Understanding Language Development in ELL Preschoolers: Making the Connection Between Language Dominance, Phonological Abilities, and Vocabulary Development

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy David Hill ◽  
Lisa M. Lopez ◽  
Adele W. Miccio ◽  
Carol Scheffner Hammer ◽  
Barbara L. Rodriguez
2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 501-521 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valery LIMIA ◽  
Şeyda ÖZÇALIŞKAN ◽  
Erika HOFF

AbstractMonolingual children identify referents uniquely in gesture before they do so with words, and parents translate these gestures into words. Children benefit from these translations, acquiring the words that their parents translated earlier than the ones that are not translated. Are bilingual children as likely as monolingual children to identify referents uniquely in gesture; and do parental translations have the same positive impact on the vocabulary development of bilingual children? Our results showed that the bilingual children – dominant in English or in Spanish – were as likely as monolingual children to identify referents uniquely in gesture. More importantly, the unique gestures, when translated into words by the parents, were as likely to enter bilingual and monolingual children's speech – independent of language dominance. Our results suggest that parental response to child gesture plays as crucial of a role in the vocabulary development of bilingual children as it does in monolingual children.


2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 861-887 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTINA F. PAPAELIOU ◽  
LESLIE A. RESCORLA

ABSTRACTThis study investigated vocabulary size and vocabulary composition in Greek children aged 1 ; 6 to 2 ; 11 using a Greek adaptation of Rescorla's Language Development Survey (LDS; Rescorla, 1989). Participants were 273 toddlers coming from monolingual Greek-speaking families. Greek LDS data were compared with US LDS data obtained from the instrument's normative sample (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2000). Vocabulary size increased markedly with age, but Greek toddlers appeared to get off to a slower start in early word learning than US children. The correlation between percentage word use scores in Greek and US samples was moderate in size, indicating considerable overlap but some differences. Common nouns were the largest category among the fifty most frequent words in both samples. Numbers of adjectives and verbs were comparable across languages, but people and closed-class words were more numerous in the Greek sample. Finally, Greek late talkers showed similar patterns of vocabulary composition to those observed in typically developing Greek children.


1982 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy T. Morris ◽  
W. Donald Crump

Learning disabled students demonstrate serious problems in developing written language facility. Although written expression is one of seven aspects of achievement specified in the federal guidelines for identification of learning disabled students, measurement of written language development is quite complex. The search for a single, sensitive index of written language development is compounded by the synergistic nature of written language and the influence of contrived formats used in assessment. Syntax and vocabulary are frequently employed in research on written language development. Thus, the minimal terminable unit (T-unit) and the type/token ratio have been used as indices of syntactic and vocabulary development in analyzing samples of students' written language. Recently, computer technology has permitted the use of more complex measures of syntactic density and vocabulary intensity. The purpose of this study was to compare the written language development of learning disabled and non-learning disabled students at four age levels on measures of syntactic and vocabulary development. Implications for measurement and research are discussed.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Kartushina ◽  
Nivedita Mani ◽  
ASLI AKTAN-ERCIYES ◽  
Khadeejah Alaslani ◽  
Naomi Aldrich ◽  
...  

The COVID-19 pandemic, and the resulting closure of daycare centers worldwide, led to unprecedented changes in children’s learning environments. This period of increased time at home with caregivers, with limited access to external sources (e.g., daycares) provides a unique opportunity to examine the associations between the caregiver-child activities and children’s language development. The vocabularies of 1742 children aged 8-36 months across 13 countries and 12 languages were evaluated at the beginning and end of the first lockdown period in their respective countries (from March to September 2020). Children who had less passive screen exposure and whose caregivers read more to them showed larger gains in vocabulary development during lockdown, after controlling for SES and other caregiver-child activities. Children also gained more words than expected (based on normative data) during lockdown; either caregivers were more aware of their child’s development or vocabulary development benefited from intense caregiver-child interaction during lockdown.


