Una clasificación de las inferencias pragmáticas orientada a la didáctica

Abstract

Nowadays it is accepted that the ability to make inferences is essential to reading comprehension. Pragmatic inferences are classified according to various criteria, none of these taxonomies is commonly accepted and they have been hardly used in education. The aim of this paper is to propose an inference taxonomy with the following characteristics: it must be simple, easy to understand and useful for the classroom. Without a suitable taxonomy there is a risk that teachers do not take into account, when assessing or planning classroom activities, all types of inferences that students should use for a good understanding. The taxonomy was made from the following principle: inferences provide information that does not appear explicitly in the text, so you can ask questions about this information. From this principle it is proposed the existence of five types of inferences that respond to five types of questions. The five main questions are: "what or who is the text alluding to?", "what is the relationship between ... and ...?", "what can be predicted knowing that ...?", "what else can you say about this? "and" what does it all mean? ". According to a review of the literature on inference making the proposed taxonomy is compatible with previous ones, also with those which are focused on teaching. There are several experimental studies showing that children and adolescents perform the proposed five kinds of inferences when they understand texts. Despite these data, the proposed taxonomy is tentative and should be used with caution because it lacks empirical support.