child language aquisition Flashcards
What age is baby talk?
0-10 months
What is a stopped sound?
Where air is momentarily from being released (‘p’) (aspiration)
What is reduplication?
Where the same vowel-consonant combination is repeated (da da)
What is variegated babbling?
Similar to reduplication except that the vowel/consonant sound changes (da de ba)
What is a consonant cluster?
Where a number of consonants are combined, as in /fr/
What is a fricative sound?
Where there is vibration whilst air is released (the ‘s’ in pleasure)
What age is Biological noises/Cooing (random vocalisation)?
0-6 months
What age is babbling (pre-linguistic)?
6-12 months
What age is The Holophrastic Stage (One Word Stage)?
12-18 months
What age is The Two Word Stage?
18-24 months
What age is The Telegraphic Stage?
24-36 months
What age is the emergence of simple sentences (post-telegraphic)?
36-60 months
What is The Holophrastic Stage?
A stage in child language acquisition which consists of single word utterances, such as “teddy”, “gone” and “more”, which often mean more, e.g. “pass me my teddy”
What does Kathrine Nelson say in regards to The Holophrastic Stage?
That 60% of children’s first utterances are nouns, usually concrete rather than abstract
What is a misconception in regards to The Holophrastic Stage?
That while children can only articulate a small amount of words - that does not mean that they don’t understand more
What did Benedict research in regards to The Holophrastic Stage?
That by 18 months a child can speak about 50 words, but can understand at least twice as many. This was based on a study of 8 children aged from 1-1.5 years with an average of 45 words in their vocabulary
What were the 7 different semantic categories that David Crystal suggested for a child’s first words?
(The Holophrastic Stage)
- Food
- Parts of the body
- Clothing
- Animals
- Vehicles
- Household objects
- Locations
What were the 4 categories that Katherine Nelson suggested for a child’s first words?
(The Holophrastic Stage)
- Naming (things, animals or people)
- Actions/events
- Describing things
- Personal/social words
What is overextension?
(The Holophrastic Stage)
A child uses a word in a wider context than an adult would, misunderstanding the precise application, e.g. uses ball to describe any round object, like an orange for example
What is underextension?
(The Holophrastic Stage)
A child restricts the applications of a word, e.g. uses white only to describe snow and is confused to hear the same used to describe blank pages in a book
What is The Fis Phenomenon?
(Berko and Brown)
(The Holophrastic Stage)
An important concept in phonology:
- Described how a child referred to a plastic fish as his “fis”
- When an adult asked “is that your fis?” he replied with “no, my fis
- When he was asked “is that your fish?” he replied with “yes, my fis”
This proves that understanding develops faster than the ability to pronounce things
What is Deletion?
Omitting the final consonant(s) of words = do(g) or cu(p)
What is Addition?
Adding an extra vowel sound at the end of words, creating a CVCV pattern = “horsie”
What is Assimilation?
Changing one consonant or vowel for another = “gog” for “dog”
What is Reduplication of Monosyllables?
Repeating a whole syllable = dada, mama
What is Consonant Cluster Reductions?
Consonant clusters can be difficult to articulate, so children reduce them to smaller units = “pider” for “spider”
What is Deletion of Unstressed Syllables?
Omitting the opening syllable in polysyllabic words = “nana” for “banana”
What is Stopped/Plosive sounds?
Sounds created when air is momentarily stopped from being released from the mouth = “p” or “b”
What is Fricative sounds?
Sounds created when vibrations or friction is created between two parts of the mouth as air is forced between them = “s” or “f” or “z”
What is The Two Word Stage?
Where a child produces two words, e.g. daddy gone. This stage occurs when a child has reached “the critical mass” - which Bassano says is 80 words
What type of words are used?
(The Two Word Stage)
Nouns, verbs and adjectives
What did Baron-Cohen find?
(The Two Word Stage)
- That female babies to learn more words faster than male babies do
- Found that in a sample of 18 month olds, boys’ average vocabulary size was 41.8 words, while girls’ average was 86.8
- By 24 months, the difference had narrowed to a boys’ mean of 196.8 VS a girls’ mean of 275.1
What are the three common syntactic constructions?
(The Two Word Stage)
- S + V = Daddy gone
- V + O = Draw bird
- S + O = Suzy juice
What do children use “this”, “that” and “thing” for?
(The Two Word Stage)
To fill in semantic gaps when conversing with adults
What did Ursula Bellugi state?
