Child Growth and Development, ELED 132

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Child Growth and Development, ELED 132

• Dr. Andrew Whitehead
• More information at
• www.esu.edu/andrew

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Trends in Language Development

• How Children Learn Word Meanings
• Fast mapping inferring a words general meaning
  after a single exposure
• Defining features characteristics that must be
  present in all instances of a concept

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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

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Trends in Language Development

• Syntactic Development making meaningful
  sentences from the words
• Some syntax appears in childrens earliest
  sentences
• Children learn general rules for word endings
  before they learn the exceptions
• Overgeneralizations gooder

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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

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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

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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?

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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 dont understand

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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

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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 childrens 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

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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

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Trends in Language Development

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

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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

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Trends in Language Development

• How Children Develop Speaking Skills
• Occurs through an interaction with others

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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