Objects to Learn about and Objects for Learning 1

1The Children’s Illustrated Literature Book in an Elementary School English Session: An Object Considered in its Materiality?

1.1. The origins of questioning and theoretical framing

The teaching and learning of English has, for a number of years, included authentic illustrated books from children’s literature as teaching materials. Unlike didactic illustrated books that are created to meet the needs of teaching and learning, authentic illustrated books exist outside school: they are written and published by English speakers for English-speaking children. To quote Tardieu’s definition (2014), what we have here is “original documents” (p. 34). Since the 2000s, there has been a proliferation in resources for use by school teachers planning to work from picture books in English. Some that come to mind include the pioneering book by Ellis and Brewster (2002), Tell it Again! The New Storytelling Handbook for Primary Teachers (translated and published in French in 2007), and the more recent methods of Choquet et al. (2012) and Hanot (2017).

Training and research are increasingly taking an interest in this children’s literature that is used for the purpose of language learning and discovering cultures, and also, more broadly, to raise awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity, as shown in the latest issue of Langues Modernes entitled “Littérature jeunesse et enseignement des langues” (Children’s Literature and Language Teaching; 2019/2). Illustrated books stemming from this children’s ...