Using Children's Literature To Support Language Development

Oral language is one of the key components of literacy, it is intertwined closely with reading, writing, vocabulary and grammar. Children learn language competency through repeated exposure to increasingly complex words via conversations they have with the adults around them as well as through specific language instruction provided by the teacher. Picture books provide the opportunity to develop the students’ knowledge of language and vocabulary further. The implications surrounding poor language knowledge are expansive and also indirectly affect the other components of literacy. It is important that language development is given special consideration so that children are able to communicate effectively and efficiently.

What is oral language?

Oral language is made up of three different components: The phonological component, The semantic component, and the syntactic component (Lindfors, 1987). The phonological component involves the study of sound patterns and their meanings, both within and across languages. An example of phonology is the study of different sounds and the way they come together to form speech and words. Phonology also relates to being able to name letters, matching rhyming words and looking at middle and end sounds of words. The sematic component is made up of morphemes, the small units of meaning that may be combined with each other to make up words, such as adding -s to the end of a word to change the meaning or joining two words together to create a different word, such as ‘rain’ and ‘drop’ being added together to make the word ‘raindrop’. The syntactic component consists of the rules that enable humans to combine morphemes into sentences. As a child develops so does the complexity of their language, eventually creating questions, statements and learning to combine two ideas into one complex statement.

It is believed that there are three dimensions when it comes to developing language comprehension; the physical component, the environmental dimension and the social dimension. The physical dimension refers to the rate at which a child’s brain is developing in correlation with their age. The environmental dimension includes where the child is living; is it remote or inner-city, what is the child’s parent’s socioeconomic status, and to what degree the child’s parents were educated. Lastly, the social dimension refers to how frequently they are seeing people of different age brackets, as a child is more likely to gain greater vocabulary knowledge via talking to an adult as opposed to another child.

B. F. Skinner theorised that children’s language development could be explained by environmental learning. He believed that using a behaviourist approach to model behaviour along with positive reinforcements over time a child would develop a vocabulary. For example, providing parent approval as a positive reinforcement when a child correctly pronounces a word or sentence. In contrast, Noam Chomsky’s believed that all humans are born with an innate mechanism to enable them to learn language. He believed this was possible by a child listening to other humans talk, hence why their understanding of grammar develops so readily. Thus, starting the controversial debate of Nature Vs. Nurture. Ewing, Callow & Rushton (2016) discuss a case from the 1970’s which is focused around a thirteen-year-old girl whom had been confined to a room for most of her life, often tied to a chair and was severely malnourished. She had been isolated and abused by her parents her whole life. Researchers used her to test the Nature Vs. Nurture theory, while they found initially the girl was able to learn a number of words, she was unable to progress when it came to learning grammar. Thus, leading to a belief that there are critical phases for learning language and that interaction with one’s environment is crucial for the development of language. Children’s language development can also be stimulated through imaginative play with words. For example, children manipulating individual words, or coming up with rhymes and songs.

Language development is linked into so many other aspects of the child’s development, while abilities will always differ between the children it is important that they receive enough of the right stimulation from those in their immediate environment to have success. However, some children have less access to these opportunities of exposure which can then result in a slower development of language acquisition which then in turn affects other areas of literacy, for example, reading and writing. Oral language can have a severe impact on reading development as it is an essential skill children must have grasped of before they are able to read with comprehension. Research has identified that children with a poor history of oral language are five times more likely to struggle with reading comprehension as opposed to their peers (Catts, Fey, Zhang, & Tomblin, 2001).

How do children learn Oral language?

Grammar, syntax and semantics are just a few of the literacy skills that influence both language acquisition and reading competence. Children learn new words through incidental exposure or through elaborated exposure. Incidental exposure occurs when children informally experience unknown words in conversations with others; for example, listening to a television program (Justice and Pence, 2005). Elaborated exposure is a more intentional approach in which children encounter new words through reading a story book or conversations accompanied by meaning-focused explanations delivered by an adult (Justice and Pence, 2005). However, in order for a child to understand in depth the meaning of a word and the proper context the child must have repeated exposure to that word and then be provided the opportunity to use that word in conversation.

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Instruction in Phonological awareness is also very important when it comes to language development. Phonological awareness involves activities focused around Rhyme, alliteration, blending and manipulating the word or syllable. An example of this may be asking the student to match rhyming words together or count how many syllables are in a word. Intensive instruction from the adult becomes more important as the student begins to get older and the sounds or words become more complex. An example of intensive instruction may be getting a student to blend to sounds together or asking the student to segment a word into sounds. Another important aspect of language development is vocabulary instruction, this involves providing children with opportunities to develop a deeper vocabulary through exposure to multiple contexts (Beck &McKeown, 2007). Vocabulary instruction should not only be measured on how many words a child knows but also their level of understanding of those words.