(The Two Word Stage)
That in The Two Word Stage children will be in Stage 1 of forming negatives, they will put “no” (for something “not”) in front of a statement:
- no milk
- no bed
- no want
Stage 2 in when a child moves not/no into a sentence:
- I no want it
Stage 3 is when a child attaches the negative to auxiliary verbs:
- I don’t want it
She also observed that in the initial stages pf language learning, children seemed to have made up their own grammatical rule for using first person pronouns. “I” being used at the start “me” used in the middle or at the end
What is The Telegraphic Stage?
Where children go from using a two part sentence to a three part sentence , for example adding a subject at the start “man kick ball”. Towards the end of this stage the SVO syntactical structures are extended further by including something like an adverb to indicate time, place or manner, for example “man kick ball fast”
What three grammatical functions do children omit?
(The Telegraphic Stage)
- Determiners: determines what they’re talking about - any, that, those, this, the, a
- Auxiliary verbs: helping verbs - be, do, have, is, are
- Prepositions: tells you where or when - in, on, at. until, over, before
What did Piaget say?
(Social Interaction)
That children learn about the world through their senses and experiences. A child’s intellectual/cognitive development is limited to learning about their immediate environment first through their senses and then when they’re older through play. Children can only use language for what they understand
What did Bruner say?
(Social Interaction)
The Language Acquisition Support System (LASS) refers to the support for language learning provided by parents and care-givers. Parents often use books as a focus of attention for developing babies’ naming/labelling abilities
What does Bruner’s LASS theory promote?
(Social Interaction)
Language learning and understanding the rules of participating in conversation. Achieved by:
- Gaining attention = drawing the baby’s attention to the picture
- Query = asking the baby to identify the picture
- Labelling = telling the baby what the picture is
- Feedback = responding to the baby’s utterance
What is meant by Downwards Convergence?
(Social Interaction)
When an adult speaks in a more simplistic way to accommodate the needs of the child
What are Phonological features used?
(Social Interaction)
- Longer pauses between words/phrases
- Speaking more slowly
- Exaggerated ‘singsong’ intonation
- Exaggerated difference between questions/statements/commands
- Pauses more evident than adult standard
What are Lexical and Semantic features used?
(Social Interaction)
- Use of concrete nouns and dynamic verbs
- Adopt child’s own words for things
- Frequent use of child’s name to gain interest
- When the child has difficulty choosing the right word, the care-giver supplies the appropriate one
What are Pragmatic features used?
(Social Interaction)
- Lots of gestures/body language
- Stopping frequently for the child to respond
- Supportive language
- Parent leads adjacency pairs in the early stages of child language acquisition
- Politeness features
What are Grammatical features used?
(Social Interaction)
- Repeated sentence frames: “that’s a…”
- Simple sentences, tag questions, present tense
- Use of ‘mummy’ instead of ‘I’
- Fewer modifiers/adjectives
What strategies do children use to write?
(Writing Acquisition)
- Sound clues, sounding out words to stress the sounds and separate syllables
- Clues from the words meaning to make links with similar words
- Using grammatical knowledge to predict spelling (such as patterns in affixes, common letter patterns in the English words)
- Writing down the word until it ‘looks’ right
What did George Bernard Shaw state?
(Writing Acquisition)
The Irregularity of English Spelling:
He argues that according to the rules of phonetic spelling, the word “fish” could be represented by “ghoti”
- rouGH
- wOmen
- raTIon
GHOTI = FISH
Although this seems absurd, the point he makes is a relevant one, as there are so many variations in terms of creating the same phoneme sound in Written English
What were the 5 stages on spelling proposed by Richard Gentry?
Stage 0: Pre-phonemic: imitate writing, mainly scribbling and using pretend writing, some letter shapes are decipherable
Stage 1: Semi-phonetic: link some letters and sounds, using this to write words
Stage 2: Phonetic: understand that all phonemes can be represented by graphemes; words become more complete
Stage 3: Transitional: combine phonic knowledge with visual memory; an awareness of combinations of letters and letter patterns, including the ‘magic e’ rule
Stage 4: Conventional: spelling most words correctly
What is Insertion?
(Writing Acquisition)
Adding extra letters
What is Omission?
(Writing Acquisition)
Leaving out letters
What is Substitution?
(Writing Acquisition)
Substituting one letter for another
What is Transposition?
(Writing Acquisition)
Reversing the correct order of letters
What is Phonetic Spelling?
(Writing Acquisition)
Using sound awareness to guess letters and combinations of letters
What is Over/under Generalisation of spelling rules?
(Writing Acquisition)
Over generalisation of a rule where it is not appropriate to apply it
Under generalisation of a rule is where it is applied in one specific context
What is Salient (key) Sounds?
