.
Abstract There is a consensus in the literature about the importance of adult scaffolding in the development of children's cognition and language skills (Bruner, 1986; Nelson, 1996; Vygotsky, 1978). This document analyzes first grade children's narrative development in order to verify the incidence of adult intervention and teaching methodology. For this purpose, the performance of two groups of children enrolled in first grade of school in the district of Quito was analyzed. Two different teaching methodologies were observed: while one of them exclusively adheres to the guidelines of the curriculum design proposed by the Ministry of Education, the other one incorporates strategies from the books Letters and Sounds I (Jara de Torres, 2001) and Learn and Write I (Jara de Torres, 2003) -adapted from the proposal by editorial Abeka. The narratives performed by the children at the beginning and at the end of the school year were analyzed and each performance of both groups was compared based on the amount of information retrieved and the type of information and linguistic resources used. The stories were presented to the children in audiovisual format (steady images and recorded voice). For task administration, the children were instructed to listen and look at the story very carefully because they had to recount it to a friend or family member. The children's remarks were recorded on audio for later analysis. Descriptive and inferential statistical methods were used in order to analyze and compare the linguistic and cognitive performance in the production of stories of the two groups of children in the different evaluation. Significant differences were observed in the variables analyzed, which provides evidence about the positive incidence of dialogic reading and the teaching of story production skills in narrative development. Differences in the performance of schools, especially in first graders, cannot be attributed to maturational factors since both groups are conformed by children of the same chronological age. Neither by the socioeconomic factors, since, in fact, group A was composed of children who attend a rural school and most of them happened to have low resources. Therefore, the significant improvement in the performance of the children of group A at the end of the school year could be attributed to the intervention of their teacher's work. It is thought that this advance in retell story skills is due to an improvement in the understanding of the basic story, however there are studies that observe that the level reached in this process does not directly affect the quality of children's narrative performance (Bustos Ibarra et al., 2014). In consequence, the improvement in the children's narrative performance of group A can be linked not only to the work carried out by the teachers with texts but also to the situations of story production involved. Many investigations have observed that adult scaffolding during story reading has a positive effect on children's linguistic and discursive development (Sénechal, Le Fevre, Hudson & Lawson, 1996; Trabasso & Nickels, 1992; Wasik & Bond, 2001; West et al., 2021). In fact, as Wells (1988) points out in a pioneering study, while reading stories contributes to children's linguistic development, the parallel text generated by teachers through their interventions to explain vocabulary, make inferences explicit, relate events and post-reading reconstruction has shown a greater effect than just reading any kind of story aloud. Thereupon, the results obtained in this work show the relevance not only of the teacher's texts daily reading but, mainly, of the intervention strategies and methodologies that they use to promote comprehension and textual production in the classroom.
RESUMO
En investigaciones anteriores sobre los sistemas de actividad de una comunidad rural, se identificaron los conceptos empíricos que desarrollan los niños en el contexto de las actividades familiares, tales como el tejido de palma, la cría de animales y la recolección de hierbas (Amado, 2010; Amado & Borzone, 2003). El objetivo del estudio que se informa fue explorar el rol de los conocimientos previos de los niños de un medio rural en la comprensión de textos expositivos escolares. Para ello se elaboraron tres series de tres textos cada una en las que el primer texto respondía a temas conocidos por los niños, relacionados con los sistemas de actividad y los otros dos eran sobre temas desconocidos. Se analizó el desempeño de los niños de la comunidad rural en la comprensión de estos textos y se compararon los resultados con el desempeño que tuvieron en dichas pruebas niños de un medio urbano. Se realizó un análisis cuanti y cualitativo de las respuestas de los dos grupos de niños a las preguntas realizadas sobre los textos. Los resultados indican que cuando los conocimientos previos se circunscriben a conceptos empíricos, la comprensión se ve favorecida si el texto trata temas conocidos. En el abordaje de temas desconocidos, esos conceptos resultan insuficientes y pueden producir distorsiones en la comprensión, si los niños no han desarrollado habilidades de comprensión lectora, tales como la realización de inferencias y el uso adecuado de la información textual.
