2.Checklist of objectives for Later Language Acquisition

Regarding MLU (mean length of utterances), be able to identify:

a) its primary function as a measure

b) how it might be problematic as a measure

• measures the ability to combine morphemes “productively” to estimate gramatical understanding

• Problems:

  • falls short on gauging how much kids really know

  • only measures production despite comprehension running ahead of production

Know and understand the “Sesame Street” evidence collected by Golinkoff and colleagues (1987) regarding the comprehension abilities of children, and understand how it demonstrates that children who produce only one-word utterances are capable of fully comprehending far more complex ones

• MLU babies ( as young as 17 months) were seated in front of 2 tv screens

  • Cookie Monster tickling Big Bird

  • Big Bird tickling cookie monster

• Babies then heard: “ Oh Look! Big Bird is tickling Cookie Monster! Find Big Bird tickling Cookie Monster ( and vice versa)

  • result: Babies reliably looked at the screen that depicted the sentence they heard, suggesting they understand word order.

Be familiar with the factors that may influence the order of acquisition of grammatical morphemes

• Frequency of use by parents

  • in a limited subset, morpheme frequency in parental speech correlates with age of acquisition in children

    • How frequently parents use a morpheme matters

• Complexity ( Brown)

  • Complexity matters

  • 2 types → semantic and syntactic

    • unable to tease semantic complexity apart from syntactic complexity

• Basically saying we cannot rule out frequency, syntactic complexity, or semantic complexity as factors

• Cant rule out all 3 we dont know what it a factor

Be able to identify a statement that best summarizes the results/conclusions of Berko’s “wug” study

• Pre school Kindergarten: correctly answer “wugs” to the problem by Berko

• Children tend to overregularize rules to irregular cases ( this is over applying ed to make something past tense)

  • runned vs ran

• Conclusion: Children are learning rule based grammatical morphemes

Be able to identify specific instances of and definitions of the following terms:

1. Overextension

2. overregulation

3. under-generalization

1. When children use a word in a broader way than an adult would

   1. ex: “horse” is used to refer to all four legged animals

2. “ ringed” instead of “rang”

   1. we are adding “ed” to make the word into past tense.

3. When children use a word in a more narrow way than an adult would

   1. Ex: “round” is used only to refer to only balls

Be able to apply findings from the so-called “U-Shaped Curve” to real-world examples of children learning morphological rules. What kinds of errors do children make, and when (not so much exact age, but in what order)? How does overregularization fit with this idea? How does the “rule and memory” model help explain the U-Shaped Curve?

• Rule and memory model: start off with memory → over apply rule → successfully learn when to use rules vs exceptions

• U Shaped curve:

  • Format : Form → rule → exception (EX: Went → goed → went )

• Curve explanation :

  • Children correctly say “talked and “went” as the process begins

  • Backslide/ learning the rule “ talk/ talked” ( adding ed for past tense)

  • End of process children master the rule, and the exception gets stored in their memory

Be able to apply findings from Bloom et al.’s (1976) study on the development of conversational skills to specific examples of children having conversations with their parents. Based on their research, what are older children (around 36 months) likely to do differently than younger children (around 20 months)?

• 19-23 months- utterances highly adjacent (69%, turn taking correctly) but those adjacent utterances not very contingent (21%, did not track with convo)

• 35-38 months: utterances slightly less adjacent (64%, turn took correctly) but those adjacent utterances now quite contingent (46%, more tracked with convo)

Be able to identify a statement that statements best summarizes the research on 4-year-olds’ ability to take addressee’s perspectives into account as they speak, according to Gelman (1973)

• Gelman (1973) found that children as young as 4 can adjust their utterances to the needs of their addressees: 

  • 4-year-olds asked to tell different partners   about toy

    • Adult partners

      • 2-year-olds

• Results:

  • With adults, used longer/more complex sentences

  • With children, used shorter/simpler sentences

• this study shows 4 yr olds are capable of using audience design.

