Setting I 94
The final report is not yet complete; reference here is made to UP£,1984,
personal notes taken and discussions had during my six-month field work
in 1985. The main results of the project may he summarized as follows:
- children before entering school have developed a full range of
language use. Aproximately 40% of all their utterances have a social
function, 37% a cognitive function ( descriptive:18%; analytic:12%;
projective:7% ) and 12% are questions;
- children have developed in their Ll cognitive functions of language
which are not expressed, used or developed at school for at least 2
years, their L2 restricting them to the use of less cognitively
complex functions;
- children's linguistic production at school consists mainly of chorus
replies repeating or confirming teachers' openings, while exchanges
involving cognitive use of language are very rare;
- at home in LI, instances of complex cognitive uses of language occur
mainly in conversations with peers (which constitute the great part of
all interaction) and in half of the cases refer to future, past or non-
present events; the majority (70%) are children's unsolicited
contributions to the on-going conversation and not result of direct
elicitation; they consist of explanations, reasons given or asked, and
predictions;
- cognitive demands made on children have a question form in one third
of the cases, and are posed proportionally more by adults than by
peers; children respond adequately to cognitive demands in 23% of the
cases, otherwise they do not reply (39%), reply inadequately (28%) or
with yes/по replies (10%).
The development and follow up of the project have been severely affected
by the combined effects of the drought and the war, that have disrupted
many development projects In Mozambique in recent years.