The role and effect of poetry in reading acquisition for children from 6 to 8 years old

Submitted by: DAN LIU
Abstract: Faced with a marginalized role and pedagogy of poetry in language learning according to the I.O.s (1972 - present) of French government, we believe that instead of classifying poetry as a particular genre of literature or as a mnemonics instrument, it should be considered as where really lets us dwell as Hölderlin does.

Poetry is supposed to establish a multi-facet space by activating our emotion, stimulating our imagination, and constructing our own imaginary (imaginaire in French). Most Children could therefore benefit from this space as their transitional area (Winnicott, 1971) before getting access to reading. Through poetry, these facets of language nurture rediscover their expressivity in visual, acoustic, or reflective manners.

Our paper aims at describing how young learners from 6 to 8 years old could benefit from the these potentialities in poetry, especially during their initiating stage of learning to read. Discussions will also be launched on the hierarchized correspondences between linguistic elements in poetry and those in reading. Thirdly, we will subsequently focus on how professional gestures (interventions) during this process could eventually make the potentialities in poetry come true.

9 cases of pupils (6-8 years old) and 6 cases of teachers (two teachers of each level) have been collected in the form of face-to-face interview from several kindergartens and primary schools in France. By analyzing the cases (content analysis), we have outlined a rather detailed and varying role of poetry, constructed three schemas to facilitate poetry-reading connections, and probed into the actual effect in young readers on their encounter with poetry. A definition of ecopoetry would also be put forward to discuss and hopefully contributed to the existing researches.

References:

Bryant, P. E., Bradley, L., Maclean, M., & Crossland, J. (1989). Nursery rhymes, phonological skills and reading. Journal of Child Language, 16(02).
Martin, S. (2010). Présentation. Les poèmes au cœur de l'enseignement du français. Le français aujourd'hui, 169(2), 3-3. doi:10.3917/lfa.169.0003
Winnicott, D. W. (1971). Playing and reality (Vol. 21). London and New York: Routledge Classics.
Sharan B, M. (2009). Qualitative Research - A guide to design and implementation. United States of America: Jossey-Bass.
Sprenger-Charolles, L. (1996). Lire. Paris: Puf.