The Role and Effect of Poetry in Reading for 5 – 8 Years Old

Délivré par l’Université Toulouse 2-Jean Jaurès

Présentée et soutenue par

Dan LIU

Le 26 JANVIER 2018

The role and effect of poetry in reading for 5 – 8 years old

École doctorale et discipline ou spécialité LETTRES MODERNES

Unité de recherche LABORATOIRE L.L.A CREATIS

Directrice(s) ou Directeur(s) de Thèse MICHEL FAVRIAUD

Jury

Jacques Fijalkow, Université de Toulouse 2 Irene Pieper, Université de Hildesheim Michel Naumann, Université de Cergy-Pontoise Bernard Schneuwly, Université de Genève Michel Favriaud, ESPE, Université de Toulouse

Université Toulouse 2-Jean Jaurès

Laboratoire L.L.A CREATIS

THÈSE

Pour obtenir le grade de DOCTEUR DE L’UNIVERSITÉ

LETTRES MODERNES

The role and effect of poetry in reading for 5 – 8 years old

LIU DAN

Présentée et soutenue publiquement Le 26 JANVIER 2018

Directeur ou Directrice de Recherche

FAVRIAUD MICHEL, HDR

JURY

Acknowledgements

The process of accomplishing the doctor thesis is a laborious yet mag- nificent journey for me. Dating back to the year of 2013, I was a newly post- graduated student who knew few about French didactics and could barely read any French articles. Four years flew so swiftly that I am now standing at the edge of graduation; nevertheless, four years passed so slowly that I still keep every detail of this journey in mind. And that is why I would like to take this chance to express my gratitudes to all those who have ever supported and encouraged me during my research and thesis writing. To begin with, I would like to devote my sincere thanks to my superviser, Michel Favriaud, who opened up a new horizon of a multidisciplinary didactics for me, witnessed each tiny advancement in my research, and encouraged me to be an independent, diligent and intelligent researcher. Your every course that I took, every seminar that I attended, every academic communi- cation that I participated have inspired me and guided me to explore further, to conquer more difficulties and to make more progress. He is the mentor of both my thesis and my research life in France. I also would like to thank Ju- dith Émery-Bruneau, professor of French didactics in the University of Québec in Outaouais for your kind help when I was an intern to arrange methodological courses for me, to exchange valuable ideas concerning my research with me and to encourage me when I felt upset when initiating the writing of my thesis. My heartfelt thanks to Michel Poletto, teacher in primary school in Tou- louse who aided me a lot to organize the interviews with pupils, to introduce other teachers to participate in my questionnaire and to generously share with me his years of teaching experiences through poetry. Other teachers

4 Dan LIU – The role and effect of poetry in reading from 5 to 8 years old

like Claire Mrel, Hélène Ceccato, Lucie Montillet, Maryline Vinsonneau etc. have also contributed their valuable teaching experiences to enrich this research. Thank you for your contributions! Moreover, I would like to thank the passionate help from Mr Alain Trouillet (Direction des services départe- mentaux de l'éducation nationale de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse Pont Neuf) and Mrs Khorsi Christine (Inspectrice de l'éducation nationale, Tournefeuille) for the diffusion of my questionnaire.

Many thanks to the other three members in my jury, Ms Irene Pieper from the University of Hildesheim, Mr Bernard Schneuwly from the Univer- sity of Genève, Mr Michel Naumann from the University of Cergy-Pontoise and Mr Jacques Fijalkow from the University de Toulouse. I am honored to present my defense in front of you!

I also think of my mother, Zhou Xiuzhen and my father Liu Hongqing. Your unconditional love and support for all these years continue to shape me from a little girl into a grown woman. Thanks to my dear friends from every corner of the world, you have presented me how efforts could pay off in your own lives and how you could back me up despite all the distances. Thank you all!

Last but not the least, I would like to give my special thanks to my la- boratory L.L.A Créatis, the University of Toulouse and the Universtiy of Québec in Outaouais which support me to accomplish my internship, to at- tend different seminars, colloques and conferences across the world to enrich my reflections towards my thesis. Thanks to China scholarship Council (CSC) that finanicially support the first three years of my doctor study in France.

Dear children, this thesis is written especially for you to discover a wonderland where you could dialogue with yourself, join hands with others, and immersed in the world of language through poetry. Enjoy!

