TEACHERS’ DISCOURSE AND VOCABULARY TEACHING IN ARGENTINEAN KINDERGARTENS

Abstract

The network of semantic relationships that configure the academic discourse in Science lessons are essential to enhance the vocabulary of students (Nagy y Townsend, 2012; Snow, 2010; Wright y Gotwals, 2017). This paper analyzes teaching situations in which the thematic unit Animals, corresponding to the area of Natural Sciences in kindergartens in the province of Córdoba was developed. The aim of the research is to analyze the distribution of teachers’ utterances dedicated to the teaching of vocabulary that belongs to the academic discourse and the different types of pragmatic functions that these utterances acquire. All lessons were videotaped and transcribed according to the CHILDES system standards (MacWhinney, 2000). For the analysis, the teachers’ utterances were categorized twice: (1) according to whether they were part of interactions in which vocabulary was taught and (2) according to the pragmatic function they played during the teaching of words. In a complementary manner, the frequency of the categorized utterances throughout the corpus was quantified and an individual analysis was carried out per teacher. The results of the quantitative analysis showed variability in: (1) the distribution of utterances used to teach vocabulary and (2) the pragmatic functions acquired by these utterances. In addition, on average, teachers prioritized making comments, followed by requests for specific information and positive evaluations. These findings are discussed with the results of previous research. The pedagogical implications are highlighted.