Production and written justification contexts of points by view by 10 to 13 years olds

This study investigates both qualitative and quantitative production of sen tences produced by 113 writers between 10 to 13 year of age for justifying points of views. Eight different production contexts were constructed from the modalities of three factors (familiarity with the topic, acceptance of the to be defended thesis and consensual opinion), such as they appear for example in sentences like "eating candies is good because..." or "going on a trip is not good, because...". The results clearly showed than from ten y ears of age children were able to justify whichever point of view and its o pposite by referring to specific information which are largely shared. Howe ver, the number and the nature of the arguments varied as a function of con texts. Children write more arguments when they have to defend a view which conforms a consensual opinion, whereas they diversify their arguments by su pporting points of views which do not conform a consensual perspective. The lack of practice with the activity constitutes in both cases a favorable c ondition. Within the framework of developing aids for school training and a rgumentative writing, our findings show that it is possible to use with non expert writers either contexts which favor quantitative production or cont exts which bring to a qualitative diversification of arguments.