Issues around language education in pre-school

Abstract

The language teaching's programmes and methods are characterized by their dependence upon the chosen linguistic, psychological and/or psycholinguistic theories. Nowadays none of these model theories can be considered as sufficiently apt to explain the numerous problems of the language development. The Genevan teamwork of J. P. Bronckart proposes the creation of an autonomous pyscholinguistic model applicable to the language teaching for which the research's verification in a scholastic situation is indispensable. The child arrives at the pre-primary school with a considerable development of his language, yet he still has to udergo the improvement period of his oral expression, before tackling a second symbolic system which is the written language. The method considered as of most adequacy is that of concentric programming based upon the child's centres of interests. The author presents a series of teaching strategies in order to better the mastery of the language's functioning mechanisms, namely activities of unconcious structure such as the symbolic play , tales, songs, etc. , investigated through a perspective which integrates the affective, cognitive and social aspects of the language.