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Ch. 3. Growing up with English
In this Chapter, we look at:
1. How children in the preschool years learn to speak,
2. How children in the preschool years learn to read and write
as English monolingual or bilingual users.
3. Is English language a more difficult language?
4. How children learn the literacy practices of their
communities
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What do young children use English for in spoke communications?
• A tool for social actions, e.g. Tell mummy what
they want;
• Establish identity as a person;
• Build social relationships
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Children’s development of speaking (communication) skills in English
Important stages (around 0- 8 years old):
Early production of sounds(phonology)
Vowels & consonants (babbling)
Concept
of time!
Single words (nouns, adj. & verbs)
Simple sentences (2 words, subject + verb)
Longer sentences (3 words, learning of tenses)
Sentences with more than 3 words (learning of tenses)
Narratives (sequence) / jokes (punch lines) / question
& answer pattern
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Children’s development of communication skills
in English (speaking)
 Early production of sounds (babbling, imitating
sounds);
 The emergence of individual words and the right
order in which they appear;
 Combination of these to make sentences
 Then build the sentences into longer stretches of
speech
They learn these for communication
(social interactions/ pragmatic)!
Caregivers as models (dialogue with them)
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Learning of vocabulary (pp. 101-103)
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Learning of vocabulary
(example of 2-word stage)
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Learning of vocabulary (pp. 101-103)
telegraphic
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Learning of grammar and vocabulary
Single word (noun, adjective or verb)
Then subject + verb
Then a bit longer (3 elements);
(e,g, Daddy got car)
Then much longer around 3 years old;
Later ( 4 ½ - 5), they can make a lot of grammatical
correct sentences (e.g. correct use of tenses, related
to time)
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Learning of grammar
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Learning of vocabulary and grammar (pp. 97-98)
- First learn from caregivers (usually mommy);
- While they are trying to learn a language (take control of a language), over-extensions occur:
1. Over-extension of certain vocabulary;
e.g. all animals with four legs are ‘dogs’;
2. Over-extension of certain grammatical rules
e.g. walk – walked  (verb form)
go-goed 
orange – oranges  (plurality )
mouse – mouses 
3. Sentences containing nouns, verbs and adjectives only, details missing (telegraphic speech);
60% vocabulary for naming function, 20 % express actions ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLvlXVEihKw)
e.g
4. children are able to include important elements to convey their messages while missing out
the details (interesting!).
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Examples of over-extension of vocabulary (p. 100)
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Example of over-extension of grammar (p. 99)
p. 99 (Read the extract below and suggest why Fredrick was annoyed and then satisfied
(‘that’s right’))
Children are aware of their linguistic
competence and their linguistic
performance although over-extensions
occur.
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Developing the concept of time
Embedded in the use of tenses.
Development of tense:
1. No tense or aspect inflections;
(e.g. he’s play; he play; she sleep (don’t realize they need to
change the verbs into past tense to refer to something
happened in the past)
2. May use other words to refer to time e.g. before, after, soon.
2. Past tense occurs
(e.g. she sleep)
(e.g. she sleeped / slept)
All the three are used by children to indicate past tense.
4. Then they gradually discover the rules of the language;
realized that there are exceptions (e.g. sleeped  slept )
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Children’s development of communication
skills in English
What other knowledge they need to acquire the three kinds of
competence mentioned in the previous slide in order to use English
successfully for communication exchanges?
e.g.
 Prosodic features: pitch, loudness, speed, intonation and rhythm,,
along with other tones of voice, to convey meaning;
 The ways in which varieties of the language differ: e.g. region,
gender, class, occupation, and other factors
 Rules of social behaviour
 Strategies to achieve special effects, such as jokes and poems.
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Language learning is …
Canale and Swain modified the idea about language learning as
involving the followings: (Canale 1983, 1984; Canale & Swain 1980a,
1980b).
There are four types of competence.
1.Grammatical competence
2.Sociolinguistic competence
3.Discourse competence
4. Strategic competence
Communicative competence:
Related to rules of social
behaviors (affected by the
social and cultural contexts in
which English is used.
