Language’s vanishing act in early literacy education

2020 ◽  
Vol 101 (5) ◽  
pp. 19-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
George G. Hruby

Current conversations about children’s literacy have focused on the need for more phonics and decoding instruction and have sidelined the importance of children’s language development, argues George Hruby. Language development involves more than the ability to decode written language. The ability to understand the meaning of those words is also important, and poor outcomes on reading assessments are not necessarily evidence of poor decoding skills. Hruby posits that comprehension follows a recursive trajectory that he calls ELIK in which students’ linguistic environment affects their language abilities which affects their intellectual growth, which affects their knowledge. Against this backdrop, a lack of attention to linguistic environment is an issue of equity, with children who grow up in less literacy-rich environments coming into school at a disadvantage.

2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 821-835 ◽  
Author(s):  
DILARA DENIZ CAN ◽  
MARIKA GINSBURG-BLOCK ◽  
ROBERTA MICHNICK GOLINKOFF ◽  
KATHRYN HIRSH-PASEK

ABSTRACTThis longitudinal study examined the predictive validity of the MacArthur Communicative Developmental Inventories-Short Form (CDI-SF), a parent report questionnaire about children's language development (Fenson, Pethick, Renda, Cox, Dale & Reznick, 2000). Data were first gathered from parents on the CDI-SF vocabulary scores for seventy-six children (mean age=1 ; 10). Four years later (mean age=6 ; 1), children were assessed on language outcomes (expressive vocabulary, syntax, semantics and pragmatics) and code-related skills, including phonemic awareness, word recognition and decoding skills. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that early expressive vocabulary accounted for 17% of the variance in picture vocabulary, 11% of the variance in syntax, and 7% of the variance in semantics, while not accounting for any variance in pragmatics in kindergarten. CDI-SF scores did not predict code-related skills in kindergarten. The importance of early vocabulary skills for later language development and CDI-SF as a valuable research tool are discussed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-86
Author(s):  
Zhen Lin ◽  
Guofang Li

Drawing on research about young children’s literacy development, this review article discusses a recent paradigmatic turn for understanding the child and childhood from human-centerism to posthumanism. Building on the new materialist tradition (e.g., Barad, 2007) and the assemblage theory of Deleuze and Guattari (1987, 1997), the posthuman lens enables researchers and educators to see children as parts of entangled networks of relationships who continuously intra-act with their peers, teachers, materials, and the other nonhuman entities and activities produced constantly by the child-material entanglements. As such, the posthumanist perspective expands the current research on early literacy by offering new possibilities for re-conceptualizing the child, the materials or resources for early literacy, and the meaning of childhood and children’s play. These new ways of seeing the child, the materials, and childhood have also generated new pedagogical practices that are material-oriented, intra-active, and flexible. The review concludes by providing directions for conducting research from a posthuman perspective in the field of early literacy education.


2009 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-13
Author(s):  
Joan Aker

Abstract Children with language disabilities at the secondary level experience significant difficulty in all components of the writing process. This article discusses issues contributing to student’s difficulty in writing as well as suggestions for how to support written language development in this population.


2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 121-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Lanter ◽  
Claire Waldron

Abstract The authors describe an innovative clinical education program that emphasizes the provision of written language services by preservice speech-language pathology graduate students at Radford University in Virginia. Clinicians combined academic coursework in language acquisition in school-age children and clinical experiences that target children's written language development to promote future literacy-based leadership roles and collaborative efforts among school-based speech-language pathologists (SLPs). These literacy-based experiences prepare SLPs to serve in the growing numbers of American public schools that are implementing Response to Intervention models.


