Children's Oral Language Research Articles

Assessing Story Comprehension in Preschool Children

Many of the foundational abilities that are necessary for learning to read emerge in preschool children's oral language in advance of formal literacy instruction. This is not only true of phonemic awareness skills but also true of oral language comprehension, particularly of stories. Thus, clinical evaluation of preschoolers' story comprehension abilities is an important part of a preliteracy assessment. Ensuring that the outcomes of these evaluations accurately reflect children's abilities and lead to optimal clinical decisions requires familiarity with the available tools, their task demands, and psychometric properties. To provide clinicians with information necessary for making evidence-based choices in their assessment of story comprehension, we review the development of story comprehension in young children with and without language impairment. We then describe the procedures, both traditional and novel, that have been used to measure early story comprehension, assessing strengths and limitations.

Maternal Contributions: Supporting Language Development in Young Children with Cochlear Implants

The principal goal of this study was to investigate the relationships between maternal contributions (e.g., involvement, self-efficacy, linguistic input) and receptive and expressive (oral and sign) language skills in young children with cochlear implants. Relationships between maternal contributions and children's language skills were investigated by using correlation and regression analyses. Thirty-two mothers (mean age = 36.0 yr) and their children (mean age = 4.8 yr) were videotaped during free play and storybook interactions. Mothers' and children's quantitative (MLU, number of word-types) and mothers' qualitative (facilitative language techniques) linguistic input were analyzed. Mothers completed a measurement tool specifically designed to quantify their sense of involvement and self-efficacy (Scale of Parental Involvement and Self-Efficacy). The Reynell Developmental Language Scales and data from videotaped transcription analyses were used to evaluate children's oral and sign language skills. Maternal involvement and self-efficacy relating to children's speech-language development were positively related to mothers' quantitative and qualitative linguistic input. After controlling for child's age, mothers' MLU and two facilitative language techniques (recast and open-ended question) were positively related to children's language skills. The performance of young implant users may vary in part because of their mothers' sense of involvement and self-efficacy, as well as the ways in which mothers interact with their children. Given this information, it would be fruitful for professionals working with these families to incorporate goals that enhance caregivers' involvement, self-efficacy, and linguistic input to better support language development in young children after cochlear implantation.

An Evaluation of the Discovery Time Programme.

This article describes the Discovery Time programme, a largely child-directed developmental programme, and discusses it in relation to the sociocultural approach to learning. It considers the effects of the programme on the development of children's oral language and cooperativesocial skills in a Year 1 classroom. Survey information gathered by the teacher indicated that the language and social skills of the children increased over a 10 week period. The review of the discovery time programme also considered information through interviews with key participants, observations of the programme in action and review of the child participants' stories and pictures. This additional information indicated that discovery time provided a positive learning environment and enjoyable experiences for the children, teacher and school community. The article concludes with suggestions for further developments of the programmewithin the school.

Drama Rhymes: An Instructional Strategy

The author shares activities for use in the primary classroom that require active participation with nursery rhymes through dramatization. The activities involve repeated readings, reading in context, and examining rhyming components, and help to develop young children's phonemic awareness and oral language skills.

Beyond phonological skills: broader language skills contribute to the development of reading

This paper reports a study that followed the development of reading skills in 72 children from the age of 8.5 to 13 years. Each child was administered tests of reading, oral language, phonological skills and nonverbal ability at time 1 and their performance on tests of reading comprehension, word recognition, nonword decoding and exception word reading was assessed at time 2. In addition to phonological skills, three measures of non‐phonological oral language tapping vocabulary knowledge and listening comprehension were unique concurrent predictors of both reading comprehension and word recognition at time 1. Importantly, all three measures of oral language skill also contributed unique variance to individual differences in reading comprehension, word recognition and exception word reading four and a half years later, even when the autoregressive effects of early reading skill were controlled. Moreover, the extent to which a child's word recognition departed from the level predicted from their decoding ability correlated with their oral language skills. These findings suggest that children's oral language proficiency, as well as their phonological skills, influences the course of reading development.

