Child Language Acquisition

The book we read for our CLA class has some wonderful material in it for having a mainstream classroom that accommodates to all children. Speech and language is a huge part of the classroom and one of the main roles of a teacher is to bring language to students lives. Here are the questions we answered!

Chapter 1

1. Explain the importance of decoding in the development of literacy

In this chapter, it states that an essential skills to succeeding in reading is the ability to decode. A child can do this by sounding words they are struggling with using context words, as well as using the alphabet in order to understand what the word is. Being able to decode plays a large role in the development of the child's abilities. 

5. Describe the language disorders that would be associated with receptive language and with expressive language. How do these disorders differ?

Receptive Language consists of a child's listening skills. In regards to receptive language, two behaviors that may alert teachers are students missing longer directions and frequently asking for repetition. Students who have difficulty with receptive language, tend to not understand long directions or even respond when the teacher asks them a question. 

Expressive language consists of the ability to express ideas and needs in a meaningful manner that is understood by listeners. In regards to expressive language, something the child may struggle with is the difficulty of not being able to find which word they want to use in a sentence.

Chapter 2

#2 How would you apply Vygotsky's theory of language development to help a child independently solve a problem in the classroom? At what point might your provide support? 

-Vygotsky's theory of language development focused on the Zone of Proximal Development. This chapter defines ZPD as “the distance between two levels of the development of children's problem solving abilities. It is the distance between what children can do by themselves, and the concepts or skills that they need to learn with assistance.” If a child in my classroom was struggling to solve a problem, I would first figure out what they can do by themselves without my help, what they need help with, and where I have to step in to show them what to do. I would provide support once I saw at what point the child couldn't do it on their own anymore 

#4 Explain the importance of environmental factors on a child's language development. What factors are most important? How would you incorporate these factors in the classroom? 

-Environmental factors, as you can tell from the reading, play a large role in a child's language development. 

Chomsky believes that children use environment context to develop their syntactic abilities for combining words to produce sentences 

Theory of mind says that socio interaction explanation is used which is children's development of concepts takes place when the environment interacts with internal factors to foster cognitive development

Emergentism says that language develops from an interaction between a child's cognitive structures and the environment

-Environmental theories states that imitation of activities in the environment help language development 

-Lastly Bates and the pragmatic theory states that examination of environmental factors that played a role in children's developmental skills 

And that was just a few of the times that environment was mentioned in this chapter. I would make sure that my children were interacting with the environment in many ways. Making sure that my students worked well with one another, having the time for partner work, group presentations, etc. I would also make sure that my children were not only focused on what's inside the four walls of my classroom. I want to make sure my students have the ability to branch out and connect to the world around them in order to continue flourishing their language development.

Chapter 3: Typical and Atypical Language Development

1. What approaches would you use to support a child with expressive language difficulties? Describe at least three.

- 1. Problem: Relies heavily on gestures and nonverbal means to communicate. Support: Make sure that you aren't monotone with your voice and movements. 2. Problem: Smaller, vocabulary than expected for age Support: Give them more vocabulary lists, or have a word of the day and have them use it in a sentence were it makes sense. 3. Problem: Does not respond verbally to questions Support: Repeat the question more than once, simplify what you are asking, ask in a kind way (not angry or fierce) 

3. Describe the behaviors that would indicate a problem in social interaction with peers. Along with those used by Tommy's teacher in the case study, what strategies would you use in the classroom to help a child with problems in social interaction? 

-Social interactions go hand in hand with pragmatics. Problems with pragmatics include does not take turns or maintain conversations with peers, eye contact may be present or inconsistent, and does not engage peers in an inappropriate manner. Some strategies that can help a child with these social interactions include organizing the classroom in a way that provides contexts for learning skills, to encourage more social interactions. Providing open ended sentences while having one on one time with children, can help them see how their sentences should start and gives them a boost to finish their thoughts. You can engage one on one with those students if they don't feel comfortable around their peers. Eventually they can reach to the point where they are willing to engage with their peers. 

4. Explain why a second language learner of English may have difficulty with certain English vowels. 

-The English language has a vast amount of phonemes which changes how we say each word. An ‘a’ can have more than one sound, which means you simply have to know the word in order to understand which sound certain letters make. English is one of the hardest languages to learn, so learning is as a second language makes it even that much harder! Difficulty in phoneme grapheme correlation may also result from the similarity of certain sounds. Presentation of vowels in sounds can cause discimination difficulty for native english speakers, especially speakers of other languages.

Chapter 4: Hearing and Listening Skills // Questions #3, #4

Question 3: Why are most classrooms categorized as poor listening environments? List three groups who are at greatest risk of missing information in adverse listening conditions and why they are at increased risk?