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Rules of social behaviour are also very important
(Talking in English in conversations)
• Opening & closing
• Turn-taking skills
• Listening skills (understand and extract relevant
information from the speakers)
• Adjaceny pairs
(e.g. Question-and-answer sequences)
• Politeness strategies (cultural/gender/age… differences)
• Appropriate vocabulary
• …
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More examples on children learning to communicate in English (p. 104)
Activity 3.7 ( learning as cooperative conversationalists)
Read the following extract, find out:
i. What Susie (4;7) acquired in order to take part in this conversation?
ii. What skills does she still appear to be developing?
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More examples on children learning to communicate in English (p. 104)
p. 104 (learning the culture-specific particles)
Read the following extract, and find out what culture-specific particles the girl
learnt from her father
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Summary
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
A young child first learns a language for communication only. i.e. they
learn social routines first (cooperative competence),
Remember that grammar rules are embedded in the conversation
between the infant and the caregiver (dyad), i.e. they will also learn
grammar rules through communicating/ imitating the caregiver
Then when they grow older, they learn how to use the language both
appropriately and correctly (communicative competence);
Bilingual children need to learns two systems. They compare and contrast
the two systems. Learn when and how to use them appropriately and
correctly.
Code switching among bilinguals is common.
Pragmatic strategies of code switching (linguistic choices) is common
among bilinguals. e.g. language as identity (trans-languaging).
Social and stylistic variation among monolingual English speakers (as first
language) is also common (style-shifting).
How children’s speech may vary and change due to factors such as social
class, age and gender
Remember how these factors affect language use vary over time
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Roles of caregivers on children learning to communicate in English (p. 104)
Activity 3.8 ( Role of teacher and Father)
Read the following extract, find out
i. what the father tries to do that makes it odd.
ii. Implications of the response of the child.
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Importance of caregivers(maid, mom, grannies, teachers)
- Motivate their cooperative awareness (dyad - - work in
pairs);
- Build up their confidence to respond, to communicate…
- Provide language environment for children to learn the
sound of the language and then imitate and use the language;
- Conversation between them is a kind of linguistic modelling
for their future communication with other people;
- Through games between caregiver and the infant, the infant
learn
i. the predictable exchanges through caregiving routines
such as feeding, bathing …
ii. question-and-answer sequence;
iii. Turn-taking skills (e.g. peek-ka-poo);
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BCT0EGi74w
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Children Learn What They Live
By Dorothy Law Nolte, Ph.D.
If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn.
If children live with hostility, they learn to fight.
If children live with fear, they learn to be apprehensive.
If children live with pity, they learn to feel sorry for
themselves.
If children live with ridicule, they learn to feel shy.
If children live with jealousy, they learn to feel envy.
If children live with shame, they learn to feel guilty.
If children live with encouragement, they learn confidence.
If children live with tolerance, they learn patience.
If children live with praise, they learn appreciation.
If children live with acceptance, they learn to love.
If children live with approval, they learn to like themselves.
If children live with recognition, they learn it is good to have a
goal.
If children live with sharing, they learn generosity.
If children live with honesty, they learn truthfulness.
If children live with fairness, they learn justice.
If children live with kindness and consideration, they learn
respect.
If children live with security, they learn to have faith in
themselves and in those about them.
If children live with friendliness, they learn the world is a nice
place in which to live.
Copyright © 1972 by Dorothy Law Nolte
http://www.empowermentresources.com/info2/childrenlearn-long_version.html
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To recap:
Children’s development of speaking(communication) skills in English
Important stages (around 0- 8 years old):
Early production of sounds(phonology)
Vowels & consonants (babbling)
Concept
Single words (nouns, adj. & verbs)
of time!
Simple sentences (2 words, subject + verb)
Longer sentences (3 words, learning of tenses)
Sentences with more than 3 words (learning of tenses)
Narratives (sequence) / jokes (punch lines) / question &
answer pattern
*** Language acquisition is a matter of learning both the
rules of social behaviour (cultural) and grammatical rules!