Helping Young Children with Special Needs Develop Vocabulary

Most early childhood (EC) programs include typi- mined the Distar Language instruction program (Engelcally developing children, children with disabilities, and/ mann & Osborn, 1976) to be successful for teaching or children considered “at risk.” Research indicates there decoding skills, but did not significantly improve comis a higher prevalence rate of language delays in pre- prehension because of limited vocabulary knowledge. school children with disabilities and those considered at More recently, Cunningham and Stanovich found that risk (Goldstein, 1994; Hart & Risley, 1995). The diver- vocabulary skills in Grade 1 predict more that 30% of sity of the EC classroom population ensures a wide range reading comprehension in Grade 11. It is reasonable to of knowledge and skill in the comprehension and use of assume that young children with disabilities and children oral language. This continuum of ability levels mandates considered at risk who experience language delays are the use of multilevel teaching strategies within the class- at a profound disadvantage. room curriculum. Quality education programs for young Although vocabulary is often emphasized in the aschildren, both in EC and early childhood special educa- sessment of young children, this emphasis is not mirtion (ECSE), utilize a curriculum that focuses on en- rored in the classroom in the form of direct purposeful hancing language development and emergent literacy instruction. In fact, in a study that identified the occurskills. Because early language development is correlated rence of various types of literacy events, Rowell (1998) with later academic and social success (Culbertson & found that only about one tenth of the teachers, in the Willis, 1993), language intervention is crucial for chil- 67 preschool classes observed worked in a purposeful dren in EC classrooms who enter with language defi- way on vocabulary. Several researchers have noted the ciencies. The curriculum needs to specifically address need for more systematic and planned curricula for voall areas of language including phonology (rules for cabulary teaching (Biemiller, 2001b; Chall, 1996). Edusounds), morphology (rules for words), syntax (rules for cators have primarily relied on children’s life experisentences), semantics (vocabulary/meaning), and prag- ences and, as the children get older, reading experiences matics (social rules) across many developmental levels. as the primary means for learning new vocabulary. In Vocabulary is one area of language that is empha- contrast, Biemiller (2003) recommends a strong teachersized in the assessment of young children. It is often directed vocabulary curriculum prior to Grade 2 in order used as part of the evaluation to determine readiness to to make a significant impact on reading and learning in learn and for early identification of developmental delay. the later grades. EC and ECSE preschool programs offer Research has shown that vocabulary knowledge is corre- a unique environment for this kind of intervention, but lated and predictive of later reading comprehension require teachers to target specific vocabulary. (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1997; Scarborough, 1998). Current recommended practice for young children Chall, Jacobs, and Baldwin (1990) found many children indicates a need to blend developmentally appropriate from working-class families had become competent read- practice (DAP) and individualized instruction (Bredeers by third grade, but experienced problems through kamp & Copple, 1997; Grisham-Brown, Pretti-Frontczac, Hemmeter, & Rigley, 2002; Horn, Lieber, Sandall, & Schwartz, 2001). This requires the teacher to look for

The Cross-Language Transfer of Phonological Skills of Hispanic Head Start Children

This article determines the interlanguage relationships between oral language skills and phonological awareness abilities in 100 Spanish-speaking Head Start children learning English. Children's oral language abilities, measured using the pre-Language Assessment Scale 2000, along with their phonological awareness, measured using the Phonological Sensitivity Test, were assessed in both English and Spanish. A hierarchical multiple regression was conducted in which the unique variance of oral proficiency in each language and phonological awareness in Spanish indicated an effect on performance for phonological awareness tasks in English, with Spanish phonological awareness and English oral proficiency accounting for the most variance. Results suggest strengthening the language and metalinguistic skills of these children in their first language as a tool for later acquiring English literacy skills.

Towards a model of technology and literacy development: Story listening systems

This article lays out a program of research designed to address one specific need of young children—to learn how to write—based on one specific ability of young children—the ability to tell stories. The model underlying this research program describes how non-screen-and-keyboard-based technologies that listen to children can be used to support their emergent literacy behaviors and have an effect on their subsequent writing skills. Four components comprise the model: the importance of emergent literacy behaviors, which are features of literate language that are demonstrated in children's oral language; the critical role played by a socially situated peer; the design of non-keyboard-based computational technologies; and the potential of information technologies that encourage construction rather than consumption. This article presents information about one kind of technology that fits the model—the story listening system ( SLS)—and describes a number of implemented SLS and an evaluation of their use by children.

Teacher–Child Conversation in the Preschool Classroom

This article explores conversations between preschool children and their teachers in the classroom environment. Teachers have an opportunity to engage students in cognitively challenging conversations at critical times during the day: book reading, playtime, and mealtimes. The article provides examples of the types of conversations preschool educators can model and facilitate in order to further develop a child's oral language and subsequent literacy skills during the school day.