Classrooms are categorized as poor listening environment because of all the extra noise that you can find in the classroom. First of all, the other students that are in the classroom are the main source of noise; students collaborating, speaking, and working with others will cause a noisy classroom. Other things can be the air conditioning, technology playing videos or music, typing, students in the halls, surrounding classrooms, and the teacher working with other students. Another reason it can be a poor listening environment is visual distractions like the outdoors, things on the wall, or other students. Students who have moderate, severe, and profound hearing loss are at the greatest risk when it comes to missing information due to learning conditions. They have sensitivity and sound difficulties. Other students who miss information can be visually impaired students, and students with special needs.

Question 4: Describe 5 modifications that the classroom teacher can make to help children with hearing and listening problems reach their maximum potential.

Visual cues to reinforce communication 

Teacher should avoid walking while talking or covering their face 

Writing key words, new vocabulary words on the board or on a chart 

Using closed captions when playing a video in class 

Create a ‘secret signal’ that the student can signal you when they miss information, so the whole class does not have to hear every time they miss something

Chapter 6

Question #3: Describe the role of inference in the development of reading comprehension. 

Oxford dictionary defines inference as “a conclusion reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning”. A child can show this by going past the basics and coming to a deeper understanding based on what they have learned, or read for example. When reading, students make inferences by looking at clues in the text and using what they already know to hypothesize what might happen next, or understand why something is occuring. Children must be able to do this in order to understand what it is that they are reading, and to have that inner dialogue with themselves about what they are reading. If a child is ‘reading’ by just sounding out the letters that they see on a page, and not understanding there is a meaning behind them, they will need intervention and practice in order to get them to be truly reading.

Chapter 8

3. What is the importance of vocabulary in children's language development? How would you help a child who has weak vocabulary? 

Vocabulary is very important in children's language development. First, they start off by communicating with gestures, like looking at something or babbling to get something they need. Once children understand vocabulary, they can communicate their wants and needs. When children know more vocabulary, which they learn from exposure with peers and parents, then their language development becomes stronger, allowing them to create longer sentences and deeper meanings to those sentences. 

There are a few strategies that a teacher in a classroom could do in order to help a child who has a weak vocabulary. Teachers should schedule sufficient time for book reading during the day, this will allow that student to be more exposure to vocabulary throughout the day. Teachers can allow time for children to look at books alone or with a friend, which helps them explore their interests and learn from their peers. Teachers can also provide individual and small group work, which enables the student to learn more words by reading and answering questions. As for preschool teachers, they can use and model technique like semantic contingency (staying on a topic introduced by the child and related to the story being read). Lastly, the teacher can use animated, dramatic, and lively style of language while reading and use the dialogic approach to help students understand tones of words. 

5. If there was a child in your preschool classroom with language difficulties, at what point would you contact the child's parents? 

Depending on the age of the child, I would not be highly concerned with their language development being off, because they are still so young and aren't going to be amazing at language. However, there are a few milestones that a preschooler should be at, and if they weren't I would be concerned and possibly contact the parents after consulting with the student, observing behaviors, speaking with other teachers/principle. If student does not speak, or if I hand them something and they don't understand or do anything with it, or they can't request their needs, I would contact parents. Some milestones (depending on age) include… 

Chapter 9

Question 3: How does vocabulary change in school-age children and adolescents? What is the influence of derivational morphology on vocabulary growth? 

School age children grow fast in their language development. In kindergarten they are enjoy listening to stories in groups, are able to follow spoken directions, and can maintain their attention and focus on tasks. Then, in first grade they expand their vocabulary, they increase their ability to write, and they begin to read and respond to a variety of literacy materials. In second grade students develop listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills. Lastly, in third grade students use critical thinking skills, determine meaning, and can address true vs false. 

In adolescence, students morphology and syntax skills develop, they rely on written language for vocabulary, and they are more dependent which can have them explore and find new words. 

Derivational Morphemes are prefixes and suffixes that are used in combination with root words to form new words. This has a large influence on vocabulary growth because if students know the root word ‘develop’ they can then learn 5 other words by adding certain prefixes and suffixes. With the word ‘develop’ they can learn develop-ment, develop-er, un-developed, develop-ed, etc. 

Question 4: What are the differences among metaphors, idioms, and proverbs? When are these types of figurative language fully learned by school age children? 

Metaphors →  a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable.

Idioms → word or phrase  that has a figurative, or sometimes literal, meaning. (cold feet) 

Proverbs → a short saying in general use, stating a general truth or piece of advice.

Being able to fully understand these shows a gradual and protracted developmental trend well into adolescence and adulthood

Chapter 10

Question 1: Describe the relationship between language and literacy. 

A child must understand language in order to build literacy. As a child enhances their literacy skills, their language develops. The relationship between language and literacy goes both ways. Language is the ability to form words in order to communicate verbally or written. When a child learns language, they use that language to learn literacy skills like print concepts, phonological awareness, spelling, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, and writing. 

