Representacions gramaticals i activitat metalingüística dels alumnes de secundària: la categoria verb

Abstract

This article describes a research project on the grammatical representation made by students in their final year of compulsory secondary schooling of the "verb" category: a notion of great epistemological difficulty. The ultimate aim is to identify the strategies they used to conceptualise it and the problems they came across, so as to, on the one hand, gain an insight into the process of internalising grammatical knowledge and, on the other, be able to design didactic devices through a methodology for teaching grammar that is based on dialogue and reflection on language. This research is exploratory in nature and includes quantitative and qualitative approaches to data analysis, in an attempt to adapt the methodology to the initial goals. The author highlights the use of interviews as a methodological tool to capture the students' metalinguistic activity through their interaction with the researcher, but also as a teaching and learning tool. Some of the findings confirm those of previous studies on schoolchildren's grammatical representations, such as their lack of coherence and systematisation of grammatical concepts, the fossilisation of this knowledge, or the need to start out from previous knowledge and representations to build up grammatical knowledge from more solid foundations. This shows the need for methodological change in grammar teaching and learning, based particularly on reflection on language and its use, and on interaction with others as a way to draw out the metalinguistic conscience.

Keywords

• representations
• metalinguistic activity
• grammatical content
• grammar teaching
• interaction.