Phonemic expansion is where the variety of sounds a child makes increases (for example when the child moves from the cooing stage to the babbling stage). Phonemic contraction(happens later) is where the number of phonemes decreases, this happens because the child retains the sounds of its native language but discards the ones it knows aren't needed.
2. How is turn-taking encouraged in early speech development? Why is it important?
Turn taking can be encouraged with the use of questions and tag questions, this is an important skill to acquire as it sets the basis for all successful conversations the child will have throughout life.
3. What is a phoneme and what is a grapheme?
Phoneme- smallest unit of sound
Grapheme- a letter of letters that spell out a sound
4. Which phonemes develop later than others? Whose research (‘Fis’ phenomenon) suggests it is articulation rather than not knowing the difference?
| Approximate age | Usually children will: |
| 18‐24 months | Use a limited number of sounds in their words – often these are p, b, t, d, m and w. Children will also often miss the ends off words at this stage. They can usually be understood about half of the time. |
| 2‐3 years | Use a wider range of speech sounds. However, many children will shorten
longer words, such as saying ‘nana’ instead of ‘banana’. They may also have
difficulty where lots of sounds happen together in a word, e.g. they may say
‘pider’ instead of 'spider.' They often have problems saying more difficult sounds like ‘sh’, ‘ch’, ‘th’ and ‘r.’ However, people that know them can mostly understand them. |
| 3‐4 years | Have difficulties with a small number of sounds – for example ‘r’, ‘w’, ‘l’, ‘f’, ‘th’, ‘sh’, ‘ch’ and ‘z’. |
| 4‐5 years | Use most sounds effectively. However, they may have some difficulties with more |
fis phenomenon (Berko & Brown) suggests that children can be aware of many different phonemes before they are able to produce them themselves.
5. What is a proto word?
Usually found at around 10-12 moths, words that are similar to – but not quite – actual words e.g.“baba”for bottle
6. What is a holophrase?
Single words that are used to represent a whole idea
7. What are the four categories of first words according to Katherine Nelson (1973)?
Naming things (N) e.g. dog, ball, mummy
Actions / events (A) e.g. give, put, sit
Personal / social (S) e.g. Hi, Yes, no
Modifying things (M) e.g. dirty, nice, this
8. What is positive reinforcement?
Correct utterances are positively reinforced when the child realises the communicative value of words. For example, when the child says ‘milk’and the mother will give her some as a result, the child will find this outcome rewarding, enhancing the child’s language development.
9. What is negative reinforcement?
Punishment, ignoring, denial of wants
10. Explain the following stages of children’s linguistic development according to Jean Aitchison:
a. Labelling – linking words to objects to which they refer, understanding labels
b. Packaging - exploring labels and where they can apply
c. Network-building – making connections between words
11. Explain the following stages of children’s linguistic development according to Piaget:
a. Sensorimotor – lasts until the child is around 2, emphasis on movement and physical reactions, play is based on figuring out how to perform basic motor activities, language skills are basically physical where the baby experiments what their mouth can do
b. Pre-operational – begins at around 2 and lasts until the child is 6 or 7. The child seems to talk constantly but much of what they say does not need to be said out loud – they show no awareness of the possibility that others can see what the child is doing
c. Concrete operational – begins at around age 7 and lasts up until the age of 11 or 12. At this stage the child is capable of using logic and solving problems rather than abstract ideas, language at this stage is used to refer to specific and concrete facts
d. Formal operational – begins at 11 or 12. At this stage the child can start to use abstract reason and to make a mental distinction between themselves and an idea they are considering. Children who have reached this stage can use language to express and debate abstract theoretical concepts such as those found in mathematics, etc.
12. What is Mean Length Utterance (MLU) and what can it tell us about a child’s language proficiency?
Mean length of utterance (or MLU) is a measure of linguistic productivity in children. It is traditionally calculated by collecting 100 utterances spoken by a child and dividing the number of morphemes by the number of utterances. A higher MLU is taken to indicate a higher level of language proficiency because as they mature the length of their utterances increases.
13. Define the following stages in terms of a child’s grammatical development:
a. One word/holophrastic
b. Two-word
c. Telegraphic
- Making meanings clearer in communication
- Utterances are similar to the style and construction of a telegram in that function words are left out but content words are retained
- Early in the stage, verb infections, auxiliary verbs, prepositions and determiners are all amitted
- These function words appear accurately in utterances towards the telegraphic stage
- Key developments take place in the construction of questions and pronouns
- Struggle with determiners – ‘a’ and ‘the’
d. Post-telegraphic – more grammatically complex combinations 36+
- Remaining function words are acquired and used appropriately. Child can:
- Combine clause structures by using co-ordinating conjunctions (and, but) and subordinating conjunctions (because and although) and to make complex and compound utterances
- Manipulate verb aspects more accurately e.g. using the passive tense
- Construct larger noun phrases
- Longer turn-taking
- Starts the conversation
- More similar to adult utterances
14. What three stages of negative formations did Ursula Bellugi discover in young children?
Stage 1: The child uses ‘no’ or ‘not’ at the beginning or end of a sentence ‘no I wear shoes’
Stage 2: Moves ‘no/not’ inside sentence ‘I no want it’
Stage 3: attaches the negative to auxiliary verbs ‘No I don’t want to go to nursery’
15. What does LAD stand for? Which theorist suggested we have a LAD? What is a LAD?
Language acquisition device – Noam Chomsky
Chomsky believes that children are born with an innate ability to learn language. He believed that every child has an LAD that encodes that major principles of language and its grammatical structure into the child’s brain. Children then only have to learn new vocabulary and apply it to the structures of the LAD to form sentences.
