School-Age Years and Beyond

all

there is substantial development and refinement of skills in ___ areas of language

products, process

language development shifts from focusing on the _______ of development to the _______ of development in the school-age years

school-age processes

differentiate school-age children from younger children:

1. shifting sources of language input

2. acquisition of metalinguistic competence

language input

8-10 years: children gain more _______ _____ from text

individualized

at 8-10, learning is more _________

reading

builds lexicon and has a role in developing phonological, semantic, and pragmatic aspects of oral language. allows children to review and think about the written words in front of them

Oral language

must develop both independently of written language and dependently with reading and writing development

going from oral to written

language development → reading and writing activities → further language development → classroom oral language experiences

Chall

developed stages of reading development, influences by Jean Piaget

prereading stage

oral langage, phonological and print awareness

initial reading/decoding

(K-1st grade)

• stage 1

• associating sounds with letters - phonics

• make many substitution errors

confirmation, fluency, and ungluing from print

(grades 2-3)

• stage 2

• confirm - gain confidence in their skills

• fluency - well paced, error-free, and efficient reading

• ungluing from print - reading becomes more automatic

• transition begins from learning to read to reading to learn

reading to learn the new - a first step

(grads 4-8/9)

• stage 3

stage 3a

(grades 4-6)

learn to read beyond egocentric purposes so they can learn about information about the world

stage 3b

(grades 7-8 or 9)

children can read on an adult level

multiple viewpoints

(14-18 years)

• stage 4

• can consider multiple viewpoints on an issue

• need background knowledge from stage 3

construction and reconstruction - a world view

(college, 18+)

• analyze, synthesize, predict to construct meaning from text

• make judgements about what to read, how much to read, and in how much detail

stage 4 example

There are different views on the matter. But one of the views seems to have the best evidence supporting it, and I would tend to go along with that view.

stage 3 example

Yes, I read it in a book. The author said it was true.

stage 5 example

I don’t know. One of the authors I read said it was true; the other said it was not. I think there may be no true answers on the subject.

acquisition of metalinguistic competence

the ability to think about and analyze language as an object of attention

phonological awareness

• goes with acquisition of metalinguistic competence

• phonological awareness → phonemic awareness

  • learning to read improves PA

    • sound blending

    • sound segmentation

    • sound manipulation

  • figurative language - children must recognize language as an arbitrary code

figurative language

children must recognize language as an arbitrary code

metaphor

• comparison saying that two objects or ideas are the same

• “He is a walking dictionary”

• “Life is a roller coaster”

• “Time is money”

• “That is music to my ears”

similes

• comparisons using like or as

• “Fits like a glove”

• “As clear as mud”

Hyperbole

• exaggerations/overstatements

• “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse”

• “…the shot heard round the world”

• “He’s got tons of money”

Idioms

• contain figurative as well as literal meaning

• “Drive someone up the wall”

• “I’ve got bigger fish to fry”

• “The cat’s out of the bag”

• “The bride got cold feet”

irony

• the opposite of what you expect to happen

• a fire station burning down

• saying “what lovely weather” during a thunderstorm

sarcasm

• specific person’s view of individual failure to meet expectations

• form of verbal irony used to mock, show irritation, or be humourous by saying the opposite of what is actually meant

• saying “oh, glad you could finally make it!” when someone is late

• “Oh, I’d love to work over the weekend!”

irony and sarcasm

• speaker’s intentions differ from the literal meaning of the words used

• children’s understanding of both is related to their theory of mind which continues to develop into adolescence

proverbs

• statements about beliefs/sharing wisdom

• “the early bird gets the worm”

• “don’t count your chickens before they hatch”

• “time is money”

• “better to be safe than sorry”

major achievements in language form

• phonological development

• morphological development

• complex syntax development

phonological development

increased phonological and phonemic awareness with morphophonemic development

morphophonemic development

• part of phonological development

• interaction between morphology and phonology

  • sound modifications

  • vowel shifting

  • stress and emphasis

sound modifications

when joining certain morphemes (e.g., sounds of plural -s in caps, bees, and glasses)

vowel shifting

when form class of a word changes when adding a derivational suffix (e.g., decide to decision, sane to sanity)

stress and emphasis

to distinguish phrases from compound words (e.g., green house vs. greenhouse, present vs. present

morphological development

associated with other language and literacy skills like receptive vocabulary, word-level reading, and spelling

