Grammar in the French elementary school: a teaching under tension ...

Abstract

The question of the teaching of the language in the school is sensitive in France and trigger regularly debates and controversies that go beyond the school. Grammar crystallises such controversy, at linguistic, didactic, pedagogic, political, institutional, and social levels. Indeed, we are dealing with an issue under tension. This contribution will seek to interrogate and combine two dimensions, the knowledge prescribed, and the knowledge taught. Two axes will articulate such an approach: first, from a diachronic viewpoint, we will present the analysis of some of the institutional texts released over the last two decades to understand the Ministry’s attempts in a very centralised national context; and second, from a synchronique viewpoint, drawing on recent research outcomes, we will try to shed light to the pedagogic reality of two groups, one in CE2 (8-9 years of age) and one in CM1 (9-10 years of age). Grammar tasks proposed to the pupils will be analysed, as well as the institutional rules set up in the class to explain the language, and the different steps set up in the textbooks, which are meant to follow the official syllabuses (those published in 2020). From these elements, we will attempt to shed light to the points in tension and see the paradoxes that cross the teaching of the language in Language Arts in the French context.