Transcript Oral Language

Oral Language Structures
• 1. Why is oral language ability important
for reading and writing?
• Theory: Reading and writing abilities are
based on oral language ability.
• Many/most of the skills necessary for good
reading and writing are oral language skills.
• Reading and writing abilities are related,
significantly, to oral language competence.
Oral Language Structures
• Phonology/Sounds
• Semantics/Meaning/Morphology/Vocabulary
• Syntax/Grammar
• Pragmatics
• Children who enter school with high levels of
phonological, semantic and grammatical knowledge
learn to read and write better than children with low
levels.
• Children with high levels of language competence
have better social relationships.
• To promote language competence, children need to
have multiple opportunities to speak, and be spoken
to.
• About grade 3-4, children learn most of their
vocabulary, and grammar through written language.
Phonological Processing
• The ability to process the sounds and
prosody of language.
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• 2. What does it mean to have receptive phonological
processing ability?
• 3. What does it mean to have productive phonological
processing ability?
• 4. Compare vowel sounds to consonants.
• 5. What is a syllable?
Phonological (Sounds of language)
Processing Competence
• Children who have receptive phonological processing
skills have the ability to recognize the sound patterns
of their native language when they are listening.
• They can tell the difference between individual sounds
(phonemes, i.e. /b/ and /p/. Therefore, they can tell the
difference between the meaning of the words /bat/ and
/pat/.
• Children with receptive phonological processing skills
have the ability to recognize the prosody of their native
language. Prosody includes rhythm, pitch and
intonation.
• Phonological processing competence
also includes the ability to produce
(speak) all of the sounds (phonemes) of
the language
and
• Combine them into syllables, onsets
(initial sound(s)), rimes (vowel sound +
final sound(s)), and words.
• Produce multi-word expressions with appropriate
prosody (pitch, intonation, stress).
• In order to communicate a person has to have stored
representations of sounds, words and prosody that
match the sounds, words and prosodic features that
the person hears.
• A child may be able to match whole words to stored
representations in a global manner, but may not be
able to match segments of words to each other
(phonemes, onsets, rhymes, syllables).
Prosody
The rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech
May reflect the speakers emotional state
May reflect the sentence type; statement, question, or
command
May reflect irony
May reflect sarcasm
May reflect emphasis
May reflect humor
Prosody
1. PROSODIC FEATURES TEND TO INDICATE THE
EMOTIONAL STATE OF THE SPEAKER.
“RAISING ONE’S VOICE “ IN ANGER, FOR EXAMPLE,
INCREASES BOTH LOUDNESS AND PITCH.
2. A STATE OF EXCITEMENT CAUSES AN INCREASE IN
THE RATE OF SPEAKING.
Prosody
DECALARATIVE: “You are going home”
INTEROGATIVE: “You are going home?”
(voice is raised at end of sentence)
IMPERATIVE: “You ARE going home!”
(are is emphasized)
• This level of phonological processing is
carried out below the level of
consciousness.
• The ability to learn language is part of our genetic
inheritance, like learning to walk.
• Children learn to process language unconsciously
like children learn to walk unconsciously.
• Humans are pre-programmed to learn selected
things quickly. (Nature)
• However, children need to be exposed to language
in order to internalize these sound patterns.
(Environment)
Speech Production Skills
• Competent speakers can make two kinds of
sounds (phonemes), vowels and consonants.
• Speakers make vowel sounds by vibrating the
vocal chords (voiced), and altering the shape of
their mouth (a,e,i,o,u)* (Unblocked).
• When speakers make consonant sounds,
significantly more air is obstructed by the vocal
tract.* Too, consonant sounds can be produced
with or without vocal chord vibrations (Blocked).
• Vowel sounds are always voiced
and unblocked
• Consonant sounds can be voiced
or unvoiced and are always blocked
(i.e. by the teeth, and/or tongue, and/or
lips).
• The syllable* is the unit of speech
production; We do not speak sound by sound like we write
letter by letter, but the sounds (phonemes) of a syllable overlap
into a single syllabic unit as it is produced.
•
c
a
t
• A syllable is a unit of speech that includes
one vowel sound; there is a syllable for each
vowel sound in a word.
Importance of Phonological Processing Skills
• Early spoken language problems are predictive of
problems in learning to read and write.
• Children who experience difficulty analyzing the
phonological structure of words (into syllables,
and phonemes) have significant difficulty learning
how to read.*
• In order to build up a spoken vocabulary, a learner must
form stored representations of the sound (phoneme)
patterns of words.
• (The dictionaries in our mind can be likened to the
dictionaries on our shelf; that is, they are the words in both
are organized by their sounds, and not by their meanings.)