Literature for Oral language

Children’s literature plays a critical role in language development through play. For example, Ewing, Callow & Rushton (2016) discusses a case where a teacher read a book where the duck would quack in different ways to indicate its enjoyment or boredom when a teacher asked How is the work? The students then mirrored the language from the picture book and would quack when they were enjoying their classwork. Reading storybooks to children plays a vital part in developing language skills as they provide children with the opportunity for frequent language-rich interactions that can then be turned into conversations about the book. Asking questions so that the child has to actively respond about the meaning of the text and what connections they can make to it, whether that be to their environment or to themselves.

Concrete levels of conversation intertwined with children’s literature can help support the development of oral language. Van Kleeck (2003) states that the amount and quality of adult-child conversation is correlated with children’s levels of language and literacy development. The complexity of the conversation depends on the level of abstraction used in the conversation. Four levels have been identified, the first being the most concrete level, this level focuses on labelling, locating and noticing present objects. An example of this would be a teacher drawing attention to a picture in a storybook using comments such as “Look at the bird in that tree”. The second level expands on the concrete knowledge learnt in the first level by further describing characteristics of objects. For example, “Look at that blue bird in the green leafy tree”. Level three and four correspond to the more complex levels of language, they require children to think and reason beyond what is present. Level 3 requires students to summarise, infer provide questions by drawing on their own previous knowledge. Lastly, Level four children are required to reason, predict, problem solve and explain the story (Blank, Rose & Berlin, 1978). However, Blank, Rose and Berlin (1978) also state that it is important that a child has a concrete foundation of word knowledge prior to elaborating with abstract language.

Having a designated place for reading can be very beneficial to language development in a classroom setting. For example, a reading rug is an idea that all children sit on the rug and listen to a storybook while reading the teacher asks the children questions about what they are reading. This facilitates language development within the context of storybook reading and can be very beneficial to developing a child’s comprehensive language skills. It is called interactive reading which is viewed by experts as an ideal setting to provide a meaningful context for a child to learn language skills (Hogan et al. 2011). It provides the teacher with an opportunity to interact with their students about the text, as they are able to analyse a word’s meaning with the students or ask the child questions about the text or linking the text to the students own life to keep them engaged in their learning. Reading the text would be quite difficult for a child in their early years of primary school; thus, making the conversations facilitated by the teacher quite valuable to developing language acquisition. Using this method also helps to keep the students engaged and focused. Through reading and re-reading different texts it also provides students with the opportunity to become familiar with the complex words throughout the text and the teacher providing prompting questions provides the students with a situation in which they are able to use those words (McKeown and Beck, 2003).

There are many texts that are designed to be used to support language development in early primary school, with a big number of those being picture books. The Mouse board book series written by Laura Numeroff is the perfect example of literacy promoting language development. The book series uses repeated characters across all of the books and contains a little amount of text on each page which leaves plenty of room for the pictures. These pictures provide teachers with the opportunity to facilitate a conversation with the students. For example, ‘who’s birthday do you think it is?’ Or ‘Why do you think the big is wearing a dress?’.

Language competency is an important aspect to develop at the beginning of all literacy programs as it provides the concrete foundation for the other aspects of literacy. Children’s literature contains many opportunities to facilitate language development and it should be viewed as a sound resource to support development in all areas of literacy. By providing both implicit and explicit instruction allows the child to succeed when it comes to language development. It provides a language rich environment full of experiences and opportunities to give the child the foundations to support their future education.

References

1. Blank, M., Rose, S. A., & Berlin, L. J. (1978). The language of learning: The preschool years. New York: Grune and Stratton.
2. Catts, H. W., Fey, M. E., Zhang, X., & Tomblin, J. B. (2001). Estimating the risk of future reading difficulties in kindergarten children: A research-based model and its clinical implementation. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools
3. Ewing, R., Callow, J., & Rushton, K. (2016). Language & literacy development in early childhood. Cambridge University Press, 2016.
4. Hogan, T. P., Bridges, M. S., Justice, L. M., & Cain, K. (2011). Increasing higher level language skills to improve reading comprehension. Focus on Exceptional Children
5. Justice, L. M., & Pence, K. L. (2005). Scaffolding with storybooks: A guide for enhancing young children’s language and literacy achievement.
6. Lindfors, J.W. Children's Language and Learning, 2nd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1987.
7. McKeown, M. G., & Beck, I. L. (2003). Taking advantage of read-alouds to help children make sense of decontextualized language.
8. Numeroff, L. (2005). If you give a pig a party. HarperCollins.
9. Van Kleeck, A. (2003). “Research on book sharing: Another critical look”. In On reading books to children: Parents and teachers.