The Major Theories:
The behavioural approach: Watson and Skinner
The inate approach: Chomsky- Universal Grammar
The interactionist approach
The behavioural approach
Children learn primarily by coping the language they hear around them. They also begin to associate sounds with situations , eventually the child will begin to imitate some of the sounds.
Beliefs: Behaviourists claim that language is learnt through imitation and repetition.
The inate approach
When children are exposed to speech parts of the brain and they try and make sense of sounds and utterances (reinforcement has little effect).
Beliefs: The brain has the primary responsibility for language learning. Innatives believe that grammar is in our brains at birth and that we spend the rest of our lives rediscovering it. Connectionists believe that we pick up the grammar through connections and events after birth.
The interactionist approach
Is when the brain plays a part in trying to understand what's around them but it requires a social and linguistic environment, working with others speeds up the learning.
Piaget's developmentalist approach
A theory which suggests that ties the language learning to the physical growth of the body and the cognitive growth of the brain. Children can only correctly use language when they've experienced it e.g. cognstively aware of short, long, light, heavy.
Connections:
Language is learnt by making meaningful connections
Beliefs: Interactionists place emphasis in language learning on the social interactions as children grow. Developmentalists feel language is learnt as the brain becomes aware of the related concepts.
Bruner and Language:
-
Enactive Stage (0-1 years) : Knowledge is stored in the form of motor responses. Children need to have real first hand experiences to help their thought process to develop
- Iconic Stage (1-6 years) : Knowledge is stored primarily in the form of visual images, children need to be reminded of their prior experiences through illustrations, diagrams in books.
- Symbolic Stage (7 onwards) : Knowledge is stored primarily as words, symbols and codes, helping to understand arbitrary ideas (beauty)
McREL: The Five Stages of Second Language Acquisition
- Stage 1- Preproduction: Minimal comprehension, does not verbalise, nods and points
- Stage 2 - Early production: Limited comprehension, one or two word response, key words, present tense
- Stage 3 - Speech Emergence: Good comprehension, simple sentences, grammatical errors, frequent misunderstood colloquialisms
- Stage 4 - Intermediate Fluency: Excellent comprehension, few grammatical errors
- Stage 5 - Advanced Fluency: Near native level of speech
Spelling
1960-70
Frank Smith said that as children learn to talk by talking they learn to read by reading. He said that reading should not be broken down into component parts and children should not be presented with contrived or over simplified texts.
The reader has 2 basic needs:
- The availability of interesting material that makes sense to the reader.
- An understanding and more experienced reader as a guide.
Psycholinguists explained that readers draw upon the following cue systems when making sense of texts:
- Semantic cues – using knowledge and experience of stories to predict events, phrases and words.
- Syntactic cues – drawing on knowledge and experience of patterns in oral and written language to predict text.
- Grapho-phonic cues – using knowledge and experience of relationships between sounds and symbols to read particular words.
1980s
Growing emphasis on home-school links, children’s knowledge of literacy before schooling and contributions made by all parents.Ÿ
A research programme in Bristol found clear evidence that listening to stories was one of the most significant pre-school experiences associated with children’s development as readers and writers.
When an adult reads to a child it is normal for the child to ask questions and make comments about the pictures, the print and the nature of the text itself. Through this talk children come to know more about what is involved in becoming a reader.
Popular texts tend to share:
- a strong story
- a lively, rhythmical text
- powerful, imaginative content
- memorable language
- interesting illustrations that complement the text
- humour
- language that is not contrived or unnatural
- As well as published texts children’s own texts play a powerful role in developing reading ability. These texts are often made into books and become a valuable part of the classroom’s reading resources.
Reading aloud
A child who is read to frequently builds up a repertoire of known texts which will be returned to again and again. On each occasion the child plays a more active role in the reading, predicting and re-enacting of the text. This familiarisation helps the child develop a growing awareness of what is involved in becoming a reader.
Silent reading
Usually during the infant stage the child moves from reading aloud to reading silently. In the initial stages the child sub-vocalises the words, reading at the same pace as if s/he were reading aloud. With experience the words become ‘thoughts in the head’ and the rate of reading increases.
Phonics
The phonics approach to learning to read is now very popular. It involves teaching children the relationship between letters and sounds, so that they can learn the sounds for individual letters and then blend the sounds together to make the word they see on the page.
We already know that there is more to reading than this straightforward activity. Nevertheless, it is interesting to look in more detail at what is taught in phonics programmes, as letter-sound correspondences are not always as simple as c-a-t in English.
Other Literary Techniques that help young readers
Fiction for young writers will often use tried and tested techniques such as alliteration to interest a new reader and help them remember the sounds associated with certain letters. These include:
- Alliteration.
- Pre-modification.
- Repeated grammatical structures.
- Assonance.
- Moral lines.
- Rhythm.
- ŸFamiliar discourse patterns.