• audience design: the ability to design your utterances for a particular addressee to match the level of what they know / where they are at

Be able to identify the specific type of metalinguistic skill that plays a significant factor in the acquisition of reading, as well as examples of what that skill allows people to do

• Metalinguistic awareness – explicit awareness of properties of language

  • Ex: give a word that rhymes with fish

  • Ex: take the first letter out of the word task

• Reading improved in preschool aged children when taught phonological awareness

Be familiar with the results and implications of the “mow-motorcycle” study of children’s phonological awareness.

• Only 10% of kindergarteners can identify “mow” vs “ motorcycle”.

  • This means that these kids can not use length of word heuristic.

• Main conclusion: phonological awareness is poor until the age of 6.

  • hence why kindergarteners struggle to read.

Understand the results and implications of Allington and Strange’s (1977) study of individual differences in reading strategies for sentences such as “The frog hopped oven the snow.”

• Claim: “the best readers are the ones who read every feature/ letter carefully rather than guessing”

• When given the “frog hopped oven the snow” there are 2 options

  • “Better” readers are more likely to correctly pronounce “oven: ( bottom up)

  • “Worse” readers are more likely to pronounce it as “over” ( top down)

• Implications: best readers rely on bottom up reading strategies,not top down.

Be familiar with the following terms, including a) which of them are synonyms for each other, and b) which of them are associated with the so-called “alphabetic principle” (awareness that letters correspond to individual sounds that can be combined to form words).

• bottom-up approach → phonic based instruction

• top-down approach → whole language/ whole word approach

• phonics-based instruction → synonym for bottom up, and is associated with alphabetic principle that sound combine to form words

• whole word/whole language approach → synonym for top down approach

• balanced literacy → _______

Be familiar enough with the research on Scottish children to identify statements about how that research lent support to this general approach to reading strategies

• Supports bottom up approach: which is the advantage of phonics.*

• The research on Scottish children by Johnston & Watson (2007) supports a bottom-up reading approach because it shows that synthetic phonics

  • teaches children to read by blending individual sounds (e.g., T–A–P–S), leads to very rapid reading gains and long-term advantages.

  • Children taught this way learned to read within months and continued to read and spell better years later.

    • This provides strong evidence that starting with phoneme–grapheme decoding is an effective foundation for reading.

Be able to identify a true statement concerning the general nature of the progress bilingual children make in learning two languages at once, especially concerning their abilities to keep the two languages separate from each other.

Early mixing :

• At first, bilingual children often mix the two languages (code-switching).

• This is especially common in the one-word and early two-word stages.

• They may have one word per object, and minimal awareness that the same object can have two labels (e.g., cat vs. gato).

Gradual differentiation:

• By around age 3, children start to reduce mixing as they learn translation equivalents.

• They still may not fully separate grammatical rules for each language.

Full separation develops later:

• By around age 4, children typically master two languages.

• They also develop metacognitive awareness—knowing which language to use, when, and with whom.

The two language systems become more distinct in both vocabulary and grammar.

Be able to identify definitions and examples of simultaneous, early sequential, and late sequential bilinguals

1. Simultaneous bilingual

2. Early sequential bilingual

3. Late sequential

1. Def: people who learn 2 languages at the same time, typically from birth or before the age of 3

2. Def: people who learn 2nd language after the first has been established but still early in childhood, typically ages 3-7

3. Def: people who learn 2nd language after early childhood usually after the age of 7 or even in adolescence or adulthood

Be able to identify examples of the costs and benefits of bilingualism Costs

• pros

  • Cognitive flexibility

    • Can multitask

  • Metalinguistic awareness

    • Tend to understand how language works more deeply

  • Delayed onset of dementia

  • Better executive function

  • Better working memory

• Costs of bilingualism

  • Smaller vocab in each language

  • Slower word retrieval

  • Language mixing or code switching