Lled 556 2010-3-oral

LLED 556 #3

Oral and Written Language

Why oral language is important

★strong relationship to literacy learning, school achievement (“4th Grade Slump”), and success beyond school

★preschool oral language abilities predict reading three to five years later

★In particular: → expressive vocabulary, and → specific school-based language practices

(oral and written genres / Discourses)

★Expressive vocabulary is a stronger predictor of reading than phonemic awareness (only related to single-word reading)

★Semantic skills (meaning vocabulary) predict passage comprehension

★Phonemic awareness appears to be a side effect of more general language abilities

Oral Vocabulary Gap Widens

At Kindergarten entry

• advanced children (75th percentile) are about a "year" ahead of average children

• delayed children (25th percentile) are about a year behind

At Grade 3 entry

• advanced children’s comprehension is equivalent to that of average children in grade 4

• slower-progressing children are similar to grade 2 children or younger

Concerns

★Current school practices typically have little effect on oral language development during the primary years

★Children who enter grade 4 with lower vocabulary show increasing problems with reading comprehension, even if they have good decoding/word identification skills

★To increase children’s ability to profit from education, we need to enrich their oral language development during the early years of schooling (Biemiller, 2003)

Yet, the correlation between language abilities and success in learning to read hides an important reality:

★Most children (even poor children) enter school with large vocabularies, complex grammar, and deep understandings of experiences and stories.

★ “It has been decades since anyone believed that poor and minority children entered school with 'no language’”(Labov, 1972; Gee, 1996, 2001).

The critical difference:

Children who fail in school do not lack not general language abilities, but rather,

specific verbal abilities tied to specific school-based practices and school-based genres of oral and written language.

Children whose vocabularies are larger in ways that enhance their early school success:

know, and especially can use, more words tied to the specific forms of language that school-based practices use.

Oral Language: Key Ideas

★Meaning-making system (signs, symbols, semiotics)

★Main tool for communication, upon which others are built

★Related to literacy, other forms of representation, other symbol systems

★Related to action, thinking and knowledge-building

Language as Social Practices

★ In the “real world” language is contextualized, integrated with human activities rather than “apart”

★People use language for specific purposes - to get things done

★ Language practices vary across cultures★Within cultures/societies, language varies

with different contexts and activities

Language learning is:★Biological / Physical - capability

for oral language★Cognitive & Affective

→ capacity is “hard wired” in humans

→ learned through use→ active engagement→ experimentation & play→ successive approximations

★Social

Language mediates thought and action (Vygotsky)

The child begins to master his/her environment with the use of speech, → which produces new relations with

the environment→ speech not only accompanies a

specific activity, but also plays a specific role - facilitating the attainment of the goal, and guiding the child’s behaviour.

★For young children talking to self “out loud” enables problem-solving

★ Internalization of social speech, at about age 7, becomes private or inner speech, which then precedes action (planning).→ “internal dialogue” (Lindfors, 1999)

Contributions of the Social World

Cultural Resources★ language system (vocabulary, syntax, alphabet)★ genres - typical ways of using language - oral and

written★ texts of various kinds (print, multimodal)★ participation structures (discourses; Discourses)★ children learn their primary Discourses within the

family

Immersion (language environment)Opportunities for social interaction

modelling and demonstration of oral language

★ forms and purposes

★ social practices, participation structures→ contextualized→ integrated within purposeful activity→ shared attention→ collaborative→ dialogic - built on others’ words→ transactional - meaning created in the interaction

Social Interaction (adults and other children)

Scaffolding by more advanced language users

★Focus on meaning and purpose★Acceptance of approximation★Feedback★Contingent response★Support★Extension and elaboration (stretching)

(Joan Tough, Gordon Wells)

What does not work well in promoting oral language?

★Too much teacher talk (e.g., IRE, whole class instruction, ability grouping)

★Mostly-quiet classrooms★Isolated vocabulary instruction★Vocabulary worksheets, etc.★Taking time from content area

curriculum to spend on language arts

Fostering Oral Language

★Broadly speaking, language can only "grow" through interaction with people and texts that introduce new vocabulary, concepts, and language structures (Biemiller, 2003).→ “texts that stretch”

★Much language growth comes from non-print sources (parents, peers, teacher explanations, class discussions, television, etc.)→ “wrap language in and around experience”

Enriched Language Environments

Enhanced verbal abilities result from family, community, and school language environments in which children: ★interact intensively with adults and more

advanced peers and ★experience cognitively challenging talk and

texts → on sustained topics, and → in a variety of oral and written genres

Contributions of Schooling

★Build on children’s existing language (vocabulary, primary Discourses)

★Acknowledge cultural and linguistic differences in children’s backgrounds

★Provide children with rich language resources and experiences for learning across the curriculum

★Facilitate children’s capacity to use language

✓ for communication and social interaction

✓ as a tool for thinking and learning✓ secondary Discourses and genres

needed for success in school and beyond