Written text comprehension is considered as an interactive process during which a mental representation is constructed by inferences making that require knowledge about texts, general knowledge about the world and specialized knowledge about the domain being discussed. The cognitive models of text processing emphasize the relevance of these types of knowledge for text comprehension (Gernsbacher, 1990; Kintsch, 1988; van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983). With regard to knowledge about the world, Vygotsky (1962) recognized different forms of conceptualization. He assumed that human beings are able to develop every day concept in the interaction with the environment and scientific concept that are reflective and systematic and must be taught. Within the framework of these contributions from Cognitive Psychology and the socio - cultural theory of human development the present work addressed the role that knowledge about the world of a group of children from a rural area plays in school expository texts comprehension. Expository texts were selected because for the processing of this type of text empirical and scientific concepts have to be activated. In previous studies on the activity systems of a rural community in the north of Córdoba (Argentina), the empirical concepts develop by children in the context of family activities, such as the weaving of palm leaves, animals bringing up and herbs gathering, were explored (Amado, 2010; Amado & Borzone, 2003). In this work the study of the way children from that community deal with expository texts processing was undertaken. With that purpose, three sets of three texts each were elaborated. The text material consisted in nine expository texts, three sets of three texts. Each set presented a progression from a known subject to the rural group (Text 1) to a text far from their natural and cultural environment (Text 3). Text 2 was about an unknown subject but the process described was related with the process described in Text 1. After reading each text, children had to answer eight literal and inferential questions. The answers to these questions were quantitative and qualitatively analyzed. The analysis of the performance of the rural group in understanding texts about known and unknown subjects was compared with the comprehension of a group of children from an urban area who had participated at school in a training program with expository texts. Results showed that the performance of children from the urban area was better than the performance of children from the rural community except in the cases of texts which included empirical concepts, that is, the knowledge that the rural group of children have learnt by their participation in the activity systems. Thus, although empirical concepts facilitated comprehension processes, they were not sufficient for all texts understanding and might be even an obstacle to the construction of coherent mental representation of the text if the children have not developed general comprehension abilities. In fact, it was observed that when rural children activated empirical concepts that were not coherent with text concepts, they had some difficulty to inhibit them. On the contrary, the urban group of children had a good performance in the processing of all the text except one which required handling of very specific knowledge. These results have relevant implications to comprehension teaching at school as they showed that, even though empirical knowledge learnt within the activity systems of the community must be considered, it is also very important to develop general comprehension abilities and scientific concepts. They will allow making a strategic use of knowledge to understand not only texts on subject related to children socio-cultural information but also texts about events and phenomena from other environments which are presented from a scientific concepts perspective.
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Para los niños pequeños la comprensión de un texto puede ser considerada un verdadero proceso de resolución de problemas, más que un proceso automático (Kinstch, 1988, 1998). En el presente trabajo se informa acerca de las dificultades específicas que aparecen durante la lectura interactiva de cuentos en niños de poblaciones urbano - marginales, que concurren a jardines de infantes en salas integradas de 4 y 5 años, en Buenos Aires (República Argentina). El análisis de la interacción maestra / niños en 26 situaciones de lectura de cuentos en nueve salas diferentes, que se realizó empleando el método comparativo constante (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Strauss & Corbin, 1991) dio lugar a la caracterización inductiva de estas dificultades. En el proceso de comprensión, las operaciones cognitivas básicas que se ponen en juego son la activación de conocimiento previo, la realización de inferencias y el procesamiento de cadenas causales y del plano psicológico de la narrativa. Las dificultades que los niños enfrentan en el proceso de comprensión se originan en la relación existente entre las habilidades cognitivas que les permiten llevar a cabo las operaciones mencionadas y las características que asume cada una de las fuentes de información a partir de las cuales los niños construyen la representación mental del texto: el texto mismo, las ilustraciones y el proceso interactivo en torno al texto. Las dificultades encontradas se originan en la relación entre las habilidades del niño y cada una de las fuentes de información. Los resultados son discutidos en función de los aportes de la Psicología Cognitiva con respecto a este tema.
