Child Growth and Development, ELED 132

1. Child Growth and Development, ELED 132 Dr. Andrew Whitehead More information at: www.esu.edu/~andrew

2. Theoretical Perspectives of Language Development • All children need to know • Phonology – how words and sounds are produced • Semantics – what words mean • Syntax – how words are combined into understandable words and phrases • Pragmatics – how to engage in effective and socially acceptable communications with others • Early Theories: Modeling and Reinforcement • A child imitates the language of others

3. Theoretical Perspectives of Language Development • Nativism – • We are born with the capacity to learn language • Chomsky – language acquisition device • Biologically built-in mechanism hypothesized to facilitate language learning • Universal grammar – • A set of parameters that allows for some grammatical structures, but excludes other possibilities

4. Theoretical Perspectives of Language Development • Nativism • Babbling is a universal phenomenon in child development • Babbling – speechless sounds • Children from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds tend to reach milestones in language development at similar ages • Language disabilities often run in families • Certain areas of the brain appear to specialize in language functions • There appear to be sensitive periods in some aspects of language development

5. Theoretical Perspectives of Language Development • Information Processing Theory • Changes in cognitive processes affect language • Attention, working memory, organized knowledge base • Language involves hypothesis testing, reasoning, and construction of a language system • Semantic bootstrapping – using knowledge of word meaning to derive knowledge about syntactic categories

6. Theoretical Perspectives of Language Development • Sociocultural Theory • Interactions with caregivers play a significant role in semantic development • Intersubjectivity is an important element in adult-child conversations • Intersubjectivity – shared understanding

7. Theoretical Perspectives of Language Development • Functionalism – language serves a useful function • Children learn language because it makes them more effective within their social group • The development of language is closely related to development in other domains

8. Theoretical Perspectives of Language Development • Critiquing Theories of Language Development • Which comes first, language comprehension or language production? • Receptive language – what one hears or reads • Expressive language – ability to communicate • What role does infant-directed speech play in language development? • Short, simple, rhythmic speech

9. Trends in Language Development • Semantic Development • Lexicon – the words one knows in a particular language • Children initially focus on lexical words; grammatical words come a bit later • Over time, children continue to refine their understandings of lexical words • Undergeneralization – overly restricted meaning of word • Overgeneralization – too broad of a meaning for a word • Children have difficulty with the function of words throughout the elementary and middle school years • Understanding of abstract words emerges later than understanding of concrete words

10. Trends in Language Development • How Children Learn Word Meanings • Fast mapping – inferring a word’s general meaning after a single exposure • Defining features – characteristics that must be present in all instances of a concept

11. Trends in Language Development • Fostering Semantic Development - strategies • Talk regularly to, with, and around infants and toddlers • Give definitions • Provide examples and nonexamples • Give feedback when students use words incorrectly • Encourage students to read as much as possible

12. Trends in Language Development • Syntactic Development – making meaningful sentences from the words • Some syntax appears in children’s earliest sentences • Children learn general rules for word endings before they learn the exceptions • Overgeneralizations – “gooder”

13. Trends in Language Development • Syntactic Development – making meaningful sentences from the words • Knowledge of syntactic rules continues to develop at the secondary level • Multilingual children readily distinguish among the syntactic structures used in different languages

14. Trends in Language Development • Syntactic Development – making meaningful sentences from the words • Fostering Syntactic Development • Teach irregular forms of verbs and comparative adjectives • Describe various sentence structures and give students considerable practice in their use • Provide ample opportunities for students to express their ideas in a relatively “formal” way, both orally and on paper

15. Trends in Language Development • Development of Listening Skills • In the first year, infants learn to focus primarily on sounds important in their native language • Phonemes – basic element of the spoken word • Young children rely more heavily on context clues than older children do • More cows or more black horses?

16. Trends in Language Development • Development of Listening Skills • Young children have an overly simplistic view of what “good listening” is • Elementary school children do not always know what they should do when they don’t understand

17. Trends in Language Development • Development of Listening Skills • Older children and adolescents become increasingly able to find multiple meanings in messages • Figurative speech – speech that communicates meaning beyond a literal interpretation of its words

18. Trends in Language Development • Development of Listening Skills • Cognitive Factors Influencing the Development of Listening Comprehension • Students schemes, scripts and other knowledge help • Promoting Listening Comprehension • Take children’s semantic and syntactic development in account when you speak, and check frequently to be sure that the children understand • Adjust the length of verbal presentations to the attention span of the age group, and avoid information overload • Encourage critical listening

19. Trends in Language Development • Development of Speaking Skills • In the first year of life, children becoming increasingly adept at making speech sounds and increasingly language-specific in their vocalizations

20. Trends in Language Development • Development of Speaking Skills • Pronunciation continues to develop through the early elementary years • Pronunciation problems are not uncommon • Synthesis, Synthesize

21. Trends in Language Development • Development of Speaking Skills • Over time, children become more skillful at narratives • Narrative – a sequence of events, either real or fictional, that are logically interconnected • Creative and figurative language emerge during the elementary years and continue into adolescence • Adolescents sometimes use their own teen “dialect” in conversing with one another

22. Trends in Language Development • How Children Develop Speaking Skills • Occurs through an interaction with others

23. Trends in Language Development • Promoting Speaking Skills • Regularly engage infants in “conversation” • Let students know when something they say is difficult to understand • Ask students to tell stories • Encourage creativity in oral language • Jokes, poems, raps – fun stuff

24. Trends in Language Development • Development of Pragmatics • Social and culturally specific conventions that govern appropriate verbal interaction • Cultural Differences in Sociolinguistic Behaviors • Being silent – Brazilians and Peruvians greet each other with silence • Interacting with adults • In some cultures children talk only when addressed by adults • Making eye contact • In some African American, Hispanic and Native American cultures, this is disrespectful

25. Trends in Language Development • Development of Pragmatics • Cultural Differences in Sociolinguistic Behaviors • Maintaining personal space • Responding to questions • IRE Cycle – Initiate, Respond, Evaluate • Answering different kinds of questions • Waiting and interrupting • Wait time – how long a teacher pauses before saying something after a question

26. Trends in Language Development • Development of Sociolinguistic Behaviors • How Sociolinguistic Behaviors Develop • Culturally transmitted, possibly has biological roots • Taking Sociolinguistic Differences into Account in the Classroom • Avoid “culture shock”

27. Development of a Second Language • The Timing of Second-Language Learning • The earlier the better • Bilingualism – knowing and speaking two languages fluently • Approaches to Teaching a Second Language • Immersion – hearing and speaking almost exclusively the second language • Bilingual education – learning lessons in the native language while learning the other language at the same time

28. Exceptionalities in Language Development • Speech and Communications Disorders • Working with Children Who Have Speech and Communications Disorders • Encourage regular oral communication • Listen patiently • Ask for clarification • Provide guidance about how to converse appropriately with others