2021 ◽  
pp. 009579842110076
Author(s):  
Elif Dede Yildirim ◽  
Jaipaul L. Roopnarine

Using propositions in cultural-ecological and maternal and paternal engagement models, this study utilized the 2018 UNICEF Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys to examine which sociodemographic factors were associated with fathers’ and mothers’ cognitive engagement and the associations between parental and maternal cognitive engagement and preschoolers’ literacy skills in Amerindian, Maroon, Creole, Javanese, Hindustani, and Mixed-ethnic families in Suriname ( N = 1,008). After establishing measurement invariance in constructs across ethnic groups, analyses revealed few consistent sociodemographic predictors of paternal and maternal cognitive engagement. Patterns of associations between paternal and maternal cognitive engagement and children’s literacy skills were not uniform across ethnic groups. Data have implications for understanding mothers’ and fathers’ contributions to children’s early literacy skills development and for developing parenting intervention programs in Suriname.


2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mona Sameeh Khodeir ◽  
Dina Fouad El Sayed Moussa ◽  
Rasha Mohammed Shoeib

Abstract Background Pragmatics is the social use of language that draws on understanding human interactions in specific contexts and requires engagement with a communicative partner or partners. The hearing-impaired children are known to have a pragmatic language delay as hearing impairment deprived of exposure to natural communication interactions, in addition to the language delay they have. Since the age of implantation has emerged as an important predictor of language, hearing, and speech in children who use cochlear implants (CI), question aroused about the benefits of early cochlear implantation on pragmatic language development in those children. Thus, this study aims to compare the pragmatic language development of the prelingual hearing impaired children who cochlear implanted before the age of 3 years and those who cochlear implanted after the age of 3 years. Results The two study groups showed no significant differences regard their scores in the Egyptian Arabic Pragmatic Language Test (EAPLT). The two studied groups had pragmatic language scores below their 5th percentile. Among the studied groups, the scores of the EAPLT were positively correlated to the age of the children, the children’s language abilities, and the duration of the received language rehabilitation, with no significant correlation to the age of implantation. Conclusions The age of implantation has no impact on pragmatic language development in children with CI. The prelingual children with CI are susceptible to delays in the pragmatic language development that is primarily related to the age of those children and their language abilities, besides their experience in social interactions. These results should be considered in their rehabilitative plan and advocate the importance of early incorporation of pragmatic behaviors into their intervention programs.


1944 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Heydon ◽  
Luigi Iannacci

This paper is a critical examination of the state of Canadian literacy education and research and its effects on young children. Its purpose is to appraise the ways in which disability is currently being produced and practiced in early school curricula and to argue for a theoretically rich curricula which begins from children’s strengths. To accomplish these goals, this paper commences with a brief appraisal of curriculum studies’ lack of attention to issues of dis/ability, considers major movements in literacy curricula, then contends that an innovation in literacy curricula the authors term, “the biomedical approach”, is pathologizing entire school populations and inflicting upon them reductionistic literacy curricula. This paper illustrates the biomedical approach through a narrative of a public school and the experiences of its early years staff and students.


2003 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. 460-470 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Morris ◽  
Anne Ozanne

Objective To evaluate the language, phonetic, and phonological skills at age 3 years of two groups of young children with a cleft palate, with different expressive language proficiency at 2 years of age. Design Two groups of children with a cleft palate with differing abilities in early expressive language skills were identified at age 2 years. Comparisons across groups were made over a range of speech and language measures at age 3 years. Participants Twenty children with cleft palate were allocated to two groups dependent on expressive language abilities at age 2 years. One group had normal language development, and the second group had been identified as having significantly delayed (8 to 12 months’ delay) expressive language development. Main Outcome Measures The children were assessed at 3 years of age using standardized assessments and spontaneous speech samples. Comparisons between the two groups were made on a range of language measures including comprehension, expressive language, and speech. Results Group differences were found on both language and speech abilities at age 3 years. Significant group differences were found in expressive language, percentage of consonants correct, phonetic inventory, and phonological process usage. The group with delayed early expressive language abilities at 2 years continued to have expressive language difficulties at 3 years of age and had more disordered speech development, compared with the nondelayed group. Conclusions A subgroup of children with a cleft palate was identified who exhibited delays in early expressive language and continued to have delayed language and disordered phonological patterns at a later age. Support for three possible etiologies including a structural/anatomical deficit, cognitive/linguistic delay, or language/phonological disorder are discussed.


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