Text comprehension can be considered a problem solving process more than an automatic one for young children (Kinstch, 1988, 1998).This study aims to identify the comprehension difficulties faced by 4 and 5-year-old children from low-income populations during story reading at kindergarten, in Buenos Aires (Argentina). The analysis of teacher / student interaction in 26 story-reading settings in nine different classrooms was carried out using the comparative constant method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Strauss & Corbin, 1991), a qualitative method that allowed to inductively categorize these difficulties. According to this analysis, in reading situations at kindergarten, children form a mental representation of the text read to them through various cognitive processes: knowledge activation, inference making, processing of causal chains, the psychological level and knowledge of the narrative squema. These processes are based on different sources of information: the illustrations, the text, and the interactive process around the text. The difficulties observed are originated in the relationship between the children abilities and each of the sources. With regard to the difficulties originated in the pictures, the analysis showed that sometimes the illustrations do not represent the principal aspects of the plot, but they contradict the text or the title of the story. In other situations, the illustrations represent a part of the text that has not been read yet or they provide many details that distract the children, being an obstacle to the comprehension process. These observations are in agreement with those of Zazanis (1991) who has pointed out the difficulty inherent in coordinating information presented both in verbal and pictorial modalities. As regards to the text, the analysis showed that the difficulties for the comprehension processes in children arise when complex or abstract vocabulary is not understood, either because it has not been explained, or because the explanation provided by the teacher is not linked to the text. Metaphors have also proved to require a complex processing since they may activate world - knowledge that is not connected to the text, with the difficulty of inhibition observed in small children (Gernsbacher, 1990, 1997). The narrative structure is part of the text features that represents a difficulty for children who have not yet developed the operative control of the narrative squema (Stein & Glenn, 1982). Another difficulty encountered by young children is the processing of causal chains that provide coherence to any text (Rosemberg, 1994). In addition, the event causal relations may belong to the psychological level of narrative. In agreement with other studies (Fivush & Haden, 1997; Trabasso & Rodkin, 1994), it has been observed that children rarely refer to this level and they have trouble inferring psychological causes (Thompson & Myers, 1985). When teachers do not take into account these difficulties in children´s interventions, because they focus on details of the text or the interactive process around the text lacks contingency or synchronicity, they cannot foster the formation of a mental representation of the text. Thus, children may form incomplete or incoherent mental representations that are not based on the textual cues. On the contrary, when teachers understand comprehension as a problem solving process, they can monitor it step by step, constructing the meaning of the text through the interaction with the children in a process of shared cognition (Borzone & Rosemberg, 1994; Manrique, 2009; Manrique & Borzone, 2007; Wertsch, 1998; Whitehurst & Valdez-Menchaca, 1992).
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El presente trabajo se propone ampliar los conocimientos acerca de las estrategias léxicas y fonológicas que utilizan los niños en la tarea de escritura de palabras en español, durante los primeros años de escolaridad. Para ello se analizó en dos experimentos, cómo incidían las variables de complejidad, extensión y frecuencia, así como el conocimiento ortográfico en el aprendizaje temprano de la escritura. En el primer experimento la variable ortográfica no fue considerada de manera específica, por lo que se diseñó y aplicó un segundo experimento. En el experimento dos se evaluó la incidencia del conocimiento léxico al comparar la adquisición de correspondencias consistentes e inconsistentes, dependientes e independientes del contexto. Las pruebas de escritura de palabras se aplicaron al finalizar el primer año y segundo año de Enseñanza General Básica (EGB). En los resultados, a finales de primer año, no se encontró un efecto de frecuencia, pero se observó, en cambio, una fuerte incidencia de la complejidad y la longitud en el desempeño de los niños, lo que puso de manifiesto que los mecanismos fonológicos son fundamentales en la primera etapa de aprendizaje de la escritura. Asimismo, se advirtió que los mecanismos léxicos son relativamente tardíos y se adquieren gradualmente. Sólo a finales de segundo año se encontró una interacción entre los mecanismos fonológicos y léxicos. Las implicancias pedagógicas del estudio fueron también consideradas.
