It all started with a controversy such as the French education system regularly faces: an evolution in the school programs becomes, according to interpretations sometimes ill-intentioned, sometimes ill-informed, the instrument of a destruction of learning which will lead French children to become even dumber than they already were. The culprit, for two weeks, has been called “predicate”: a centuries-old term, used in Latin and Greek, already taught in several French-speaking countries including Belgium and Quebec, which quite simply designates what relates to the subject of 'a sentence. For example, in “this polemic is totally absurd”, “this polemic” is the subject; "is totally absurd" is the predicate, that is, the part of the sentence that says what the subject does or is.
Let's go back to the starting point, that is to say in November 2015: it was at this time that the school programs for the 2 nd , 3 rd and 4 th school cycles (from CP to 3 rd ) incorporate, on the proposal of the Higher Program Council, the “predicate”. Taught from CM1, it must allow “identifying the constituents of a simple sentence in relation to its semantic coherence”. At first, this went almost unnoticed: in February 2016, on her site, a CM2 teacher perfectly described the usefulness of the predicate.
Extract from the school programs of the 2
and
, 3
and
and 4
and
cycles, 2015.
And the CODs, COIs and other COSs in all this? This is where the controversy arises: in an article published on the Télérama site on January 3, a French teacher at the college recounts a training course she took on teaching the language. And affirms that the appearance of the predicate implies the disappearance of the rest: “Simple. Effective, perfect. Let's stop encumbering ourselves with complex notions, direct, indirect, second object complements, circumstantial complements, and all that gibberish that disturbed our dear darlings and had no use! However, she underlines, “we still need a little of all that. If only, for example, for the agreements, you know, the agreements of the past participle in particular. The unbearable rule that you learned a very long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away: "With the auxiliary avoir, the past participle agrees in gender and number with the direct object complement when it is placed before the auxiliary.
No question of abandoning the COD
From there, some quickly deduce that French pupils will no longer learn object complements and their functions, and will therefore soon no longer be bothered to agree the past participle correctly. Le Parisien puts the subject on the front page and gives the floor to completely helpless parents when it comes to helping their children with their homework. Teachers, too, say they do not see how or why to teach it. Then it is an opportunity to bring out the usual speeches on the collapse of the school under the blows of “pedagogism”, pointing to a supposed “impoverishment” of the language. And to let his creativity express itself, like what a professor of letters proposed on the Figaro Vox: a skit on the model of Molière. The subtle description of the decor sets the tone: “A public school pediment whose walls are collapsing or cracking as after a bombardment. The Republican motto is peeling off and seems almost erased, the tricolor flag is in shreds. Against an overturned bust of Condorcet a sign has been placed: "For sale."
Faced with criticism, Michel Lussault, president of the National Programs Council, assures us that “the grammar has not changed, it remains just as complex and just as formidable. She will always cause problems for everyone. It is his teaching that is evolving, and there is no question of abandoning the CODs and other fun things: “The predicate is an introduction. Then, we will look at how the predicate is constituted, and study the complements of the verb. The complements of the verb… which are none other than the COD, COI and COS, so designated for greater clarity at this stage of schooling. It is then, in fifth, that the COD returns under its name in learning the agreement of the past participle, as was already the case. “I remind you that many people do not know what 'direct object complement' means”, says Michel Lussault, stressing that the formula itself, inherited from two previous denominations, is not really correct. “Then subordinate clauses, conjunctions, etc. will be taught. Where is the attack on the fatherland? he wonders. Reading the school programs proves him right: the 3 rd cycle (from CM1 to 6 th ) provides for the teaching of the predicate, but also the notions of simple sentences / complex sentences and everything that can compose these sentences.
Seperti yg dijangka result spm hanya dpt 2 Ayam dan yg bakinya Bebola ayam😂 Di sebabkan cita2. She's doing research… https://t.co/v6adRabGRj
— Kamilahsyazanadadiey Thu Jun 10 18:01:50 +0000 2021
The sociolinguist Philippe Blanchet, author of a book on glottophobia, underlines the confusion at work in many critics: “We confuse language with the tools for analyzing language, in the same way that we confuse the language with its spelling. The authors of these criticisms believe that children learn French at school, when they already know how to speak French. What they learn is analytical tools and academic French.”
What is grammar for?
In short, from a factual point of view, we quite quickly reach the limits of the debate. And yet, many questions have been raised, foremost among which is this: what is the use, then, of the grammar that we are taught at school? "The only effective use of school grammar is that it helps to understand the spelling of French, since it is a very grammatical spelling," explains Philippe Blanchet. "In a lot of languages, like English, which also has a lot of spelling exceptions, we don't study grammar in school."
The author of these lines himself has an anguished memory of those days when it was necessary to learn “object complements”, “circumstantial complements” and even things as simple as “pronouns”. Of all this, something has remained, since today we know how to write and understand complex sentences. But was it really the best way to do it? We asked, on Twitter, what memories people have of all this. Oh, that was fine, that was pretty simple, most of them replied. Others admitted that it took them several years to digest everything. But today, who is really able to designate a COI or a COS in a sentence? This conversation on the social network reveals that even when you think you know, you don't necessarily know.