Methods- actually learning how to read
Although you've never seen the word before, most of all you will be able to guess a pronunciation for
smidge. How? There are two principal methods by which a child learns to read. One is the Whole Word approach where a child is taught to recognise the total shape of the word. This method might make use of pictures and labels. The other is the phonic method where a child learns the sound of individual letters and runs them together to form a word, such as m-a-t. What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of both?
Readability
One important aspect of studying children's literature, and for writing for children yourselves, is the concept of readability. Readability is how easy it is to read. The frameworks allow us to be a bit more specific. What might you consider when looking at children's writing? Complete the table.
A framework for analysing children's reading books
| Graphology |
- Page layout.
- Lineation.
- Pictures.
- font(s) and size of letters.
|
| Lexis and Semantics |
- Length of words and number of syllables.
- Types of words and semantic fields.
- Sounds of words e.g. onomatopoeia, rhyme.
- Concrete/abstract nouns.
- Repetition.
- Ease of recognition (sound-spelling match).
- How context could help with more difficult words.
|
| Grammar / Syntax |
- Sentence type (simple, compound, complex.
- Sentence length.
- Position of subject and verb in sentence.
- Use of active or passive voice.
- Verb tense.
- Modification e.g. adjectives, adverbs.
- Pronouns used after subject (or object) has been clearly established.
- Lineation in relation to grammatical units.
|
| Cohesion |
- Careful structuring of sentences to make the text cohesive.
- Repetition (of words and parts of sentences).
- Pronouns used after referent well established.
|
| Influences from everyday speech |
- Face to face interactions.
- Familiar scenarios.
- Use of direct speech.
- Informal register.
- Repetition.
|
| Features borrowed from the oral tradition of story-telling |
- Alliteration (big, bad wolf).
- Repeated epithet (Little Red Riding Hood).
- Parallel sentence structures.
- Rhythmic language.
|
Trends in Phonological Development
It is difficult to be precise about later phonological development and the way in which vowels and consonants are acquired varies from child to child. When a sound has been mastered, it maybe used only in the pronunciation of certain words and may be missing or pronounced incorrectly in others. Researchers have identified certain trends in phonological development and these are listed below:
- Command of all the vowels is achieved before all of the consonants
- By the age of two and a half the average child has mastered all of the vowels and around two thirds of the consonants
- At four the child is likely to be having difficulty with only a few consonants
- The child may be six or seven before confidence in using all vowels and consonants has been acquired
- Consonants are first used correctly at the beginning of words but consonants at the end of words are more difficult for example ‘p’ and ‘b’’ sounds in ‘push’ and ‘bush’ will be easier to pronounce than ‘rip’ and ‘rib’.
- In general, sounds that occur frequently in a large number of words will be acquired before sounds that occur less frequently
- To make words easier to say children simplify their pronunciation in certain ways
Ways of Simplification
Deletion:
Children will often simplify pronunciation by deleting certain sounds:
- Final consonants can be dropped eg) the ‘t’ sound in ‘hat’ and ‘cat’
- Unstressed syllables are often deleted eg) ‘banana’ becomes ‘nana’
- Consonant clusters are reduced eg) ‘snake’ becomes ‘nake’ , ‘sleep’ becomes ‘seep’
Substitution
Another form of simplification involves substituting harder sounds with easier ones.
- R (as in rock or story) becomes w
- Th (as in there, that or thumb) becomes d, n or f
- T (as in toe) becomes d
- P (as in pig) becomes b
Reduplication of sounds is another common phenomenon. This occurs when different sounds in a word are pronounced the same way such as ‘dog’ becoming ‘gog
Undertanding
Berko and Brown (1960) describe how a child referred to a plastic fish as his ‘
fis’. When an adult asked ‘is that your
fis?’ he replied ‘no, my
fis.’ When he was told ‘that is your
fish’ he replied ‘yes, my
fis.’ Another child confused card/cart and jug/duck in his speech, but when shown pictures of the items, could correctly identify them. This proves that understanding may develop faster than the ability to pronounce things.
Grammatical development:
One word stage / Holophrastic stage
The average child is about a year old when it speaks its first words. Roughly between 12 and 18 months is begins to speak in single word utterances such as ‘milk’ mummy’ and so on. This is known as the
ONE WORD STAGE. Occasionally more than one work may appear to be involved but this is because the child has learned the group of words as a single unit and thinks it is all one word. For example: ‘Allgone’.
In many situations the words simply serve a naming function, however, sometimes they convey more complex messages. These words are called
HOLOPHRASES. For example, the word ‘juice’ might mean ‘
I’ve finished my juice’ or ‘
I want more juice’, therefore the single word is taking the place of a more complex grammatical construction that the child hasn’t learned yet.
Two word stage
Two word sentences usually appear when the child is around 18 months old. Usually, the two words are in a grammatically correct sequence such as:
- Subject + verb - Jenny sleep (Jenny is sleeping)
- Verb + object Suzy juice (Suzy is drinking juices)
- Subject + complement Daddy busy (daddy is busy)
Also, when a child tries to repeat what an adult has said, it will miss out part of the sentence, but what is retained is usually grammatically correct:
ADULT: Look Charlie, Ben’s playing in the garden
CHILD: Play garden
This example shows how children in this stage focus on key words. Words that convey less information such as ‘in’ or ‘the’ for example, are missed out.