Sommaire

INTRODUCTION ...... 9

1. INTRODUCTION ...... 15

1.1. THE CROSSROAD BETWEEN LITERATURE AND LINGUISTICS ...... 17

1.2. THE MARGINALIZATION OF POETRY ...... 19

1.3. POETRY LEARNING IN SCHOOL ...... 21

1.4. MULTIPLE ACCESSES TO POETRY ...... 24 1.4.1. Acoustic access to poetry ...... 24 1.4.2. Visual access to poetry ...... 28 1.4.3. Reflective access to poetry ...... 29

1.5. POETRY AND READING ...... 31 1.5.1. Logographic phase and poetry ...... 33 1.5.2. Alphabetic phase and poetry ...... 35 1.5.3. Orthographic phase and poetry ...... 37 1.5.4. Mediation role of poetry with teachers ...... 38

2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ...... 41

2.1. OUR BASIC KNOWLEDGE OF POETRY ...... 43

2.2. POETRY AND HUMANE NURTURE ...... 48 2.2.1. Poetic dwelling – language and being ...... 49 2.2.2. Emotional nurture in language ...... 50 2.2.3. Hierarchy of imaginative nurture ...... 55

2.3. EXPRESSIVITY OF NURTURED LANGUAGE ...... 64 2.3.1. Visual facet of poetry ...... 65 2.3.1.1. From visual perception to visual thinking ...... 65 2.3.1.2. Prolonged visual perception in poetry ...... 67 2.3.1.3. Reconstruction of text or mind? ...... 71 2.3.2. Acoustic facet of poetry ...... 74 2.3.2.1. Rhythm and poetry ...... 75 2.3.2.2. Punctuation and poetry ...... 79

6 Dan LIU – The role and effect of poetry in reading from 5 to 8 years old

2.3.2.3. Recitation and poetry ...... 83 2.3.2.4. Diction and poetry ...... 85

2.4. POETRY AND LEARNING TO READ ...... 89 2.4.1. Debate on word identification ...... 90 2.4.2. Phonological awareness (metaphonological ability) ...... 91 2.4.3. Phonological units ...... 93 2.4.4. Reflection and manipulation of phonological units ...... 95 2.4.5. Phases of reading acquisition ...... 97 2.4.6. Development from epi to meta linguistic ability ...... 99

2.5. PROFESSIONAL GESTURES ...... 102 2.5.1. The basis of professional gestures ...... 104 2.5.2. Theoretical model of professional gestures – multi-agenda107

2.6. OUR HYPOTHESIS OF ECOPOETRY ...... 110

2.7. KEY PROBLEMS AND OBJECTIVES OF RESEARCH ...... 121

3. METHODOLOGY ...... 125

3.1. INTRODUCTION ...... 127

3.2. CHOICE OF METHODOLOGY ...... 128

3.3. DATA COLLECTION ...... 130 3.3.1. Sample selection ...... 130 3.3.2. Instrumentation : selective questionnaire, observations and semi-structured interviews ...... 134 3.3.3. The limitations of data selection ...... 142

3.4. DATA ANALYSIS ...... 143 3.4.1. Category and its construction ...... 144 3.4.2. Categories in our research ...... 145 3.4.3. Content analysis ...... 147

4. CASE ANALYSIS ...... 149

4.1. CASE 1 ...... 151

4.2. CASE 2 ...... 157

4.3. CASE 3 ...... 166

4.4. CASE 4 ...... 176

4.5. CASE 5 ...... 188

4.6. CASE 6 ...... 197

4.7. CASE 7 ...... 205

4.8. CASE 8 ...... 215

4.9. CASE 9 ...... 223

5. DISCUSSION ...... 235

5.1. THE ROLE OF POETRY IN OUR RESEARCH ...... 237

5.1. CASES IN GS (M, E, K) ...... 244

5.2. CASES IN CP (T, B, C) ...... 247

5.3. CASES IN CE1 (P, L, J) ...... 251

5.4. ROLE TRANSFER OF POETRY ...... 257

6. CONCLUSION ...... 261

7. BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 269

8. ANNEX ...... 277

8.1. ANNEX 1 ...... 278

8.2. ANNEX 2 ...... 281

8.3. ANNEX 3 ...... 282

8.4. ANNEX 4 ...... 284

8.5. ANNEX 5 ...... 287

9. INDEX ...... 295

8 Dan LIU – The role and effect of poetry in reading from 5 to 8 years old

Tables

Table 1 - Linguistic correspondences between poetry and reading ...... 117 Table 2 - Justification of our methodological choice ...... 129 Table 3 - Key codings ...... 146 Table 4 - The construction of ecopoetry in our experiment ...... 243 Table 5 - Ecopoetry in GS ...... 246 Table 6 - Ecopoetry in CP ...... 250 Table 7 - Ecopoetry in CE1 ...... 256