Connecting Children's Stories to Children's Literature: Meeting Diversity Needs

Combining children's natural storytelling abilities with quality multicultural literature serves to enhance their language skills and students' appreciation of cultural differences. Narrative abilities—particularly stories—are a natural vehicle for building on children's oral language skills and develop literacy with print. If the stories have a multicultural focus, it is only natural that readers and participants will develop an appreciation of both cultural similarities and differences.

Social Relationships, Peer Collaboration and Children's Oral Language

This study examined the influence of peer collaboration and social context on children's use of literate language. Literate language is defined as a specific oral language register. It was hypothesised that friend, compared to non-friend dyads would evidence more literate language in the form of talk about cognitive and linguistic processes. Same gender dyads of 7- and 8-year-old children were observed during collaborative writing tasks in friend or non-friend groups, and measures of oral language were collected. The findings suggested that different peer relationships differentially effect children's oral language in the areas of conflicts, social regulation, and metacognitive and literate language. The data support the proposition that different sorts of peer relationships and instructional settings affect children's interactions and early literacy development. The results are discussed in terms of the role of social regulation in the context of peer collaboration.

Lasting Effects of Home Literacy on Reading Achievement in School

Specific effects of home literacy on the development of word decoding and reading comprehension from first through third grade were examined in an ethnically and social–economically heterogeneous sample of 69 Dutch children. Home environment pertained to children's opportunity for educational interactions, and parents' instructional and social–emotional quality during literate (joint book reading) and nonliterate (joint problem-solving) activities. Home environment was assessed before first grade; reading achievement at the end of first and third grade. At the end of first grade, oral language skills also were measured. Results revealed that parents' instructional and social–emotional quality had an effect on the development of reading comprehension, but not on word decoding. The effect was found for parental quality during both literate and nonliterate interactions. Finally, the home environmental effect was mediated by children's oral language skills in first grade, which lends support to a pragmatic oral language route to reading comprehension.

Utility of brief teacher rating scales to identify children with educational problems

The study aimed to determine the utility of teacher ratings of children's behaviour, oral language, and literacy skills in identifying children with educational problems, and to examine the relationship between behaviour, oral language, and literacy skills. Teacher ratings were obtained for a cohort of Year 2 pupils (N = 129, mean age = 7.3 years, SD =.33) from five schools in Western Australia, using three brief screening questionnaires. To determine the sensitivity and specificity of the screening instruments in identifying children with educational problems as determined by psychometric criteria, direct psychometric assessment of oral language, vocabulary, reading, and spelling was conducted for a subset of the children. Teacher ratings of language, literacy, and behaviour correlated significantly with the standardised test scores. The screening instruments for language and literacy had reasonable sensitivity (74%) and specificity (92%), but a fairly high rate of false negatives (26%) and relatively poor positive predictive power (.53) for identifying children with problems in language and/or literacy. The prevalence of marked behaviour problems in this Australian sample of school children (9.6%) was comparable to that found in previous studies. Brief teacher-based screening instruments appear to have the potential to provide an economical and effective approach for identifying children at risk for educational problems, but the current instruments lacked adequate precision. The marked overlap between educational and behavioural problems in young children has important implications for prevention, identification, and intervention policies.

Relationships, individual differences, and children's use of literate language

Research in children's oral language and early literacy learning currently stresses the facilitative role of social context. Social context in this literature is typically treated on a macro-level, e.g., mother-child interaction or peer interaction. We present a more differentiated model of peer influences on children's learning one oral language register, 'literate language'. Literate language, which predicts school-based literacy, is defined as talk about language and literacy. We suggest that children's temperament and their close relationships, in the form of friendships, play important roles in literate language learning. We present separate models for friends and nonfriends and posit that literate language is learned more effectively between friends because of the emotional tenor of this relationship. When they are with friends children, even those that might be considered 'difficult', disagree, resolve disagreements, then express emotions indicative of social understanding. Reflection upon emotion states, in turn, leads to literate language. The sample comprised 33 males and 23 females attending American kindergarten classes, with a mean age of 65 months. Dyads of same gender and race were observed 12 times across the school year during which time samples of oral language were taken. Measures of children reading and writing were also collected. The data support our model, and the friendship model accounting for more of the variance in literate language (R2 = .69) than did the nonfriend model (R2 = .43). Children with friends engage in the sort of conceptual conflict and resolutions which maximise use of literate language. This context seems particularly important for 'difficult' children. Future research should continue to examine the interface between individual and group levels variables.

