La Copie de Texte comme Indicateur de l’Apprentissage de la Langue Ecrite par l’Enfant

The behavior of 34 first-grade children was observed when copying a text — their procedures for dividing the text verbal behavior and written production — in order to obtain task with which to follow the child’s progress through the first two years of schooling. Four successive levels appear after analysis of these data. On the first level, the construction of written units, the child faces particular problems with the title, lines, blanks and letters. The text is merely a commonplace object for the child. The second, or literal, level involves systematic letter-by-letter copying; letter naming appears. The text becomes a sequence of letters. On the third level, the child strives to copy visually and/or phonetically identifiable groups of letters: phonemes, syllables, or pronounceable non-syllabic strings of letters. Oral support is often implicit. The text is not seen by the child as a representation of speech. The word constitutes the unit of reference on the fourth level. The wide span group succeeds in copying the text word-by-word, while the narrow-span subgroup needs to repeat the trial twice, using the syllable as the support unit. Oral behavior is omnipresent. The text has become a sequence of words for the child.