Semantics/Meaning/Morpholo
gy/Vocabulary
distractible = dis + tract + ible
• 6. What is semantics?
• 7. What are “content” words?
• 8. What is the relationship between oral
vocabulary knowledge and reading ability?
The Development of Word Meaning and Vocabulary
(Morphology)
• In order to understand what someone is
saying, you need to associate meanings
with particular sound (phoneme) patterns.
• The semantic system is the meaning
system.
• Content words, or lexical words (including nouns,
•
•
•
•
verbs, adjectives, and most adverbs), are words that
carry the content or the meaning of a sentence, are
open-class words. Open classes accept the addition of
new morphemes (words), through such processes as
compounding, derivation, inflection, coining, and
borrowing.
Examples:
Nouns John, room, answer
Adjectives happy, new, large, grey
Verbs search, grow, hold, have
Adverbs really, completely, very, also, enough
• The correlation between vocabulary and
reading comprehension is very strong.
• Children who enter first grade with
larger spoken vocabularies are often the
ones who score highest on reading
achievement tests at the end of first
grade.
• Each time a child learns a new word
with a similar sound (phoneme) pattern
of a known word, the phonological
representations become segmented
(below the level of consciousness).
Defeciencies in Spoken Vocabulary
• Most individuals with limited vocabularies also have
problems in phonological processing, memory, syntax,
and orthography (spelling patterns).
• There is a strong correlation between vocabulary
measures and reading comprehension scores.
• It is essentially impossible to be a skilled reader if one
has limited vocabulary.
Syntax/Grammar
9.What are the two main roles of syntactic knowledge?
10. What are “Grammatical Function Words?”
11. What is prosody?
Grammatical Knowledge
• Speakers need to know more than individual words to
accomplish their communication goals.
• Speakers need to know how to combine words in
ways that are likely to be understood by others
(and judged as well formed).
• Different meanings are derived from different word
order.
Joe, Bill, hit
Joe hit Bill. Vs. Bill hit Joe
you, give, money, me
You give me money vs. Me give you money.
Speakers need to know how to combine parts of
words in ways that are likely to be understood by
others (and judged as well formed).

Different meanings are derived by adding
prefixes and suffixes to root words.
form reform informed formation

Different meanings are derived from inflectional
endings.

Boy, boys;
I hit, she hits;
melt, melted; run, running
• In contrast to content words, grammatical function
words (GFW; also called grammatical words) are
words that have little lexical meaning or have
ambiguous meaning, but instead serve to express
grammatical relationships with other words within
a sentence.
• Function words are closed-class word since
languages do not easily add new words to this set.
They are always relatively few and resistant to
change. They are lexically unproductive and are
generally invariable in form.
Different meanings are derived by adding
grammatical function words (GFW):
determiners (a, the)
prepositions (over, under, by)
complementizers (that)
conjunctions (and, because, if)
auxiliaries (can, do, should)
question words (what, how)
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•
When the judge entered the courtroom,
everyone rose.
They fed her the dog biscuits.
They fed her dog the biscuits.
----------------------------------------------------------------------The old train the young.
Visiting relatives can be a
nuisance.
Conjunctions
• Tom went to school because it was Monday.
• If it is Monday, Tom is in school.
• Tom wanted to go on a picnic, but it was
Monday and he had to go to school.
• Tom went to school on Monday, and his older
sister Mary went to the park.
Prepositions (Spatial)
• Tom walked under the bridge.
• Tom walked over the bridge.
• Tom walked next to the bridge.
Prepositions (Temporal)
• Tom ate breakfast before he went to
school.
• Tom went to his class as soon as he
got to school.
Anaphora (Pronouns)
• Tom walked to school. He was late. His
sister left earlier and she was on time.
• Tom’s class went on a field trip.
• They went to a museum. Their teacher
and several parents went with them.
Auxilary Verbs
• Tom is running.
• Tom and Mary are running
• Tom can run very fast.
• Tom should eat his vegetables.
Question Words
• Who was late?
• Why was Tom’s sister not late?
• Where did Tom go?
• Speakers have an “implicit” (unconscious)
knowledge of grammatical categories.
• Speakers have an “implicit” (unconscious)
knowledge of the temporal order of words in
phrases.
• Speakers with this knowledge are able to
achieve their communication goals.
•
People have some mental process that
helps them bundle groups of words into
components.
• It is thought that people use grammatical
rules:
1. Sentence = noun phrase + verb phrase
2. Noun phrase = (determiner) + (adjective) + noun
3. Verb phrase = verb + (noun phrase)
The tall boy hit the round ball
There are other theories of how this works.