The nature of peer interaction in the social context created by the use of word processors

This paper discusses a study designed to investigate the nature and quality of children's oral language interactions during the process of collaborative writing with the computer. The data collection was undertaken through two case studies conducted in the U.K. ( N = 8) and Finland ( N = 30) with primary-aged children. The data were collected through tape-recordings, transcripts and a system of analysis which classifies children's linguistic utterances according to functions. Observations and interviews were used to obtain information of the situational context in which children's talk occurred. The findings show that children's verbal interactions were highly task related, characterised by the exchange of information, questioning, judging, organising and composing. Exploratory and argumentational use of language was, however, found to be low and the general nature of peer interaction was rather procedural and context bound. The implications of these findings to theory and practise are discussed.

Maternal belief systems: Linchpin in the home reading process

A hypothetical model of the determinants and outcomes of reading aloud was tested using two samples of families of preschool-aged children and their parents. Study 1 involved 60 low-income families. Study 2 involved 56 predominantly working-class families. The majority of subjects in both samples were African American. Measures were taken of SES, maternal literacy, maternal beliefs about reading aloud, the frequency and quality of reading interactions with the child, children's interest in reading, and children's oral language skills. Demographic characteristics and maternal literacy were positively related to maternal reading beliefs. Beliefs were highly predictive of both the degree to which mothers exposed their children to joint book-reading and the quality of mothers' book-reading interactions. Maternal beliefs were also positively related to children's interest in books. An unexpected finding was that reading practices were not substantially associated with oral language skills. Results are discussed in terms of the need to better understand the role of belief systems in parent—child socialization processes.

Collaborative writing with computers and children's talk: A cross-cultural study

This article focuses on a study designed to investigate the nature of children's talk during the process of collaborative writing with the computer in the United Kingdom and Finland. By investigating children's oral language interactions in two countries, the aim was to obtain a broad understanding of ways in which primary-aged children socially construct writing while using computers. Children's talk in both countries was found to be highly task-related and to concern mostly composing, not ways in which to use the computer. The nature of the children's talk was, however, identified to be fairly procedural and context bound. Data suggest that the reasons for the findings are not associated with use of computers alone. Instead, ways in which children interact and write while using computers are embedded in wider sociocultural contexts of which children are a part.

Describing oral language opportunities and environments in head start and other preschool classrooms

This article describes the nature of children's oral language experiences in Head Start and in other preschools serving low-income children, and relates those experiences to broader features of the classrooms' programs. The data are drawn from multiple sources, including general demographic information, teacher interviews, and audiotapes of teachers' and children's spontaneous interaction that occurred throughout one morning in 61 individual classrooms. Drawing on a sociocognitive model of literacy development, we hypothesize that particular classroom circumstances (e.g. smallgroup size), pedagogical orientations (e.g. desire to foster early literacy development), and activity settings (e.g. small-group activities) will maximally facilitate the types of talk known to be predictive of later language and literacy development (e.g. pretending, cognitively challenging interactions). As hypothesized, correlational analyses revealed relationships between classroom circumstances and interactions, between pedagogical orientations and interactions, and between activity settings and interactions; the more educated teachers, the teachers whose pedagogical orientations strongly supported literacy or social development, and the teachers who reported spending more time in small group activities engaged in more cognitively challenging conversations with children. Implications of these findings are discussed and related to both practice and policy.

Using the newspaper to support children's emerging literacy

Young children's literacy development involves emerging knowledge, skills, and attitudes about both written and oral language. However, until relatively recent years, children's oral language development has received the lion's share of attention in most early childhood programs. What young children know about written language and their natural ability to learn about writing and reading have been underestimated and misinterpreted and so have received little developmentally appropriate support from early childhood program administrators, teachers, parents, and the public.

Young Children's Oral Language Production in Three Types of Play Centers

Abstract This observational study investigated the effects of three types of play centers—blocks, housekeeping and a changing thematic center—on the oral language production of 21 young children, 10 females and 11 males, ranging in age from 4.8 to 6.2 years. Language samples were collected by videotaping four groups of subjects in fifteen-minute play sessions per week for five weeks as the groups rotated through the three play centers. Three hundred minutes of language samples were examined for subjects' language fluency, number of communication units, mean length of utterance and vocabulary diversity. The findings indicated that: (a) The subjects' fluency, number of communication units and vocabulary diversity measures were significantly greater in the block center than in the housekeeping center; (b) the mean length of utterance measure of the subjects' language remained consistent across the three types of centers and (c) no significant difference was found between the language production and vocabular...