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How to explain the drop in the spelling level of schoolchildren?

2022-12-08T12:27:55.052Z


INTERVIEW – A National Education survey reveals that the average number of errors on the same dictation has doubled since 1987. Françoise Picot, former teacher and honorary inspector of the ministry, explains to Le Figaro the reasons for this drop.


Pedagogical adviser and former inspector of National Education from 1992 to 2003, Françoise Picot worked a lot on grammar and spelling.

This former teacher works with groups of primary school teachers, in particular on the teaching of grammatical spelling, on the educational and collaborative network Léa.fr.

With her professional experience in schools and author of numerous French publications for primary school, she explains to

Le Figaro

what is missing today in the teaching of spelling.

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LE FIGARO.

- What do you think are the reasons for the drop in spelling among CM2 pupils?

Francoise PICOT.

-

I think there are three points that help to explain the reasons for this result.

They are all intimately linked to the school.

First, there is a real lack of attention: the students are much less concentrated than before.

All the teachers notice it and say it.

This is undoubtedly linked to the current life we ​​lead where everything is done in a hurry as well as to the time spent on screens.

Neuroscientists analyze it very well.

Then there is the reduction in school time.

In the old days, when students knew spelling, they went to school 30 hours a week.

Read alsoThe spelling performance of CM2 students continues to decline

We went to 26 hours, then 24 hours.

Of these 24 hours spent at school, they have many more subjects than before: art history, computer science, learning foreign languages, etc.

As a result, much less time is spent on spelling.

Colleagues tell me that they are now running after time, there is a real deficit in school time.

Last point, there is not really any reflection on the teaching of spelling at the level of National Education.

Linguists like Danièle Cogis or Jean-Pierre Jaffré have reflected on this subject.

But this does not pass at the level of National Education, nor in programs and classes.

Why is spelling undermined by National Education?

At the level of National Education, when we talk about spelling, the programs teach that students must memorize the rules.

They ask teachers to teach them spelling by taking dictation.

From then on, it is believed that the students will know everything about spelling.

But we realize that this is not true, especially at the level of grammatical spelling since that is where it fails.

Students need to know the rules, but above all they need to know how to use them.

However, linguists have shown that this is not enough.

” READ ALSO – The advice of the world spelling champion to be the best in French

The pupils know that the verb agrees with its subject, that the adjective agrees with the noun to which it relates, that the past participle agrees with the subject.

All this they are able to recite to you.

But when it comes to putting it into practice, they don't.

We didn't create any automatisms in them.

It is at this level that there is a problem: we have not thought about these automatisms to be acquired.

Reflections have been made on this point, but this has not been relayed at program level, nor in continuing education.

National Education has not taken up the subject.

However, we can clearly see today that dictation is not the only way to teach spelling.

The 2016 programs have indeed established that it is necessary to take daily dictation.

The students we assessed are now in CM2,

they were in Grande section at the time.

Throughout their primary schooling, they had dictation every day.

We also gave a lot of drills.

Today's results have regressed.

Somehow, that means it's not enough.

What are the main difficulties encountered during this dictation* used for the survey?

This is not the first time that we have spoken of this dictation, since we have had comparisons on this same text for several years.

In this dictation, the words are not lexically difficult.

There are no words that the students don't know:

“Mom”

,

“Dad”

,

“Dog”

.

What currently sins, it is that when the pupils write, they do not know that the verb agrees with its subject.

They don't relate the words.

They don't put the

"-s"

because it's not automated there.

However, we thought about proposing a teaching of this grammatical spelling in an automated way.

” READ ALSO – Will the past simple disappear?

On the other hand, at the level of the relations between the words, therefore of the grammatical spelling, the dictation becomes difficult.

Because you have both narrative and discourse.

The story is

“evening was falling”

.

It is imperfect.

There is also a narrative moment, at the end of the text:

“at this moment the dog began to bark”

.

It's simple past.

And in the middle, there is discourse, it's present tense:

“says Maman”

.

We also have the past tense:

"the kids got lost"

,

"they haven't found their way yet"

.

“She may have seen them”

: here, there is an agreement of the past participle with the direct object.

Lexically, children should know how to write all the words, moreover, there has been no regression at this level.

What solutions can be provided to students to improve their spelling?

When we work on grammatical spelling at school (grammar and conjugation), we never start from an entire text.

We always work from sentences.

There, the children can be repeatedly confronted with the imperfect, the past simple.

This is why, with certain colleagues, we said to ourselves that if we wanted to create automatisms, we had to put the students in a situation, starting from a short text in which they will be led to understand the functioning of the language.

There are sentences that can be in the past perfect, the imperfect or the past simple.

We try to put together all these relationships that the students have to make.

Then we change the characters.

In the dictation mentioned, instead of “Dad and Mom”, we will just put “Dad” for example.

Then we look at what changes.

Students are allowed to reflect on this change.

What is missing is precisely this absence of reflection in spelling on the relationships between words.

We have to get the students to reflect on what they are doing so that it becomes automatic and then they no longer need to reflect.

Read alsoIn Paris, a giant dictation to (re)discover Proust and spelling

Dictation is therefore not the only exercise to improve your spelling.

It's not the only way to learn the language.

But that doesn't stop you from doing dictations.

The “spelling moment” must be a reflection on a text, by operating the language disconnected from the dictation.

And not just a daily dictation.

The student must reflect on the relationships within a text by making the language work.

That is to say, I will change the tense employed and the person as the subject.

And they watch what happens.

The dictation can come later.

In addition, we no longer do enough written production.

However, it is a good exercise in which pupils can be led to reflect on their language.

In this sense, it would be necessary to leave a less important place to dictation to make room for activities with a short text.

*

Dictation used for the survey of the Ministry of National Education

:

“Evening was falling.

Mom and Dad worried, wondering why their four boys hadn't come home.

- The kids must have gotten lost, said mum.

If they haven't found their way home yet, we'll see them arrive home very tired.

- Why not call Martine?

She may have seen them!

No sooner said than done!

At that moment the dog began to bark.

Source: lefigaro

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