Confusion as to what a child actually means during the two-word stage can arise because children don’t know tenses or plurals yet. Also, depending on the
CONTEXT of the utterance it might have more than one meaning. Take the following example from Bloom (1973):
| WHAT WAS SAID | ACTION | POSSIBLE MEANING |
| Mummy sock | Child picks up sock | This is mummy’s sock |
| Mummy sock | Mother puts sock on child | Mummy’s putting my sock on |
The Telegraphic Stage
From the age of about 2, children begin producing three and four word utterances. Some will be grammatically complete such as ‘Amy likes tea’ or ‘Mummy sleeps upstairs’ but others will have essential grammatical elements missing such as ‘Daddy home now’ or ‘Laura broke plate’. These utterances are similar to some of those used in the two-word stage – they can often make sense, but key elements are missing such as:
- Articles – ‘a’ ‘the’
- Auxiliary verbs – ‘is’ ‘has’
- Prepositions- ‘to’ ‘on’ ‘for’
- Conjunctions – ‘but’ ‘because’
Progress during this stage is rapid, and by the age of 5, children have usually mastered sentences containing more than one clause, conjunctions and ‘ing’ ‘ed’ or ‘s’ endings to words and verbs. These are known as
inflectional affixes.
Acquistion of Inflections
Research indicates there is a predictable pattern in the acquisition of inflectional affixes. These are word endings such as –ed and –ing. Functional words such as articles like ‘a’ and ‘the’ and also auxiliary verbs seem to be acquired in a regular order.
Brown (1973) studied children’s language development between the ages of 20 months and 36 months and found the sequence shown below occurred regularly. The features are also listed in the order in which they were acquired:
1) –ing
2) plural ‘-s’
3) possessive ‘-s’
4) the, a
5) past tense –ed
6) third person singular verb ending – s (eg): he sings
7) auxiliary verb ‘be’ (eg): I am dancing
Cruttenden (1979) divided the acquisition of inflections into the following three stages:
1) In the first stage, children memorise words on an individual basis
2) In the second stage they show an awareness of the general rules of inflections. They observe that past tense forms usually end in –ed so instead of ‘ran’ they say ‘runned’. This kind of error is known as Overgeneralisation.
3) In the third stage, correct inflections are used
Understanding Grammatical Rules
Children produce accurate grammatical constructions from an early age, and researchers have tried to determine if they have learned this themselves or have copied adult speech. A famous experiment was carried out by Jean Berko (1958) who showed children pictures of fictitious creatures he called ‘Wugs’. At first, the child was shown a picture of one creature and told ‘this is a Wug’. Then, they were shown a picture of two Wugs, and the children were asked to complete the sentence ‘Now there are two…’. Children aged 3 and 4 replied ‘Wugs’. As they could never have heard this word before, it because clear that they were applying the rule that plural end in ‘-s’/ However, children between the ages of 2 and a half and 5 often
OVERGENERALISE’ with plurals, so we hear things like ’sheeps’ and mouses’.
Asking Questions
Research suggests this happens in three stages:
1) Relying on intonation in the two-word stage eg: daddy home? Said with a rising tone
2) During their second year children acquire question words such as ‘what’ and ‘where’ resulting in questions such as ‘where daddy gone?’ They can’t yet use auxiliary verbs such as ‘has’
3) In their third year, children can use auxiliary verbs and learn to say ‘is Joe here?’ however, they can’t always use wh-words correctly yet and might say things like ‘why Joe isn’t here?’
Negatives
This also happens in three stages:
1) Words ‘no’ and ‘not’ are used in front of other expressions eg) no want
2) During the third year ‘don’t’ and ‘can’t are used eg) I don’t want it
3) In the third stage more negative forms are acquired such as ‘didn’t’ and ‘isn’t’ and negative constructions are used more accurately.
Pragmatic development: Michael Halliday’s Language functions
| FUNCTION | WHAT IT IS | WHAT IT’S USED FOR |
INSTRUMENTAL | Language used to fulfil a speaker’s need | Directly concerned with obtaining food, drink comfort etc . eg ‘I want’ |
REGULATORY | Used to influence the behaviour of others | Persuading / commanding / requesting other people do as you want ‘daddy push’ (child on swing) |
INTERACTIONAL | Used to develop social relationships and ease interaction | The Phatic dimension of talk eg ‘hello’ |
PERSONAL | Used to express personal preferences / the speaker’s identity | Sometimes referred to the ‘here I am!’ function – conveys attitudes, expresses feelings |
| INFORMATIVE | Used to communicate information | Relaying or requesting information eg ‘I got a new doll |
HEURISTIC | Used to learn and explore the environment | Using language to learn – this may be questions or answers or the kind of running commentary that accompanies child’s play |
IMAGINATIVE | used to explore the imagination | May also accompany play as children create imaginary worlds / may arise from story telling. Also jokes, songs etc |