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Learning to read and write in English
(pp. 109-126)
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Basic things a child needs to know
while learning to read and write
 Signs and symbols ( pictographs)
 Basis of different writing systems;
[Logographic (e.g. Chinese)]
[Syllabic (e.g. Japanese)]
[Alphabetic (e.g. English)]
 Symbols represent meaning (26 letters combine together to make
meaning);
 In English language, symbols represent (=) sounds:
grapheme-phoneme correspondences rules
(e.g Letter ‘a’ represents the sound of it in different words such
as ‘cat’, ‘play’.)
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Advantages: cutting words into small units
1. Analytic phonics: distinguishes the initial consonants(onset) from the rest of the syllable (rime)
pat
onset
rime
p
at
mat
pet
met
sit
pit
lit
slit
spit
spite
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How children figure out spelling of a word? (P. 114)
meaning
pronunciation
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What a child needs to know
while learning to read and write (Readings A and B)
Learn to recognize what counts as important in each script:
 learn the type of stroke to be used;
 directionality;
 shape;
 size;
 spatial orientation ( Fig. 308 on p118);
 placement of the page (even angle, length in Chinese and Arabic, in
Chinese, angles and spaces between strokes may change the
meaning) e.g. ‘大’ and ‘六’
 While deciding the angle, spaces, length, their cognitive skills are
involved.
 Learning to write involves their embodied knowledges (visual, actional and
cognitive aspects)
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p. 118
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Is learning to read and write in English more difficult? (Reading A)
Advantage
- Syllabic (into morphemes, each of them carry meaning)
The main disadvantage
• Many exceptional words in English that do not conform to the graphemephoneme correspondences rules <i.e. symbol equals to sound>, actually English
spelling system is unsystematic!)
e.g.Inconsistent grapheme-phoneme correspondences rules e.g. cat, play and are.
(Different sounds for the same letter ‘a’ when it is combined with other letters to
make a word.)
• Therefore, they need to memorise a lot of exceptions.
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Learning to engage in literacy practices of their communities
e.g. Halloween card
-pumpkin, moon, bats
e.g. mid-autumn festival card
- lantern, moon, rabbits
e.g. Mother’s Day card
- cakes, hearts, flowers…
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Learning to engage in literacy practices of their communities
(pp. 115 – 117)
Heath (1982a) investigated how children in three places, namely
Maintown, Roadville and Trackton learnt to read and write
before formal schooling.
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Heath (1982a): results
Maintown
Background:
Middle class community
Environment in which
children were brought up:
Environment filled with print!
Learns rules about book
reading;
Learnt to use sentence
structures for written texts
when very young!
Purposes of reading books:
Teaching purposes;
interactive
Roadville
Background:
White working class
community;
Parents work in textile mills
Environment in which
children were brought up:
Trackton
Background:
Black work-class
community,
Agriculture in the past but
now with textile mills.
Environment in which
children were brought up:
Children’s room filled with
books;
Parents not encourage
reading;
Children have no books;
Learnt from adult talk, oral
narratives;
Start reading at schools
Purposes of reading books:
Purposes of reading books:
Reading is for social
discussion; negotiation of
meaning
Mainly for teaching;
Not for storytelling.
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Schiefflin and Cochran-Smith (1984)
They looked at literacy before schooling in three
very diverse cultural setting:
 a Philadelphia nursery school in the USA;
 a Kaluli community in Papua New guinea and;
 a Sino-Vietnamese family in Philadelphia.
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Schiefflin and Cochran-Smith (1984)
Philadelphia nursery school
Kaluli community in Papua
Sino-vietnamese refugee
family in philadephia
Background:
Background:
Background:
Parents are literate in English;
Parents place high value on
reading & writing.
Purposes of reading and
writing:
For self-expression, for
learning, for social
interaction.
Some adults learn English;
Don’t read or write at home;
Not important for children
either;
Actually discourage
children to read books!
Purposes of reading and
writing:
For teaching Bible (literacy
bought in by Christian
missionary).
Literate in Chinese;
Purposes of reading and
writing:
Functional need to learn
English!
Get things done!
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To conclude
• The path taken to literacy vary from one
context to another;
• Meaning / purposes/ definition (concepts) of
literacy differ/ vary from one community to
another.
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