Amorsen, A., McBurnie, K., & Wilson, D. (2017). Oral language development in the early years- getting everyone involved. Practical Literacy: The Early & Primary Years, 22(2), 13-15.
This article goes in to detail explaining how a group of teachers researched, who had the greatest impact children’s early oral language. The teachers, Kelly, Adele, and Deborah, soon found that parents had a major role to play in helping teach their children oral language. These teachers did various things to get parents involved with their children. They set out to share their research result with diverse groups. They created an Early Childhood Network; this was used to join the early educators and parents together. Educators and parents could work as a team
Literacy embraces reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Integrating all of these into a literacy program is key. Teachers must provide endless and ongoing opportunities for their student to read, write, listen, and speak.
“Phenomenologically, Donny and Timmy were not growing up in a literate environment. Although they lived in a home situation in a city situated in a country that contained many forms and functions for print, they did not experience it. They did not notice it around them; they did not understand its uses. Their world functioned without written language” (Purcell-Gates, 1997, p. 58).
Language development emerges during the first two years of life whereby, infants and toddlers begin to develop skills to use symbols as a sign of communication. Psycholinguists have it that language development is dependent on physical growth thus as the brain develops
Grimshaw, Gina M, Adelstein,Ana Bryden, M.Philip and MacKinno, G.E. "First-Language Acquisition In Adolescence: Evidence For A Critical Period For Verbal Language Development." Brain and Language 63, no. 2 (1998): 237-255.
In the article titled Nine Ideas About Language by Harvey Daniels, one of the fundamental ideas that he presents is Children learn their native language swiftly, efficiently, and largely without instruction. This dispels the myth that parents “teach” their children to talk.
A comprehensive approach to literacy instruction is when reading and writing are integrated. This happens by connecting reading, writing, comprehension, and good children’s literature. A comprehensive approach to literacy should focus on the many different aspects of reading and writing in order to improve literacy instruction. This includes teachers supporting a comprehensive literacy instructional program by providing developmentally appropriate activities for children. Comprehensive literacy approaches incorporate meaning based skills for children by providing them with the environment needed for literacy experiences. This includes having a print rich classroom where children are exposed to charts, schedules, play related print, and
Harris et al ( 1988) ‘Journal of Child Language, vol. 15 pp 77 – 94,
Nathani, S., Ertmer, D. J., & Stark, R. E. (2006). Assessing vocal development in infants and toddlers. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 20(5), 351-369. doi:10.1080/02699200500211451
In our schools today, literacy should not just be a task for the English or Reading teacher. Instead, literacy should be a shared venture by all teachers within all content areas. Teaching literacy in all content areas is important because a teacher with a solid understanding of teaching literacy in his/her content area will tremendously help all students achieve greater success on class assignments and standardized assessments. There are three main points that surround the idea of teaching literacy in all content areas. Teachers need the necessary skills and knowledge to teach literacy, once the necessary skills and knowledge are gained then there is justification for teaching literacy across content areas, and
SHANNON LOCKHART (2012) 'Supporting Communication, Language, and Literacy Learning With Infants and Toddlers', 26(3), pp. [Online]. Available at:http://www.highscope.org/file/NewsandInformation/Extensions/ExtVol26No3_low.pdf(Accessed: 18-Mar-2014).
Assessments matter. They are a useful tool for teachers to use to inform daily literacy instruction. They provide clear pathways into what the child already controls, partially controls, and aren’t yet controlling in reading and writing. I am not just talking about any assessment tool, I am talking about the one that was reviewed and rated as a screening tool by the National Center for Response To Intervention, Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement (OS).
Hulit, L. M., & Howard, M. R. (2002). Born to talk: An introduction to speech and language development (3rd ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Language acquisition is a significant milestone in early childhood with lexical acquisition beginning as early as six months, and starting before an infant ever speaks their first word (Gervain & Mehler, 2010). Understanding and later speaking their native language will prove to be an important skill. According to Topping, Dekhinet, and Zeedyk (2012), parent-infant interaction in the first three years is critical to the development of this skill. The brain shows evidence that structural and functional organization for language exists from the start (Gervain & Mehler, 2010), and even prior to birth infants are exposed to language in utero (May, Heinlein, Gervain, & Werker, 2011), with hearing onset in the third trimester. This exposure allows them
Strozer, J.R. (1994). Language acquisition after puberty.Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Web. 10 Mar. 2014.
Further in this term-paper I am going to describe the stages in child language acquistion starting from the very birth of an infant till the onset of puberty.