Illustrations

Figure 1 - Poème à Lou ...... 69 Figure 2 - Poème Amour ...... 69 Figure 3 - Poème Michel Leiris ...... 69 Figure 4 - Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) ...... 80 Figure 5 - André du Bouchet (1924-2001) ...... 80 Figure 6 - The pre-nurture from poetry ...... 114 Figure 7 - Hypothesis: The establishment of ecopoetry ...... 120

INTRODUCTION

Introduction 11

The didactic of poetry has gone through several decades from its prosperity in school learning to its decline, even marginalization reflected on the governmental programs (see I.O. from 1972). Poetry was separated from literature with the expansion of the youth literature, particularly away from the narratives. No linkages to other disciplines such as language learning, literature, art or education were constructed during these years, poetry learning has gradually abandon itself to a marginalized position. A crucial part of the reason lies in the lack of relevant researches in this domain, it increasingly masked and deprived the uniqueness of poetry learning, even reducing it as sealed cultural heritage or certain mnemonic instruments (Favriaud, 2007a). The Group ALEP1 has devoted to the restoration of this deviation of poetry learning for more than ten years2. In their project of poetic writing with four teachers, they gradually constructed an intellectually independent but accompanying environment with their pupils in the learning project. Later they named it as « éco-poésie »3 in the class (Favriaud, 2016). It then became our starting point of research. Favriaud (2010) deepened the definition of ecopoetry4 : « une écopoésie pratique - permet de considérer les poèmes comme des objets sémiotiques subjectifs, qui engagent le corps et l’imaginaire, et qui engagent la langue d’une façon expérimentale »5 (Favriaud, 2011c). What is ecopoetry composed of in real classroom context ? Could its linkage to language contribute to reading for pupils ? Will the role of ecopoetry vary along with pupil’s reading abilities ? Our research aims at contributing to the didactic of language through poetry which remains alternative or even marginal within the decades, therefore occupies an essential role for its restoration. The concept of ecopoetry was recently put forward, therefore it is

1 The group of ALEP, directed by Michel Favriaud, includes Claire Escuillié, Alain Miossec, Nathalie Panissal, Michel Poletto, Maryline Vinsonneau. 2 Cf : Favriaud, M., Viinsonneau, M., & Poletto, M. (2017). Les chemins de poésie d'Alep Limoges Lambert-Lucas (Favriaud, Viinsonneau, & Poletto, 2017) 3 The expression was firstly invented by Maryline Vinsonneau in Group ALEP. 4 Ecopoetry is one of the key words in our thesis. It is defined as a subgenre of poetry in English speaking world, which refers to poetry with a strong ecological emphasis or message. It was brought into public as a term by the article of J.Scott Bryson (2002) : Ecopoetry : a Critical Introduction. However, in our thesis, the term « ecopoetry » is only an English translation of « écopoésie », therefore has no relation to the definition from the original term. Our definition of ecopoetry would be presented step by step throughout the thesis. See more in section 2.6. 5 A practical ecopoetry - makes it possible to consider poems as subjective semiotic objects, engaging the body and imagination, and engaging the language in an experimental way (This translation was done by the author of the thesis, later it will be marked as « Translated by DL »).

12 Dan LIU – The role and effect of poetry in reading from 5 to 8 years old

necessary to elaborate this concept in a more detailed and extended manner. The linkage with reading could also bring poetry learning back to the central stage of education, therefore would even boost its reprosperity in the decades to come.

Our thesis bases on understanding the marginalizations of poetry in the didactic of French, describing how teachers and their pupils work with poetry in school context and finally demonstrating the linkages between the donations that poetry could provide and the abilities that pupils are supposed to obtain in reading. During this process, we gradually find out that these linkages, however, involve multiple elements that may be probably ignored or underestimated in previous researches. These elements take us to further explore and present their interactions, which urge us to draw a detailed construction of ecopoetry to facilitate reading for pupils from 5 to 8 years old. Under the framework of ecopoetry, we seize the opportunity to observe and analyze its increasingly varying role according to pupils’ distinguished reading levels, and also to witness its correspondent ef- fects in pupils. To accomplish the goal in our research, we have selected several cases of both pupils and teachers in GS, CP and CE1. These pupils create each of their ecopoetry in their own context of reading, some of them receive help from teachers and parents however there are those who continue being ignorant as outsiders of their ecopoetry construction. They are considered as reading learners, but also individuals (I), children, and human beings in our reseach, the perspective has allowed us to weigh more on each of their discoveries in poetry under respective roles ; poetry is seen as cultural heritage, but will it assume more roles in correspondance to the various roles of our reading learners ? This co-construction, could it eventually aid us to climb over the shackles concerning poetry learning and revive the didactic of French language in a poetic way ? To resolve these questions, we have decided to conduct this doctor thesis to explore the field faded or even forgotten by a lot of researchers and policy makers. Every case in our research will be responsible to present us a realistic, detailed and enlightening portrait to respond to our problematic in its own manner. Chapter one intiated by our observation of the discrepancy between nursery rhymes and poetry. Furthermore, we discovered more discontinuities concerning poetry in distinguished perspectives : as a discipline, as a didactic method, or even as a social phenomenon.

