Doing Research on French Language and Literacy: Issues and Challenges

1
Doing Researchon French Language and
LiteracyIssues and Challenges

• Alain Desrochers
• University of Ottawa

2
Overview

• Introductory remarks
• Differentiating types of issues and challenges
• Socio-educational
• Methodological
• Professional
• Some priorities
• How CLLRNet can (does) make a difference
• Conclusion

3
Introductory remarks

• Doing research on French language and literacy
  development involves different types of issues
  and challenges
• Some of these challenges have already been
  overcome
• Other challenges still need to be addressed
• Examples of both will be discussed

4
Socio-educational issues

• Differences in educational programs between
  Canadian provinces
• Approaches to reading instruction
• Sequencing of acquisitions
• Selection of teaching materials
• Status of the French language in Canadian
  communities
• Assessment Different reference norms for
  communities where French is a minority language
• Main point These variables introduce additional
  sources of variance in the assessment of Canadian
  childrens language or literacy performance

5
Methodological or technical issues

• Assessment issues
• Measures adapted to the Canadian context Detail
• Translating tests from English to French
• Reference norms
• Psychometric properties
• Test construction or adaptation issues
• Normative data on words Detail
• Lexical databases Detail
• Technological improvements
• With screen display in graphics mode it is now
  possible to present characters with diacritics in
  any fonts

6
Professional issues

• Dissemination of scientific knowledge
• In what language?
• Readership
• Impact
• Scientific labor force
• The community of Canadian researchers available
  to design or work on French language or literacy
  development projects is still small
• Expectations regarding rate of progress must be
  realistic

7
Priority Items

• Research tools development
• Data on word characteristics
• Assessment measures
• Training of research personnel
• Basic training
• Training with new technologies
• Advancement of scientific knowledge
• Measurement issues
• Investigation of developmental processes
• Prediction of language and literacy problems
• Cross-linguistic comparisons
• Theoretical understanding
• Development of evidence-based applications
• Analysis of current practices Rationale,
  effectiveness
• Improvements Reading instruction, remediation
  programs, etc.

8
How CLLRNet can make a difference

• Research tools development
• Core facilities
• Measures catalogue
• Training of research personnel
• Highly qualified personnel training program
• Sponsored research internships
• Advancement of scientific knowledge
• CLLRNets 5 thematic cornerstones
• Core facilities
• Development of evidence-based applications
• Research support
• Road map to language and literacy
• Systematic reviews
• Encyclopedia of language and literacy development
• Partnerships

9
Conclusion

• There are facilities available within CLLRNet to
  address the sort of issues and challenges I just
  discussed
• It is up to us to be creative and make these
  facilities as effective as possible

10
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION
11
APPENDIX
12
Why French reading measures developed in Europe
may not be useful in Canada 1

• Choice of contents driven by educational programs
  that differ markedly from Canadian programs
• Unusable reference norms
• ECOSSE Norms relative to socio-professional
  classes that are specific to France
• Use of words that are seldom used in Canada if at
  all
• ELO tancarville, dévisseuse, landau
• Test de vocabulaire miasme, girandole,
  panégyrique
• Test de langage chaussure montante, escarpin
• Use of illustrations that are culturally specific
  or obsolete
• LCMR French gendarme, mailman, vinyl record
  player

13
Why French reading measures developed in Europe
may not be useful in Canada 2

• Error coding schemes that depend on regional
  pronunciation characteristics
• Petit Poucet confusion between é and è in some
  regions of France
• Cultural differences in adult-child interaction
  patterns that are reflected in test instructions
• Alouette Ignore the child and use terse
  instructions
• Tiens! Tu lis Tiens! Tu lis tout ça
  Allons, tu lis

14
Lexical variables for which data are available in
French (see Desrochers Saint-Aubin, 2004)

• Word Form
• Objective frequency of occurrence
• Subjective frequency of occurrence
• Age of acquisition
• Orthographic neighbourhood N
• Uniqueness point
• Grapheme-phoneme correspondence
• Word Meaning
• Picture naming agreement
• Imageability or concreteness
• Categorical typicality

15
Databases available on the French lexicon

• BRULEX (Content et al, 1990)
• NOVLEX (Lambert Chesnet, 2001)
• LEXIQUE (New et al., 2001)
• MANULEX (Lété et al., 2004)