Les connaissances liées à l’apprentissage de la lecture dans un dictionnaire électronique

The aim of this article is, on the one hand, to introduce, in a general way, the main problems that occur upon conception of an electronic dictionary for learning in an area, and more particularly for putting into practice knowledge linked to learning in this sort of environment. On the other hand, we illustrate our comments using the Lexical Resource Module (LRM hereafter), for how a child learns to read at the outset. Theoretical research on learning to read enabled the team working on the AMICAL project to determine an organised ­collection of knowledge that the learner should acquire during the course of his/her learning to read. These pieces of knowledge pose four main types of problem when being put into practice using an electronic dictionary: the characterization of interfaces putting into action the knowledge; the methods used to present the knowledge to the learner; the problems of the implicit and explicit; the issue of determining the pieces of knowledge which are linked to the area. We present each of these problems and illustrate them with the help of the LRM. This module can equate to a dictionary in the sense that it provides the learner with the possibility, firstly, of choosing a lexical element of the module (or word), and, secondly, to visualise the collection of interfaces carrying information, called “situations”, associated with this word. In this article, we therefore present, at the beginning, the framework of our research – the AMICAL project. Then, we define the LRM, and the problems linked to its conception. Subsequently, we describe in more detail one of the problems which we illustrate by taking concrete examples from the LRM