2020 ◽  
Vol 70 (S2) ◽  
pp. 20-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary M. Oppenheim ◽  
Zenzi Griffin ◽  
Elizabeth D. Peña ◽  
Lisa M. Bedore

2020 ◽  
pp. 026765831989851
Author(s):  
Alexandra Karousou ◽  
Theodora Nerantzaki

Recent studies highlight the important contribution of phonological working memory (PM) in the early stages of both native and foreign language development. However, research on the effects of PM training on language development is very limited. This study aimed at assessing the effectiveness of a PM training educational intervention as a means of fostering vocabulary development in beginner-level young learners of English as a second/foreign language (L2). A double-blind pretest–posttest quasi-experimental design was adopted, with an experimental group ( n = 50) and a matched active control group ( n = 47). All participants were initially assessed with an English-sounding nonword repetition test and an English language vocabulary test (receptive and productive). In addition, the experimental group students participated in the PM training (33 sessions of 15-minutes length within 12 weeks), while the control students participated in non-phonological-memory related English language activities. After the conclusion of the intervention, PM and L2 vocabulary were reassessed in both groups. Results confirm previous findings on the significant relationship between PM and L2 vocabulary size and provide evidence for PM trainability, as well as on resultant L2 productive vocabulary gains. No effect of PM training was detected on receptive vocabulary development. Results are discussed with regard to their theoretical implications, and to possible applications of PM training as a method for supporting vocabulary development in the L2 classroom.


Author(s):  
Māra Domiceviča ◽  
Krista Apīne

Parental involvement in the development of the vocabulary of preschool children will improve not only their success at school, but also their cognitive and emotional development. Children start to learn language from the moment they are born and this process depends on the continued involvement of the parents. The aim of the article is to define the extent of parental knowledge and opinions regarding the development of the vocabulary and the methods that could be used to improve it. The article is based on the results of a previous study that is a part of a national research programme (“Latviešu valoda”) which focuses on the development of Latvian language in preschool children. The study used parental surveys in order to gather their opinion on the importance of their involvement in the development of preschool children’s vocabulary. The data gathered from these surveys was analysed to present statistically significant results. The information gathered from the surveys could be used to analyse if there are any issues in the parental knowledge about vocabulary development and used by teachers and education specialists to support parents in a more informed way. One of the observed effects of the surveys was an increased parental attention to the speech and vocabulary of their children which was required in order to answer the questions. Similarly, the parents noticed that some activities and processes that are related to the language development did not previously receive as much of their attention as they thought they should give. Conversations, reading and singing were considered to be the most important tools of speech and language development by the surveyed parents. Alarmingly, approximately half of the parents considered the requirements for vocabulary development to be lower than what is currently considered to be standard with a large proportion of the parents significantly underestimating these requirements. Therefore, the authors believe that parents often fail to recognise issues with their child’s vocabulary, as they lack the knowledge to properly assess the development of speech and vocabulary. The results of the study suggest that the problem of parental implication in preschool children’s vocabulary should be analysed further and extended to consider the family’s socioeconomic context.


2017 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 1029-1035 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie Rescorla ◽  
Holly Constants ◽  
Marta Białecka-Pikul ◽  
Małgorzata Stępień-Nycz ◽  
Anna Ochał

2014 ◽  
Vol 369 (1651) ◽  
pp. 20130299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Padraic Monaghan ◽  
Richard C. Shillcock ◽  
Morten H. Christiansen ◽  
Simon Kirby

It is a long established convention that the relationship between sounds and meanings of words is essentially arbitrary—typically the sound of a word gives no hint of its meaning. However, there are numerous reported instances of systematic sound–meaning mappings in language, and this systematicity has been claimed to be important for early language development. In a large-scale corpus analysis of English, we show that sound–meaning mappings are more systematic than would be expected by chance. Furthermore, this systematicity is more pronounced for words involved in the early stages of language acquisition and reduces in later vocabulary development. We propose that the vocabulary is structured to enable systematicity in early language learning to promote language acquisition, while also incorporating arbitrariness for later language in order to facilitate communicative expressivity and efficiency.


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