→ derivational prefixes and suffixes

derivational prefix

changes the meaning of the word

→ unmet, irregular, disappear

derivational suffix

changes the word’s form class meaning, or both

→ encroach (verb) to encroachment (noun)

→ squish (verb) to squishy (adjective)

complex syntax development

• most important achievements in form during school-age

• complex syntax

• seems to be related to the complexity of their caregivers’ syntax

• needed for persuasive writing and narrative tasks

complex syntax

developmentally advanced grammatical structures that demonstrate a decontextualized language style

language content

• notable semantic development

• lexical development

• understanding of multiple meanings

• development of literate language

areas of notable semantic development

• lexical development

• understanding of multiple meanings

• understanding of lexical and sentential ambiguity

• development of literate language

lexical development

• by graduation from highschool, vocabulary is about 60,000 words

• school-age children learn through direct instruction, contextual abstraction, and morphological analysis

direct instruction

learning the meaning of a word from a more knowledgable source

contextual abstraction

using context clues in spoken and written language to determine meanings of words

morphological analysis

analyzing the lexical, inflectional, and derivational morphemes of words to infer their meanings

polysemous

words are ________, or have multiple meanings

lexical

words and phrases with multiple meanings

sentential

ambiguity within different components of sentences

development of literate language

language that is highly decontextualized - use language to reflect on the past and reason, predict, and plan for future

language use

• pragmatic development - children learn to use language for many reasons

important pragmatic developments

• functional flexibility

• conversational abilities

• narrative development

functional flexibility

• ability to use language for a variety of communicative purposes or functions

• use language to: compare and contrast, persuade, hypothesize, explain, classify, and predict

language use functions with significant development

expository discourse and persuasive discourse

expository discourse

language used to convey information

persuasive discourse

convince another listening or an audience to adopt a certain stance or take action

language use includes conversational abilities

1. topic maintenance

2. extend dialogues with increase in conversational turns

3. increased relevant and factual comments

4. smooth and effective transition from one topic to another

5. adjust speech style and content according to the listener’s feelings and thoights

6. become more proficient at understanding and using indirect requests

7. more adept at detecting conversational breakdowns and repairing them

8. around age 9, children begin to use more sophisticated strategies (e.g., providing additional background information, defining terms to repair breakdowns when they occur)

narative development

4 types of narratives:

1. recounts: telling a story about personal experiences or retelling a story that has been heard of read

2. accounts: spontaneous personal narratives

3. event casts: describe a situation as it happens

4. fictional stories: invented narratives

story grammar

• element of narratives

• refers to the components of a narrative as well as the rules to how these components are organized

language and gender

• classic studies revealed differences that are not as prominent today

• differences in vocabulary use and conversational style

• some research finds that context and social status impact children’s conversations more than gender differences

gender and conversational pragmatics

body posture, eye contact, topic maintenance

language and aging

• tip of the tongue phenomenon - inability to recall word

• older adults have more difficulty producing the spoken forms of familiar words

• older adults have more difficulty retrieving the spelling of familiar words

• older adults speak more slowly

• the ability to remember proper names declines with age

• older adults have more difficulty understanding others’ affective prosody - phonological components of speech that convey emotion

• older adults have more difficulties with higher-order language processes such as constructing sentence-level or message level meaning

types of evaluations

formative and summative

formative evaluation

• to inform potential language learning activities

• measure language development process

summative

• to discover the outcomes of language learning

• measures the products of language development

3 types of assessments

screenings, comprehensive evaluations, progress-monitoring assessments

screenings

identify those who need comprehensive evaluation

comprehensive evaluation

identify the presence of a language or learning disability

progress-monitoring assessments

document a child’s improvement and monitor efficacy of curriculum and interventions

standardized assessments

• Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation, Third Edition (GFTA-3)

• Test of Language Development--- Intermediate, Fourth Edition (TOLD-I:4)

• Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Fourth Edition (PPVT-4)

• Test of Word Knowledge (TOWK)

• Children’s Communication Checklist, Version 2 (CCC-2)

• Test of Pragmatic Language, Second Edition (TOPL-2)