16. What is a virtuous error? Give examples.
syntactic errors made by young children in which a non-standard utterance reveals some understanding, though incomplete, of standard syntax (for example, saying 'runned' instead of 'ran' shows the child understands that 'ed' is often used to put a word into past tense) (overgeneralisation)
17. What are overextension and underextension? How do they contradict Skinner’s ideas?
Overextension – when a child uses one word to describe lots of things – no concept of differentiating e.g. 4 legged object = dog
Under extension -
18. What is Universal Grammar?
19. How are Bruner and Vygotski’s theories similar and different? Give examples and use terminology.
Both Jerome Bruner and Vygotsky stress the importance of social interaction and the importance of the caregiver. Vygotsky believes that the caregiver must use CDS e.g. frequent use of concrete nouns, simpler constructions and deixis where as Bruner highlights the difference between what a child can do without help and what he/she can do with help. (Zone of proximal development). Both Vygotsky and Bruner developed the idea of scaffolding - the strategies that caregivers provide for learners that they can then use independently.
20. How are Halliday and Dore’s categories similar and different?
21. What is egocentric speech?
22. Child-led discourse?
23. What are some useful features of CDS to discuss in an essay and why?
Phonology
- separate phrases more distinctly – can be seen by more pauses
- use higher and wider pitch range
lexis and semantics
- use of concrete nouns
- frequent use of child’s name and absence of pronouns
Grammar
- Simpler constructions
- Frequent use of imperatives
- High degree of repetition
Large number of one-word utterances
- Deixis used
- Repeated sentence frames
- Use more simple sentences
- Omission of past tense
Pragmatics
- Lots of gesture and warm body language
- Fewer utterances per turn
- Supportive language
24. What does recast/reformulation mean?
25. What does LASS stand for and whose theory is it?
26. Define the following theories and say who the theorist(s) are for each:
a. Nativist - Naom Chomsky
Chomksy believes that children are born with an inherited ability to learn any language. He believes that every child has a 'language acquisition device' or LAD which encodes the major principles of language and its grammatical structures into the child's brain. Children then only have to learn new vocabulary and apply the structures from the lad to form sentences. Chomsky points out that a child could not possibly learn a language through imitation alone because language spoken around them is highly irregular and sometimes ungrammatical.
b. Behaviourist - Skinners behaviourist theory Correct utterances are positively reinforced when the child realizes the communicative value of words and phrases. For example, when the child says ‘milk’ and the mother will smile and give her some as a result, the child will find this outcome rewarding, enhancing the child's language development. Skinner viewed babies as 'empty vessels' in which language had to be 'put into'. Skinner suggested that children learnt language through the environment and consequences of undesired responses (e.g being ignored) although Skinner said that language was learnt mostly by positive reinforcement. He also suggested tat babbling would not progress to speech unless the parent gave them praise
c. Social interactionist - Jerome Bruner developed interactionist theory - how language is acquired through interaction between the child and caregiver. Care giver must use child directed speech (CDS)
d. Cognitive - Jerome Bruner LASS The Language Acquisition Support System (LASS) .The LASS is the idea that caregivers support their children's linguistic development in social situations, by interacting and encouraging the child to respond (by pointing, asking questions).
Naom Chomsky
e. Critical period - Lennenberg's critical periodMost babies learn a language by a certain age if they are to learn to speak at all. A critical period is a fixed time period on which certain experiences can have a long lasting effect on development. It is a time of readiness for learning, after which, learning is difficult or impossible. Almost all children learn one or more languages during their early years, so it is difficult to determine whether there is a critical period for language development.
27. What are the main approaches to teaching children to read? What are the differences between top-down, bottom-up, and other approaches?
28. How might we relate Skinner’s ideas about reinforcement to literacy acquisition?
29. What cues do children use when reading?
30. List and note the key characteristics of Chall’s stages of reading development.
31. List and explain the key features of reading schemes. What are the arguments for and against reading schemes and a ‘synthetic phonics’ approach?
- 'Phonics' involves teaching letter-sound correspondences. Children are then taught to 'synthesise' and put these sounds together to create words. Teachers will start of with single letter sounds (e.g. s,a,t,p,i,n) and then move on to those which involve 2 letters (E.g. oi, ou and ai) and so on.
- “Learning the letter sounds is merely the first step. The really important bit is to teach the children what to do with them. How to blend them together for reading and how to listen for them in a word to spell it. Start simply with CVC words [consonant vowel consonant words, such as cat, hat, hop] and gradually introduce longer and more complex words.”
- Irregular words such as those with origins from another language may be hard for the child to learn and may need other strategies to be able to learn these.
* Contradicting approach NLS
- Dr Kevin Collins came up the the Primary National Strategy(NLS) for learning how to read. He said that children might use their phonic knowledge to 'get the first consonant' but they also need to use the context, maybe the picture and the evolving story.
- Reading scheme books will be given to children in reception at varying stages. Some chose to do this right away, some after basic phonics have been learnt.
- There will also usually be a reading diary designed for teachers to let parents identify any difficulties that their child might be having with reading.
- Different schools have different schemes, some may let the child switch books whenever they please and some have strict policies that only the teacher can switch books on a certain day.
32. List some quality children’s books and why they are valuable.
33. What are some of the key miscues a young reader makes and what fundamental ideas do they have to learn about reading that they often have difficulty with at first?
34. Why is reading so hard in English? Give examples using terminology.
