Language Development in Early Childhood: Quality of Teacher-Child Interaction and Children's Receptive Vocabulary Competency.

Ning Yang,Yi Huang,Jinjin Lu,Jiuqian Shi

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.649680

Abstract

High-quality teacher-child interactions in early learning environments have been regarded as a key contributor to children’s early language and cognitive development in international scholarships. Little is known, however, about the longitudinal effects of children’s receptive vocabularies in the Chinese context. In this study, we addressed the question of such longitudinal effects by examining the predictive effect of preschool teacher-child interaction quality on children’s subsequent receptive vocabulary development in 42 kindergartens in Guangdong Province China. The results in a nested design showed that except for the factor of Emotional Support, the other two factors (Classroom Management and Instructional Support) were positive predictors to children’s vocabulary competency from K2 (T1) to K3 (T2) at preschools. Findings contribute to the growing international literature on the critical role teacher-child interaction quality plays in children’s language and literacy learning and development. Implications for enhancing communication channels between early childhood (EC) educators and decision-makers, and the strategies of the improvement of language and literacy teachers’ professional development are also discussed.

Highlights

Vocabulary is critical for children to develop language, literacy, and communication in their early years
We selected the province for two main reasons: (1) The province holds the largest number of families with different socioeconomic statuses, and (2) it has broad urban-rural disparity due to the presence of many migrant workers and families
At T1, the mean emotional support score of 3.84 and classroom organization score of 4.82 were well within the range for medium quality, which suggests that children experienced moderate levels of emotional support and classroom organization

Summary

Introduction

Vocabulary is critical for children to develop language, literacy, and communication in their early years. Previous studies have shown that if children have high-quality preschool experiences, their learning and cognitive development will be promoted concurrently and longitudinally (Shonkoff and Phillips, 2000; Reynolds et al, 2011; Campbell et al, 2014; Yoshikawa et al, 2015) To date, these empirical studies have been dominantly undertaken in the United States and a number of developed countries in Europe In China, very few studies have focused on the impacts of teacher-child interaction quality on the development of children’s receptive vocabulary and communication longitudinally, in the case of left-behind children. When parents migrant to work in big cities (usually over 6 months), it is common that their children are left at home and taken care of by grandparents (Zhao et al, 2009)

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