“We have a school grammar which, classically, is a labeling grammar”, admits Michel Lussault. "We learn labels mechanically", that is to say, to designate what words or groups of words are. “This grammar is not without effectiveness, but we realize that, over time, some students are able to metabolize it, while others, very many, are not able. Because it remains a labeling decoupled from meaning.” In summary, completes the grammarian Florence Leca, lecturer at the Sorbonne, “there are two grammars: the normative, which terrorizes, which says how to say well. And there is an analytical grammar, which explains more than it imposes. Perhaps it would be interesting to reflect, in secondary education, on a grammar that shows its interest. For example, why it's interesting to know the difference between 'these' and 'his'” – she chooses this example because she knows a scientist who, although “very brilliant”, cannot distinguish between these two words.
The introduction of the predicate could therefore have this virtue: to give more meaning to the learning of grammar. Dominique Bucheton, former university professor of language and education sciences at the IUFM in Montpellier, explains to Liberation that she "has always used the notion of predicate, often by naming it more simply, to help students understand this difficult question that traditional, school grammar has never been able to define: what is a sentence? "Accidents: three dead." Yes, that's a complete sentence.
With this tool, "we are not in terms of syntax, we are in terms of communication," says Florence Leca. “The predicate is new information that is conveyed. It's an interesting notion because it leads to rhetoric." For example, she takes two sentences: “Pierre is getting married tomorrow” and “It is Pierre who is getting married tomorrow”. The first gives information: Pierre (this is the subject) is getting married tomorrow (this is the predicate). In the second, the predicate is… well, we don't know, in fact, at the time of writing these lines. Is “it” the subject of the sentence, and “is Pierre who is getting married tomorrow” the predicate? It would be strange… Even if it means being stupid, we therefore relaunch Florence Leca, who kindly offers us an accelerated grammar course by email. Here it is reproduced:
What is the predicate for? An accelerated grammar course by Florence Leca, grammarian.
We see here what the analysis based on the predicate can have of interest: it makes it possible to better understand the meaning of a sentence and to apprehend the fact that the same words, put in a different order, no longer transmit the same thing. Which will not be useless when the time comes to be confronted with political speeches. But for the linguist Alain Bentolila, interviewed by Le Figaro, if the predicate is "a formidable philosophical notion for [his] students, for children, it has no interest". In his view, the predicate continues to "prioritize nomenclature over meaning."
Let us remember all the same, by the way, that Pierre is getting married tomorrow (and so much the better for him, after all).
Challenging the obsession with “language proficiency”
In reality, reflections on another way of teaching grammar are not new. In this regard, one can even go so far as to question the obsession with “mastering the language”. In Refounding the teaching of writing, a work published in 2014, Dominique Bucheton raised the problem: “Carried to the pinnacle […], this paradigm of “mastery of the language” advocated the priority of exercises and language lessons and grammar instead of regular and long reading and writing practices. However, “in France, reading and writing skills have continued to decline, unlike other European countries (Finland and Ireland, for example) which nevertheless also encounter social, economic or migratory difficulties”, she observes.
According to her, it is therefore necessary to integrate into language teaching the fact that languages vary according to cultures and ways of thinking. "Making a student competent in writing practices means giving him the means to be comfortable in all kinds of writing situations, to build there and find his place, to make his voice heard there; it is to lead him to think pen in hand; it is also to enable him to understand, objectify and control the writing process, the language games and the communication issues of any situation.
This is what teachers have endeavored to do, some of whom have recounted their experiences. Formerly a teacher at the Jules-Ferry college in Villeneuve-Saint-Georges (Val-de-Marne), in a priority education zone, Karine Risselin has set up workshops to have her students do "dictations-debates", a exercise she recounts in this article. In groups of 3 to 5, students must return their version of a dictation after consultation. "The regular practice of this activity puts the pupils on the alert, arouses always fertile interactions and also gives voice to those who do not have it", she notes.
In short, the debate over the predicate revives an old quarrel. Behind the scandalized stands of self-proclaimed defenders of the French language, there is the idea that since they have gone through this somewhat mind-numbing apprenticeship, there is no reason for others to escape it. But also that we must keep “a school which serves to block a large part of the population from selecting an elite”, suggests Philippe Blanchet. However, "this elite, obviously it is the one who has the time, the means and the support of the parents". “It is an elitist but above all conservative vision, to prevent any refoundation of the school so that it really plays its role of democratization and even more of invention of new practices of writing and reading”, abounds Dominique Bucheton, for whom the most important thing, in this electoral period, is to “repose the only real question: that of the refoundation of the initial and continuous training of teachers”.
And to finish...
A little quiz: did you understand the predicate? What did you learn from your grammar lessons? Test your knowledge.
