<i>"On peut toucher?"</i> L'orchestration de la perception sensorielle dans des interactions en formation professionnelle initiale

This paper addresses general questions regarding the role of perception and materiality in the field of vocational education and training. It consists in a detailed analysis of a videorecorded sequence of interaction in a vocational school, in which a trainer demonstrates to a small group of apprentices the treatment of heating steel. The analysis consists in stressing the importance of materiality in teaching and learning activities and shows how apprentices access to professional knowledge and skills by seeing, hearing, smelling, touching and even tasting material objects. On a methodological level, this case study underlines the complementarities between language use and other semiotic modes of human interaction. It brings arguments for the use of videotaped data in the field applied linguistics in general and research on vocational education in particular.