LING 2P99 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Phoneme, Spoken Language, Mossi Language
30 Jun 2018
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● More than ⅓ children enter school with significant deficiencies in language, early literacy
skills and motivation to learn that put them at risk for long term reading difficulties
○ Insufficient spoken language
Early oral language skills
● Spoken language skills and literacy skills are in a bidirectional relationship
○ They both influence each other
● By time literacy instruction begins, there is already big difference between kids in spoken
language skills
○ Some kids better at understanding more complex sentences
● Differences in oral language skills caused by
○ Genetics
○ Environment (input)
■ These environments differ in SES
● Higher ses parents
○ Have more diverse vocab
○ Longer and more complicated sentences
○ More language teaching during play
○ More speech during book reading
●SocioEconomicStatus-related differences
○Vocabulary
■ Ses accounts for ⅓ of variance in children's vocab size
● Receptive vocab
○ Ability to understand words
■ Ask to point to bus and you do, you understand
word bus
● Productive vocab
○ Ability to use words
■ Point to object and ask what is and you say bus
then you know word bus
■ SES gap appears early and widens until Kindergarten and then remains
stable
● Higher SES kids acquire language more quickly and so the gap
between rich and poor kid vocab widens
■ During school, rate of vocab growth is similar across ses group
● School stablizes rate of growth but cuz poor kids start behind then
stay behind
■ Hart and risley 1995
● Researchers went into family home once a week and recorded
talk
● Higher SES kids were exposed to more words, richer vocab, more
complex grammatical structure
● In 1 week high SES kids heard 215,00, mid ses 125000 and low
62000
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● By 3 years higher ses kids heard 30 million more words than lower
ses kids
● By 3 years high ses kids had 1000, poor kids had 500
○Syntax
■ High ses
● Greater MLU (more complex sentences)
● More frequently use complex sentences than low ses
● Better comprehension of complex sentences
■ Ses related differences in syntax exist for complex sentences but not
simply sentences
● Rich and poor kids same for simple sentences
● Vasilyeva 2008
○ Measured mastery of simple syntax (accuracy of word
order and use of obligatory syntactic elements) and
complex syntax (sentences with more than 1 clause)
○ In simple syntax SES groups were similar
■ Age and frequency they acquire and use simple
syntax is same
● Simple syntax may depend on biological
mechanisms or common environmental
features that all kids of all SES have
○ In complex syntax, high ses produced complex sentences
earlier and used them more frequently and use more
diversity of types of complex syntax
■ Complex syntax may depend more on input
characteristics which differ between SES groups
■ Importance of mastering complex syntax
● Poor kids may not master this until later school years which
problem for literacy
● Incomplete mastery impedes literacy acquisition and academic
growth
○ Textbook and test questions contain complex syntax
○ Requires cognitive resources to decipher sentence
structure which means less resources available for
comprehending message
○ Hinders acquisition of new knowledge
○ Prevents kids revealing what they know on test
■ Cannot express themselves well on test
●Parental input
○ Amount of speech parents provide at home predicts spoken language skills
○ Parent practices predict spoken language skills- especially vocab
○ Linguistics features of parental speech linked to spoken language skill including
■ Vocab sophistication
■ Length and complexity of utterances
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■ Complex syntactic structure
○ Huttenlocher 2002
■ Videotaped 4-5 year old children interacting with moms at home
■ Calculated % of complex sentences used
■ Children complete syntax comprehension test
■ Results:
● % of complex sentences produced by kids and comprehension
scores were related to % of complex sentences in parental speech
●Teacher input
○ Amount of teacher speech predicts early vocab and later language ability
■ This means that since there is no genetic link between teacher and
student, amount of input affects literacy
○ Specific teacher talk linked to language skill
■ Cognitively challenging /analytic talk during book reading predicts better
vocab and story comprehension
● Analytic talk
○ Discussions that go beyond literal meaning presented in a
text
■ Infer character traits and motivation
■ Infer problems
■ Connect events across book
■ Infer cause and effect relationships
■ Construct explanation for character behaviours
■ Word related discussion and repeated exposure to new words helps
expand vocab
● Read aloud technique for emphasizing words
○ Choose book and divide into three or four segments to be
read on successive days
○ Select 3-4 vocab words from each segment
○ Introduce 3 new vocab words
○ Read segment 1, highlight vocab words
○ After reading, ask 3 questions that require kids to use
those words
○ Help kids recall events and vocab
○ Next day, talk about segment 1 and then read segment 2,
repeat steps
● Having a box of props for vocab in story
○ Teacher input impacts child’s syntactic structure as well
○ Experimenter played game where he described a pic with a passive or active
sentence
■ Kids more likely to describe pic in passive when it was their turn to
describe
○ Huttenlocher 2002
■ Children given test of comprehension of complex sentences at beginning
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
More than children enter school with significant deficiencies in language, early literacy skills and motivation to learn that put them at risk for long term reading difficulties. Spoken language skills and literacy skills are in a bidirectional relationship. By time literacy instruction begins, there is already big difference between kids in spoken language skills. Some kids better at understanding more complex sentences. Differences in oral language skills caused by. Ses accounts for of variance in children"s vocab size. Ask to point to bus and you do, you understand word bus. Point to object and ask what is and you say bus then you know word bus. Ses gap appears early and widens until kindergarten and then remains stable. Higher ses kids acquire language more quickly and so the gap between rich and poor kid vocab widens. During school, rate of vocab growth is similar across ses group.