Question 2: You are moving from teaching preschool to kindergarten. How would your teaching be different? Would it be the same? 

There are difference that preschool aged students and kindergarten students have when it comes to literacy development and their abilities. For example, when it comes to print concepts, preschools realize that groups of letters have meaning and can turn the pages one at a time, but at the kindergarten level children know parts of books like index and contents as well as know that written letters in words correspond with specific sounds. Differences in children's abilities will most definitely change how a teacher approaches teaching literacy. For example, in a preschool setting, comprehension is taught by having students retell stories, or relate stories to personal experience. As a kindergarten teacher, you will be teaching and checking for comprehension by having students predict what may happen next, or have them answer more involved questions about the reading. 

Chapter 11

Question 1: Explain the main difference between the personal narrative structure and the fictional account structure.

Personal narrative and fictional narrative are different because personal is an actual event and fictional is imaginative. The chapter defines the two narratives as… 

“Personal narrative is defined as a description of a past event, experienced by the speaker or by someone the speaker knows.”

“Fictional narrative consists of an imaginary story, either from a book or spontaneously created by a speaker.” 

The main difference in structure is personal narratives are structured with content and manner of production which includes topic maintenance, informativeness, sequence of events, referencing, and fluency. Where fictional structure does not necessarily have to follow a sequence of events or be real. 

Question 5: Describe the impaired narrative characteristics associated with a language impaired child's narrative skills. 

Symptoms of impaired narrative discourse include word finding deficits, lack of informativeness, inappropriate referencing, inability to construct a narrative, and reduced discourse coherence. Children struggle with narratives in many ways. They do not provide enough information for the message to be understood, off topic utterances, shifting from one topic to another, and failure to shift topics. This does depend on the child, each student is unique and some difficulties may be more extreme than others. 

Chapter 12

Question 3: Describe the implications of literacy development for AAE speaking children. 

African American Engliah impacts the morphology, syntax, and phonology of American Engish. Children who speak AAE prior to even attending school can impact their literacy development because they have already been exposed to English in a way that is different than MCE (Mainstream Classroom English). Language is a critical developmental skill and intact language abilities support efforts to teach children a wide range of skills. Becoming use to AAE, which includes features like zero possessive, zero plural, zero past tense, preterite hadm remote past been, and double modal makes it difficult for a student to transition into a classroom where none of those features are found (MCE). Their reading and writing skills may be slightly behind as well until they get more used to MCE. Children who also can't switch from AAE to MCE (code switch) frequently encounter difficulty learning to read. 

Question 7: Describe the creation of an activity that encourages you students to use a variety of oral narrative styles. 

There are many types of oral narrative styles like nonfiction (journalism or biographies), poems, songs, and drama. An activity that can encourage your students to use a variety of oral narrative styles can be an assignment where you get to choose how you want to express your story. For example, students can be assigned the topic of telling a narrative about a part of your life that has changed who you are. Students can have the option to create a song, or written piece, a story, a poem, or skit showing or describing that time in their lives.

Chapter 13

Question 1: An L2 learner is someone who has learned English on top of their first spoken language, also known as bilingualism. There are 5 stages of learning when an L2 learner is learning English. Each stage has its own implications when it comes to assessing linguistic and academic performances. The students first language learned will have dominance over their second English and them being able to learn English will be difficult if learning at an older age, compared to learning it when you learned the first language. As teachers, we must assess to see where our students are at in learning English, and then work from there using strategies and interventions. 

Question 4: Since Clara seems to be doing well academically as a 5 year old: copying her name down, copying words, coloring, and completing tasks without reminders. What Clara is struggling with is communicating with her peers in the classroom. This is usually common for students who does not understand or speak English, but she isn't even communicating with her Spanish speaking peers. I would collaborate with other teachers in the building to see if they have ever had a similar situation and get ideas on what I could do as the teacher. I would work with the other teachers to brainstorm some ways to get Clara to talk to her peers, if not get her to at least communicate with me. I would also work with her parents because they know their child best.

Chapter 14

Question 2: What is a speech difference? What is a speech disorder? 

-A speech difference is a difference in the child's speech due to the first language they learned, speech sounds are different in different languages. A speech disorder is defined as an impairment in the structure and or function of the speech and hearing mechanisms of a person. A speech difference can be fixed through practice and learning a second language well, where a disorder needs some kind of medical intervention.

Question 5: Why is it important to consider the development of both languages in bilingual children? 

-“If we examine only English, we are not including skills that a child possesses in his or her other language” We can not expect a child to completely forget about their first spoken language. Firstly, that is a large part of the students identity and we wouldn't want to take that part of a person away. Secondly, ignoring the child's first language and not working on development with it may affect their ability to learn and work on their second language (english).