preschool period
2 years before a child enters elementary school, or between about ages 3 and 5 years.
- acquire new words at a lightning pace—about 860 words per year—averaging about two new words per day during this period
Contextualized language
is grounded in the immediate context, or the here and now.
- Such language relies on the back-ground knowledge a speaker and a listener share, and on gestures, intonation, and immediately present situational cues.
Decontextualized language
relies heavily on the language itself in the construction of meaning. Such language may not contain context cues and does not assume a speaker and a listener share background knowledge or context.
Theory of mind progression
- children demonstrate sensitivity to diverse desires
- demonstrate sensitivity to diverse beliefs,
- show sensitivity to knowledge access,
- understand false belief
- understand hidden emotion
- children understand sarcasm
Sentential complements
structures that represent a person’s speech or mental state. They contain a main clause with a verb of communication or a mental state verb and an embedded clause that may or may not be true.
emergent literacy
earliest period of learning about reading and writing
metalinguistic ability
the ability to view language as an object of attention.
- an important achievement of the preschool period that correlates well with children’s success with writing and reading instruction, both of which depend on the ability to focus on language as an object of attention
Three important achievements in emergent literacy for preschoolers are
alphabet knowledge, print awareness, and phonological awareness.
Alphabet knowledge
is children’s knowledge about the letters of the alphabet.
- children who grew-up reading know letters in the 1st 3 years of their life
- by age 5 they know letters in their name (own name advantage) 79% of them
Print awareness
is children’s understanding of the forms and functions of written language
- print interest
- recognition of print functions
- understanding print conventions (left to right/ top to bottom)
- understanding print forms (learn words and letters)
- recognizing print to part to whole relationships (how letters combine to make words)
- when reading to themselves only loook @ book 5-6% of time
- when ADULTS read looks they 12.5 times when an adult read the book verbatim, 17.7 times when an adult made nonverbal references to print, and 21.2 times when an adult made verbal references to print.
phonological awareness
is children’s sensitivity to the sound units that make up speech
- beginning at around age 2 years
Own-name advantage:
Children learn the letters of their names earlier than other letters.
Letter-name pronunciation effect:
Children learn alphabet letters with the name of the letter in its pronunciation earlier than letters for which this is not the case
Letter-order hypothesis:
Children learn letters occurring earlier in the alpha-bet string (e.g., A, B, C) before letters occurring later in the alphabet string (e.g., X, Y, Z).
Consonant-order hypothesis:
Children learn letters for which correspond-ing consonantal phonemes are learned early in development (e.g., B, M) be-fore letters for which corresponding consonantal phonemes are learned later (e.g., J, V).
shallow level of phonological awareness
show an implicit and rudimentary sensitivity to large units of sound structure.
- word awareness
- syllable awareness
- rhyme awareness
- onset awareness
- phoneme identity
- developed form 3- 5 years of age
deep level of phonological awareness
demonstrate an explicit and analytical knowledge of the smallest phonological segments of speech
- phoneme blending
- phoneme segmentation
- phoneme counting
- phoneme manipulation
phonological processes
systematic errors children make in their speech
- in the age 3–4 period, children have the fastest suppression rate
Two patterns that may persist past the fifth birthday are as follows:
- Liquid gliding: When a liquid consonant (/r/ or /l/) is replaced by a glide consonant (/w/ or /j/— the first sound in yellow)
- Stopping: When a fricative (such as /θ/—the “th” sound in think— or /ð/—the “th” sound in though) or an affricate (such as the first sound in jeep) is replaced by a stop consonant (such as /t/ or /d/)
alphabetic principle
the relationship between letters or combinations of letters (graphemes) and sounds (phonemes).
Derivational morphology
the prefixes and suffixes we add to a word to change its meaning and sometimes its part of speech.
Frequent occurrence in utterance-final position:
Infants and children are most sensitive to sounds and words at the ends of utterances. Children first learn morphemes occurring as suffixes.
Syllabicity:
Children first learn morphemes that constitute their own syllables (e.g., present progressive -ing) and later learn morphemes that contain only a single sound (e.g., third-person singular -s).
Single relation between morpheme and meaning:
Children first learn mor-phemes with only one meaning (e.g., the morpheme the functions only as a definite article) before they learn morphemes that express multiple meanings (e.g., -s denotes present tense, third person, and plural number).
