Typical Development Ages 6 – 12 years (Primary School) Flashcards
Links between language & literacy
Prep Learning to Learn ‐ Sitting, attending, group-learning, play-based learning ‐ Need to listen to learn how to learn Grades 1 - 3 Listening to language to learn literacy Poor enjoyment of reading, gets left behind Grades 4 - 6 Learning through written language ▪increased need for literacy ▪child directed learning ▪teacher instructs and child accesses information themselves
Language Development in the School Years
During the school years, children:
• develop more sophisticated semantic and syntactic forms (language content and form)
• become more effective communicators and conversationalists (language use)
• develop the ability to reflect on the nature of language itself (metalinguistic skill)
• learn about the written language system (literacy)
Language Development in the School Years
During the school years, children:
• develop more sophisticated semantic and syntactic forms (language content
and form)
• become more effective communicators and conversationalists (language use)
• develop the ability to reflect on the nature of language itself (metalinguistic skill)
• learn about the written language system (literacy)
• Written language becomes a primary source of input
- Increasingly individualistic
• Metalinguistic competence develops
- “The ability to reflect upon and to analyse language as an entity itself”
Vocabulary:
- School-aged child acquires between 3,000- 5,000 new words/year (10-13 words/day) (Miller & Gildear, 1987)
- Literacy is closely related to development of word knowledge
- Vocabulary increases in size and depth of word knowledge (e.g., shades of meaning; multiple meanings)
- Increased knowledge of relational terms, especially space & time;
- Increased knowledge of kinship terms such as cousin, in-law etc.;
- Learn double-function words – physical and psychological meaning (cold, hard, crooked..); starts by 9 or 10, with full mastery by 12 years.
Organisation of Vocabulary
• Semantic organisation changes with maturity
- associations based on superordinate and subordinate classes
• Semantic networks develop
• Divergent and Convergent semantic skills develop
- Divergent tasks: verbal fluency
- Convergent tasks: semantic categorisation
Word definitions
- Ability to define words changes at school:
- Become less concrete and functional
- Able to provide a formal, conventional definition by 11 years (Year 6).
- Definition follows a formula “a [noun] is a [category]”
Language - Content
Figurative Language Development
• Steady improvement of idiom during school, full understanding at adolescence.
- At 5 or 6 will recognise literal meaning of idiom first and understand nonliteral meaning of some (e.g., to kick the bucket).
• Proverbs more difficult – more syntactically complex, less exposure.
- Some understood around 7 years, comprehension continues to develop into adulthood (e.g., a stitch in time saves nine)
• May be able to produce metaphorical language but unable to explain meaning until 11 years of age (e.g., You are my sunshine).
Language - Form
Slow, gradual advances in syntax in school-aged child
• utterance length increases on average one word per year until about 9 years of age, when it begins to taper off
• a continual evolution of more complex low frequency structures (e.g., passive sentences)
• many structures are used before they are understood
• with age, children will achieve more consistent comprehension and production of:
1. Wh questions 2. Complex sentences 3. Passive sentences
4. Various morphological features related to nouns and verbs
Wh Questions
Further wh-questions develop as children begin to understand
- Time = When?
- Causality = Why?
- Instrumental relationships = What? How?
Complex sentences
Conditional “if” sentences
• One proposition is dependent upon the fulfilment of a stated condition
• Those that express logically related conditions are understood earlier
▪ “If the sun shines, I feel warm”
• Reversible relationships are understood later
▪ “If you win, I will leave”
▪ “If I leave, you will win”.
• Usually most complex understood by 8 years (Wallach, 1984)
Hypothetical reasoning > “If this…then that”
• Beyond understanding experience-based conditional relationships
• Requires ability to think flexibly and consider several possible outcomes of a condition
• Use and understanding evolves beyond 12 years of age (needed to understand syllogisms and attempt deductive reasoning)
Complex sentences cont
Although” and “unless” sentences:
• Although = juxtaposes a condition against a contrasting proposition
• “Wekeptwalkingalthoughweweretired”
• Unless = expresses a negative conditional relationship
• “Unless we save the money, we can’t go”
• If and although understood by 11 years
• Unless not fully understood and used until 15 years
Passive Sentences
• Prep students may produce reversible passives but have trouble interpreting because of word order.
- The boy was chased by the girl. (The girl chased the boy)
• Agentive non-reversible are more frequently produced under 11yrs.
- The window was broken by the boy.
• Instrumental non-reversible passives are more frequently produced between 11 and 13 yrs.
- The window was broken by the rock.
Reflexive Sentences
Reflexive pronouns are later developing
• Myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves,
oneself.
• Used when:
when the subject and object are the same e.g., He cut himself when he was shaving.
• Can also be used for emphasis – can appear redundant e.g., I did the assignment myself…
The engine itself never missed a beat…
The photos that he himself selected were excellent.
Irregular Past Tense and Plurals
• Run-ran, eat-ate, child-children, man-men….
• Often appear just prior to school then disappear due to overgeneralisation
• Then relearned by early school years
• Some continue to pose challenges – even for adolescents and adults
(lie-lay-lain, swim-swam-swum, ring-rang-rung, hanged- hung)
Conversation
• Begins to consider others’ intentions by 8 years.
• Increased ability to deal with conversational breakdown → by 9 years can use sophisticated repair strategies to address perceived source of breakdown;
• Ability to maintain topic grows in school years; concrete → by 9 years can sustain topic through several turns, abstract (11 years)
- Number of turns in each topic & manner for maintaining topic grows;
• Spontaneous request for clarification by 9 –10 years;
Narrative
• ‘True Narratives’ emerge at approx. 5 – 7 years of age (central theme, character, plot, characters have motivations, logically ordered sequences of events ++)
• Informing (reduced omission of key information) improves with:
- the ability to adopt the listener’s perspectives
- advances in linguistic competence (e.g., adverb use, temporal terms)
• Story grammar analyses reveal that with age children’s stories contain more complete and complex episodes
• 6-year-olds begin to produce complete episodes
• While 6-year-olds are using a greater variety of conjunctions (now, then, so, though), even at 11 years, 20% of narrative sentences begin with “and”
• By 9 or 10 there are more components in the episodes
• By 11 or 12 complex narratives with embedded episodes are starting to be produced
• Development of narrative abilities continues through high-school into adulthood (where the purpose changes e.g., telling facts to persuading the listener/reader).
Metalinguistic Abilities
Primary school
Appreciates humour in jokes involving lexical ambiguity
Judges appropriateness of different forms for different situations and listeners Understands multiple word meanings
Adolescent and Adult
Analyses sentences at various levels
Understands various forms of figurative language (idioms, metaphors, proverbs etc)
Creates humour through lexical ambiguity Judges correctness/explains source of error
