“Te explicó qué quiere decir”, “te digo cómo se llama”. Interacciones niño-niño en torno a vocabulario no familiar

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the conversational movements use by twelve-year-old children to explain vocabulary in reading and writing situations with 4-year-old children. These situations were video recorded in a school where a child tutor program was held. The program was implemented in schools attended by children and adolescents from urban-marginalized backgrounds in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The data analysed in this paper includes 50 tutoring situations. The unit of analysis consists of exchanges in which the older child explains one or more words to the younger one or tries to elicit a precise word. The data analysis followed a qualitative procedure that combines the constant comparative method (Glaser y Strauss, 1967; Strass y Corbin, 1991) with conversational analysis (Goodwin, 2000). Findings showed that in these situations the older children rely not just on linguistic information but also on other semiotic fields.

Keywords

• Interaction analysis
• vocabulary acquisition