This study analyzed the acquisition of word spelling strategies in Spanish-speaking children, during the first two years of elementary education. The cognitive word spelling models, initially developed for English, describe different stages in the acquisition spelling process. In the first stage, children write by memory, reproducing visual cues. At a second stage, children analyze the phonological structure of the word. Finally, in an orthographic stage, children can write words, using lexical information, without phonological mediation (Frith, 1984, 1985; Marsh, Friedman, Welch & Desberg, 1980). Even when the stages theory was discussed, these first studies allowed the identification of early lexical strategies and phonological mechanisms implied in the English word spelling processes. However, English is a language with a deep orthography, and the phonological strategy is a necessary mechanism but it is not enough to spell words properly. On the contrary, the Spanish orthographic system is shallow, and the phonemes-graphemes correspondences are very regular. Consequently, the spelling strategies could be different in these two languages, and the models developed for English would partially explain the orthographic learning process in transparent languages. This work aims to contribute to the knowledge on early spelling word strategies in Spanish. In two experiments, first and second grade children were given spelling tests designed to explore their phonological and orthographic knowledge. In the first experiment, the incidence of word complexity, length and frequency on spelling performance was explored. However, there was a possibility that, if children performed better in frequent words spelling, in relation to less frequent, they were resorting to their lexical knowledge. In this case, children were using an orthographic-lexical strategy. On the other hand, the possibility of writing complex and long words is associated to the phonological awareness level and correspondence knowledge. If children were able to easily write frequent and non frequent short and simple words, but had difficulties in writing long and complex words, they were possibly analyzing the sounds of the words and thus activating the corresponding letters. If the word was long or complex and the phonological skills were not well developed, children would have difficulties in writing them; one such problem, for example, would be in omitting letters. In this case, complexity and length variables that show the use of an analytic strategy would be influencing the performance. In the first experiment, the orthographic variable was not considered specifically, so a second experiment was designed. The second experiment evaluated orthographic knowledge, considering the orthographic characteristics of the words. The acquisition of the consistent and inconsistent correspondences was compared. The consistent correspondences could be solved using transcription rules, while inconsistent correspondences could be written only through lexical knowledge. Furthermore, consistent correspondences could be independent or dependent from context. In the first case, we refer to phonemes that are always represented with the same letter. In the other case, transcription depends on the syllabic context. Tests were applied at the end of the first and the second year of primary education. Results of the first experiment showed that, at the end of the first year, there was no frequency effect but the variables of complexity and length affected the children's performance. At the end of the second year, a frequency effect and a significant interaction between complexity and frequency were found. In the second experiment, a significant consistence effect was observed, but there was no frequency effect. These results indicate that phonological strategies are fundamental in the beginning of spelling acquisition. On the contrary, lexical mechanisms appear later and they are acquired gradually. Indeed, at the end of the first grade, frequency only affected performance of context dependent correspondences, but not independent. Likewise, interaction between phonological and lexical strategies was found only at the end of the second year. Pedagogical implications were also considered.
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Se presentan los resultados de un estudio exploratorio acerca de la resolución de anáforas en niños. Las investigaciones realizadas con adultos jóvenes muestran que hay una serie de factores que inciden en el procesamiento anafórico. Tomando como referencia dichos factores, en este estudio se ha analizado la incidencia del grado de explicitud y de la distancia entre la forma anafórica y el antecedente. El grupo social de procedencia de los niños (nivel socio económico: NSE medio y NSE bajo) es otra de las variables independientes y como variables dependientes se tomaron las respuestas de los niños a preguntas sobre el antecedente de una expresión anafórica en un texto breve. Los tipos de anáforas eran: repetición, sinonimia, pronombre con clave de género, frase nominal, pronombre sin clave de género, supraordenamiento semántico y anáfora cero. Participaron cuatro grupos de niños de segundo y tercer año del nivel de Enseñanza General Básica (EGB). Los resultados muestran un mejor desempeño de los niños de NSE medio con respecto a los de NSE bajo, independientemente del grado de explicitud y de la distancia de las formas anafóricas. Las diferencias entre grupos de niños son mayores entre los de segundo año. En tercero, en ambos grupos, se observan porcentajes de respuestas correctas superiores al 90, excepto en el caso de anáforas sin clave de género. Se observa la incidencia del grado de explicitud de la forma anafórica y de la distancia en aquellas formas cuya resolución presenta dificultades. La anáfora cero no resulta difícil de resolver para los grupos estudiados