Oral Language

Oral Language

Lipson, M.Y. & Wixson, K.K. (2009). The foundations of literacy. In Assessment and instruction of reading and writing difficulties: An interactive approach, fourth edition. (249-301). Allyn & Bacon.

Definition of processOral language- Oral language is one of the developmental milestones that is acquired by children at a very young age. Oral language is the process by which a person uses words to communicate. It refers to the process of acquiring new words and combining them to express the relationship between objects, attributes and actions. Oral language involves a cognitive process that provides speakers with an understanding of the use of words in different contexts.  It also involves a combination of patterns, intonation and facial and body gestures that together allow the speaker to exchange ideas, comment, request, and express different emotions.  Oral language has five subcomponents that are necessary to communicate effectively. These components are phonology, which refers to the combination of sounds to form words, grammar, the meaning of words; morphology, the use of morphemes to mark subtle changes of meanings; syntax, the order of words in a sentence; and pragmatics, the use of words in different contexts.

Developmental Information of Process
Emergent literacy is influenced by both experience and instruction. Reading and writing are correlated with oral language competence, and share the following characteristics: a language-basis, cognition, a communicative-basis, and are interactive. Reading difficulties can stem from either speech (decoding) or language-processing (comprehension) problems. Phonology and vocabulary are two of many elements which affect the development or oral language.

Regarding phonology, infants attend to speech sounds early on. On average, babbling (and the ability to distinguish among phonemes) begins at about 6 months. By age seven, most speech sounds are developed. A child’s first words are heavily tied to phonology.
Vocabulary development is a strong predictor of reading comprehension (Senechal & LeFevre, 2002; Tabors, Snow, & Dickinson, 2001). Words take on meaning and are used intentionally as early as 10 months of age—“holistic representations” are not uncommon (i.e., the use of the word “dog” to mean any animal). First words often fall into the following categories: statements, directives, sounds, nouns (Caselli et al., 1995). Children with large vocabularies tend to perform better on phonemic awareness tasks in their first year of school (Senechal, Ouellette, Rodney, 2006). Factors which impact the rate of vocabulary development include: hearing, intelligence, personality, attention to meaning, and phonological memory (Gathercole, Willis, & Baddeley, 1992).


Stage of Reading Impacted
The development of oral language skills will be most important for the foundations of reading, or the emergent literacy stage. This is where the necessary skills are acquired for later reading and writing development. it is highly impacted by the development of oral language. Literacy skills are highly impacted by the development of oral language and also develop simultaneously with general cognitive development. These skills begin to develop early on in life and by age 10 months, infants are able to understand and begin to use individual words with meaning. Exposure to literacy and vocabulary development early in life is an integral part of developing strong literacy skills in early childhood. An important skill to develop is phonemic awareness, which can be a long process and is usually not acquired until school age. Phonemic awareness and learning to read are linked skills and influence each other during development. Phonemic skills that come on line in preschool/kindergarten are: rhyming, blending, counting, segmenting, deleting, and substituting. In addition to phonemic awareness, print awareness is also a necessary acquired skill for early literacy. Children learn that oral language as well as print are communicative and share a message. The types of experiences that children have at school and at home will also have an impact on their oral language and reading development. Shared story reading influences oral language development by increasing vocabulary. Exposure to alphabet and print in the home also help to foster the foundations of reading. Oral language development in early childhood both influences and is influenced by literacy development and exposure. This makes the emergent reader stage one of the primary stages impacted by oral language skills.

Connections to bilingual or cultural diversity
As mentioned in the article, oral language is the base of literacy skills. It is also suggested that good social/cultural, linguistic, and cognitive knowledge and skills in L1 would increase the likelihood of success in L2 reading and writing. In terms of oral language development, there are both universal and culturally-specific language development features. For example, applying holistic meanings to a single word could be a universal characteristic of oral language development while phonemic inventory and rate/word type in vocabulary development are considered rather cultural/linguistic specific. The pragmatic aspects such as discourse, appropriateness, paralinguistcs, or cognitive-academic language proficiency are also culture-related. Therefore, culture shapes a child’s oral language development.

As for how culture impacts literacy, even though the presentation of alphabets is linguistically different across languages, the purpose of written language is to communicate. However, it is pointed out that children begin learning reading and writing skills in culturally situated environment such as home. For example, parents of different ethnic groups or cultures have different styles of reading stories to children, which would also shape children’s interests and reading abilities.

In terms of assessments of children’s literacy, it is important to consider if the child speaks other languages other than English. If so, the relationship between literacy and language can be complex. All aspects of the language should be carefully evaluated. Both areas of language comprehension and production to assess include speech articulation, syntax, pragmatics, and vocabulary.


Video:
Invented Spelling

Gina Sparrow
Kirstin Warden
Melissa Velazquez
Janice Wu