(Writing Acquisition)
Writing the key sounds only
What is Virtuous Errors?
(Writing Acquisition)
Mistakes that indicate what the child knows and is aware of in terms of logical spelling but applies it incorrectly
What is the point of writing?
(Writing Acquisition)
- To communicate with others for social, interactional and phatic purposes (text messages, letters, etc)
- To record information (notes, lists, reminders, forms, etc)
- To express ideas (diaries, stories, essays, poems, etc)
How do we make out writing idiosyncratic?
(Writing Acquisition)
- Progression from pencil to pen
- Joint up handwriting
- Making decisions about your style, e.g. sloped, upright, etc
- Spelling
What were the 7 stages Dr Kathy Barclay identified?
(Writing Acquisition)
- Scribbling: random marks on a page
- Mock handwriting: appears with drawings, production of wavy lines resembling writing
- Mock letters: make letter-like shapes that resemble conventional letters
- Conventional letters: usually child’s first name and a string of letters
- Invented spelling: writes conventional letters, begins to cluster to make words
- Approximated of phonetic spelling: associate sounds with letters
- Conventional spelling: when spelling becomes more and more conventional
What is the “Look and Say” or Whole Word Approach?
(Reading Acquisition)
Children learn the shape of words, not breaking them down phonetically. With the “Loo and Say” method, children learn to recognise whole words or sentences rather than individual phonemes. Flashcards with individual words written on them and used for this method, often accompanied with a related picture so that the children can link the object and referent
What is Analytic Phonics?
(Reading Acquisition)
To break down whole words into phonemes and graphemes, looking for phonetic or orthographic patterns. Splitting words into smaller units:
- Onset (the vowel or syllable at the start of a word)
- Rime (the rest of the word, always beginning with a vowel)
For example:
S-ay
Sl-ate
H-igh
A-pple
What is Synthetic Phonics?
(Reading Acquisition)
To remember up to 44 phonemes and their related graphemes, To recognise each grapheme, sound out each phoneme in a word, blending the sounds together to pronounce the word phonetically. This is often done by:
- Seeing the symbol (grapheme)
- Listening to the sound (phoneme)
- Using the actions such as counting phonemes on fingers
For example:
S-ay
S-l-a-te
H-igh
A-pp-le
What where 4 stages proposed by Dr Barry Kroll?
(Understanding Genre)
Preparatory Stage: (up to the age of 6)
- Oral skills are quite well developed. The child masters the physical skills required to write. Acquisition of technical skills: development pf fine motor skills and learning the basic principles of the spelling system
Consolidation Stage: (ages 6-8)
- At this stage children tend to write as they speak. They are likely to use short, declarative sentences, grammatically incomplete sentences or longer sentences linked by simple conjunctions such as ‘and’, ‘then’ and ‘so’
Differentiation Stage: (ages 8-midteens)
- Children become more aware of the differences between writing and speaking. Confidence grows and sentences become more accurate. Start to understand the different writing styles required for different purposes and audiences
Integration Stage: (midteens upwards)
- The writer develops a personal ‘voice’ and adapts confidently to the requirements of different situations. These skills continue to develop in adulthood
What is a criticism of Kroll’s stages?
(Understanding Genre)
Katharine Perera:
- Claims his research is not specific enough
- Cites Kantor and Rubin who said that many 17-18 year olds remained in the middle stage of writing development
- Suggested that children’s writing develops at different rates depending on genre and style
What 5 organisational structures or genres did Joan Rothery find in children’s early independent writing in school?
(Understanding Genre)
1) Observation/comment: first sentence is an observation and the second is a comment. In longer pieces these are interspersed
2) Observation: she sound that teachers consistently rated texts containing observation only less highly than those with added comments
3) Recount: this is a usually chronologically organised sequence of events. More mature examples it may go: orientation/event/resolution. More like a narrative genre, however recounts run smoothly
4) Report: gives factual objective description of events or objects. They’re done by more mature writers and have a schematic structure. No chronological sequence of events
5) Narrative: involves a problem or complication that has to be resolved for better or for worse and begins with an orientation which usually gives a temporal or spatial setting for the event that follows. In more mature narratives the complication/resolution may happen more than once: orientation/complication/resolution/coda
What is James Britton’s study?
(Understanding Genre)
He examined students use of language in learning. Once the writer knows that writing must be done, what is expected and how to proceed, the conception state is complete, here the writer chooses their topic and decides what to write
The incubation stage is where the individual writes, revises and edits the composition
Unless the writer understands his goal for a piece and the task they’ve been given, the production stage where they commit their ideas to paper cannot successfully occur