Introduction 13

These discontinuities deeply aroused our interests to dig out the underlying reasons. In this chapter, we started by seeking after the advantages of nursery rhymes in poetry, i.e. the diction6 of poetry, and gradually found out multiple accesses to poetry and also their imba- lance. Even though our starting point was entirely from a linguistic view, however during the process, we surprisingly encountered other non-linguistic elements, such as body language, emotion, imagination etc. This unexpected encounter impels us to question over the identity of reading learners and also the role of poetry in their development of reading under school context. Meanwhile, we firstly referred to the concept of « ecopoetry » from previous researches. Chapter one finished by presenting the problematic of our research and its corresponding objectives. Chapter two aims at constructing a theoretical framework of our research. Followed by the problematic of chapter one, we developed each aspect, especially by adding the humane nurtures in poetry and the professional gestures of teachers in school (these two aspects were not detailed in the problematic however considered essential later in our research). The purpose of chapter two is to demonstrate how poetry could perform its roles and how reading learners could obtain from poetry during their reading which are firmly supported by relevant researches. It is also in this chapter, we are able to elaborate and further depict the growing establishment of ecopoetry. At the end of chapter two, we put forward our theoretical hypothesis based on the researches chosen in our thesis. It serves as a key reference to our experiment coming along. Chapter three serves as presenting the methodology of our research, which is used to collect data from real school context in the light of our hypothesis constructed in chapter two. To realize this goal, we have implemented a qualitative study (case study) with nine pupils from GS to CE1 and two teachers from CP and CE1. It helps us to deepen our understanding of the poetry learning in authentic school environment, and more importanly, it contributes to fill in our construction of ecopoetry with solid data resources. Moreover,

6 Diction is one of the key words in our thesis. It originally refers to the writer’s or the speaker’s distinctive vocabulary choices and style of expression in a poem or story. Then it develops the meaning of the distinctiveness of speech, the art of speaking so that each word is clearly heard and understood to its fullest complexity and extremity(Crannell, 1997, Glossary, p. 406 ; http://www.merriam-webster.com/netdict/diction). In our thesis, we would adopt the second meaning, more specifically, we would further enrich the diction in poetry in chapter 1 section 1.4.

14 Dan LIU – The role and effect of poetry in reading from 5 to 8 years old

chapter three also clarifies each step of the experiment to ensure its validity and reliability, and prepares for further case analysis. In chapter four, we demonstrated the nine portraits of pupils from GS to CE1 in a row, mixed with the comments from their teachers. The analysis illustrated the construction of ecopoetry for every portrait, from which we would have the chance to observe how each pupil interacts with the world, self, others and language. Moreover, we could also witness how the construction of ecopoetry differentiated under their own contexts and under which conditions it will facilitate the reading of pupils. Chapter five concerns the discussion of the data analysis based on chapter four in four axis (I & world, I & self, I & others and I& language). It offers us a transverse of the nine cases by distinctive groups. Here we further interpret the role of poetry in each grade, among which we discovered the common grounds of each group and also analyzed their differences according to their respective reading abilities. It is in this chapter that we rede- fine our concept of ecopoetry based on the hypothesis which adapt better to our portraits in the research.

Finally in the conclusion we sum up the content of our thesis and list our limits of the research, both conceptual and methodological ; followed by its contributions and ef- fects both in theory and in practice, from which extended problematics could be put forward to push further the researches in this domain in the future.

1. INTRODUCTION

1 – Problematic 17

1.1. THE CROSSROAD BETWEEN LITERATURE AND

LINGUISTICS

As two divergent and parallel disciplines, the relation between literature and linguistics has been discussed for a long time: « jusqu’aux années 1960, les relations entre linguistique et littérature n’ont guère été problématiques. Elles s’orientaient essentiellement dans deux directions »7 (Maingueneau, 2011, p. 76). According to Barthes, the definition of literature values a lot its connections with the society, with human being