L'apprentissage des capacités argumentatives: Etude des effets d’un enseignement systématique et intensif du discours argumentatif chez des enfants de 11-12 ans

In the fields of linguistics and psychology the didactic implementation of new knowledge relative to argumentative discourse and its acquisition has led us to develop a didactic sequence focused on the teaching of argumentation in 11-12 year old pupils. This sequence was experimented in six schools in order to assess the effect of these new educational methods on the capacities of pupils to treat the dialogic dimensions of argumentation in the writing of monologues. An analysis of the productions of the pupils who had been submitted to the didactic sequence, compared with those of a control group, showed a significant improvement in the capacities of the first group. These improvements concerned aspects such as backing up arguments, acknowledging the addressee, negotiating with an eventual contradictor and using of a certain number of units and linguistic expressions specific to argumentative texts (expressions of responsability taking, textual organisers of cause and conclusion, modalisations of probability and of certitude, concessions and polite expressions).