• People use their grammatical knowledge to
create and comprehend multi-word utterances
that:
• (1) portray the relationships in mental scenes
that they envision;
• (2) demand responses from themselves or
their listeners or
• (3) request information
• (4) Children could not become good readers
without grammatical knowledge.
• (5) Children could not become good writers
without grammatical knowledge.
Pragmatics
Pragmatics
• 12. What are pragmatic language skills?
Pragmatics
• Pragmatics deals with knowledge of the
Social and cultural aspects of language.
1. People with good pragmatic skill vary the way
they talk (and write) depending upon their
purpose.
2. People with good pragmatic skill vary the way
they talk (and write) depending upon their
audience.
Pragmatics
Language use varies among social class
Language use varies among cultures
Language use varies among ethnic groups.
Language use varies among geographic regions
(dialects)
Pragmatics
The language of school is Standard English and
the style is formal (like that used in texts)
Other forms may be nonstandard like dialects
spoken in inner cities, or Appalachia.
People speaking nonstandard forms are just as
able to communicate with each other as those
speaking a formal style.
Instructional Implications
• 13. What are three instructional
implications of oral language
processes?
• 14. What are three things to include
when reading to young children?
• When speaking to young children,
adults need to use “grown-up”
vocabulary in context; i.e. when going
through the check-out line speak about
the “cashier.”
Instructional implications for Young Child
• When appropriate, adults need to speak in
more sophisticated sentences, and expand
the child’s utterances (without asking them to
repeat them). i.e. If child said “I go potty,” the
adult can say, “Oh, you have to use the toilet
in the bathroom.”
• Narrate an experience as you go through it with
the child; “Now we have everything we need
for dinner, so we have to see how much
money it will cost, and pay the cashier.”
• Encourage child to use more uncommon words
and longer sentences by having them relate an
experience to an adult that wasn’t present; “Tell
daddy what we did at the supermarket today?
What did we do after we had all the food we
needed for dinner?” “Yes, then we paid the
cashier, and she helped us put our food into
bags. The cashier was very helpful.
Instructional implications for Young Child
• Adults can help a child’s articulation by
exaggerating the mispronounced sound, the
omitted syllable, or the incorrect form of the
verb without having the child repeat.
•
bafroom bathroom;
basiball bas ket ball
hit
hits
Reading to Young Children
• 1. When reading to a child focus on
uncommon words and uncommon grammar
(Before, during, and/or after reading).
• 2. Read the same book several times.
Children love listening to familiar texts, and
become more familiar with the uncommon
words and grammar the more they hear it.
• 3. Have children make predictions about the
story to get then more engaged. “So, what
do you think Max is going to do?”
Oral vs. Written Language
• 15. Compare oral and written language
learning.
• Theory: Written language is culturally
determined, but oral language is biologically
determined.
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Written language is secondary to oral language.
Written language learning is dependant upon
oral language learning.
•
Written language learning is explicit and
conscious, but oral language learning is implicit
and unconscious.
Oral Language
• Every culture has oral
language.
Written Language
• Significantly fewer cultures
have written language than
have oral language.
• Oral language development
always precedes written
language development.
• Written language
development always follows
oral language development.
• All people learn to speak with
• A (small) minority of people
little difficulty (with very few
have significant difficulty
exceptions).
learning to read.
• Oral language is learned
implicitly, below the level of
consciousness.
• Written language is learned
explicitly, and consciously.
Speaking vs. Academic/Written
Language
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Academic Language
• 12. Compare academic/written to oral
language
Writing vs. Speaking
• More uncommon words; more words than is
commonly used in oral language.
• More complex grammar; longer sentences than are
found in oral language. (In fact, oral language users
seldom speak in sentences at all.)
• More de-contextualized: more of the meaning is in
the language/words itself. In addition to the
language/words, oral language users have additional
means of communicating. this can include body
language, facial expressions, and the pitch, intonation
and stress of the voice.
The Six Language Arts
The Six Language Arts
• 13. What are the three receptive
language arts?
• 14. What are the three expressive or
productive language arts?
The Six Language Arts
• Listening:
Speaking:
• Oral Language
Receptive language
»
Construct Meaning
Expressive/productive language:
Construct/Create meaning
The Six Language Arts
• Reading:
Writing:
Written Language
Receptive language
Construct meaning
Expressive/productive
language:
Construct/Create meaning
The Six Language Arts
• Viewing:
• Visual Information
Receptive
Construct meaning
Visual Reproduction:
meaning
Expressive/ productive
Construct/Create