Contenu du sommaire : La révision de texte. Méthodes, outils et processus, sous la direction de Sabine Pétillon et Franck Ganier

During the past 25 years many studies have been done on text revision in cognitive psychology. However, one must aknowledge that revision is still an ill-defined concept. Revision definitions are rarely expressed in operational terms and differ from one researcher to another. This paper aims at clarifying what we mean by text revision by reviewing the main definitions available in cognitive psychology, the methods that are used to analyse text revision and the different subprocesses of the revision process that researchers have identified.

It is in questioning the notions of “intended meaning” and of intention (ality) as they are analyzed by E. Benveniste that we approach the corrections carried out in the manuscript of Génetrix by Mauriac. The observation of these modifications moves toward a dramatic intensification of the novel, and this dramatization translates, from our point of view, an “intention to say” (Fr. vouloir dire) in the work in the ensemble of the modifications that one may observe in the manuscript. As much as at the macro-structural level (especially in the elimination of digressions) as at the micro-structural level (types of naming, stylistic devices, syntactical configurations, punctuation), the analysis reveals a semantic direction, which allows us to perceive, at the critical points of the revision, the genesis of a text and the intention to say of the author in a space of translinguistic dynamics.

This paper proposes an on line analysis of writing with a word processor by ten year old pupils. It will sketch analysis axis of pupil's writings on word processors while questionning the role of procedures of which the semantic range is very small, nay nil, in the constitution of a text. At what times the formal called modifications take place ? What comes after, and which semantic modifications their making is likely to have generated them ? The examining of to meaning, will allow to work out some aspects of interactions between the conceptualisation activity and the constraints of scripting.

The revision of the verbal agreement is an activity requiring at first “to detect” an error or a risk of error, before operating possible modifications. Two procedures of detection are differentiated (Largy α Dédéyan, 2002) : an algorithmic novice procedure and an automatized expert procedure based on the treatment of cooccurrences between inflectional morphemes (e.g., case of two successive words respectively bent by -s and -nt). The first seems sensitive to semantic constraints, such as the plausibility between the local noun and the verb (Largy, Dédéyan α Hupet, 2004) ; by contrast, the second is influenced by factors of surface perceptive, such as the police of writing (i.e., bold, degraded, Dédéyan α Largy, submitted) of the marks of the local noun and the verb. To test the hypothesis according to which these factors are of visual nature, this research studies the impact of the visuo-spatial sketchpad (Baddeley, 1986, 1992, 2003) on the novice and expert detection. To do it, children, teenagers and adults have to detect verbal agreement errors within sentences “Noun1 Noun2 Verb” of which half contains a proximity concord (e.g., The dog of the neighbours arrive). A temporal constraint is imposed. This task is realized in isolated condition at first, then simultaneously in a secondary task implying the visuo-spatial sketchpad. The results show differentiated profiles according to the level of expertise. It indeed seems that the experts make more errors relative to the secondary task than the novices. The expert detection thus seems to lean on visual cues.

The aim of this paper is to show that procedural texts offer an interesting genre for studying revision processes in writing and for applying research results to help technical writers to revise their texts. Indeed, because such texts require their readers to follow procedures successfully, technical writers have to produce efficient documents. Research on revision generally shows that the efficiency of revision is related to the use of appropriate methods. Technical writers, however, are not always completely successful – perhaps because they are not always aware of some particular methods. Indeed, the pragmatic function of procedural documents makes it essential to revise them. Thus, a study of users' behavior can help reveal the efficiency – or inefficiency – of procedural documents. Such studies can be used to evaluate different versions of the text as they are revised. This paper aims to provide links between procedural texts and revision processes, as well as describing the problems usually met by technical writers when they are writing and revising such documents. It concludes with a number of suggestions for aiding revision.

Know-how is made of knowledge on the actions intervening in the accomplishment of a task. Expressed verbally, this knowledge is itself a task. Studies on problem solving let us to identify, on the one hand, the prerequisite knowledge needed to understand and learn how to accomplish a task, and, on the other hand, the task structure in which the knowledge is embedded. Thus, this approach allows to associate know-how with understanding, learning and with verbal production revision. We point out how two context-based formalism for representing knowledge and reasoning, namely contextual categorization and contextual graphs, can be used for simulating the revision of verbal production of the know-how. The procedural explanation, which can be analyzed in terms of exposition, categorization and implication on the object side to justify the organization of actions in a structure of context-aware goals, is a didactical competence that is not really studied although this competence would help to improve the writing of instructions, and more widely, the teaching of practical knowledge. Thus, we list nine components of the process of revising the verbal production of know-how.

Three studies evaluate rewritings by students from 8 to 12 years old who used a resource texts database. This paper stresses the importance of the semantic treatment in the processes of writing and rewriting, describes the rewriting assistance system, and introduces to some important results. The students who use the system rewrite more, add macrostructure propositions and produce original propositions rather than propositions borrowed from the resource texts ; the system helps the unskilled writers ; access to the resource texts by criteria is more helpful than free navigation ; the students who learned how to rewrite with the computer system succeed in better using the paper resource texts and transfer their skills to other text genres.

The ideas of the revision vary according to the field of research and the various points of view of the researcher. We propose doing an analysis of the various points of view on the revision in a situation where the reviser is on his own and in a situation of co-revision. Then we propose a review of the works on the technological assistances to the production and the revision of texts. Finally we suggest new prospects for research offered by the open-ended Internet environments and take into account the linguistic and cultural contexts in remote co-revision and co-construction of knowledge.