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CSD 333 Oral Language Development
Dept. of Communicative Sciences and Disorders
Michigan State University
Professor Laura Dilley
Spring, 2019
Unit 14 (Apr. 15 – 21, 2019)
A language sample
• Overall
– Good decontextualized language
– Brown’s Stage Post V with MLU 4.5+
– ~100% intelligible
• Speech perception
– Great receptive lexicon
• Phonology
– Almost all consonants
– Substitution pattern: fronting
A language sample
• Morphology
– Good derivational and grammatical morphology
– Possessive `s incorrect in “Valentine’s Day”
• Syntax
– Good with use of declarative, negative, and
interrogative modalities
– Clip uses simple rather than complex syntax
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A language sample
• Semantics
– Large receptive and expressive lexicons
– Robust semantic network
– Some words in the lexicon aren’t fully developed
• Pragmatics
– Ability to carry on a conversation has advanced
– Has a fairly robust conversational schema
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The school‐age years!
Developmental milestones
• Up through the preschool years, identifying
language milestones is fairly straightforward
• Pinpointing language development in the
school‐age years and beyond is not so simple
• Two aspects of language development in the
school years:
– Shift in sources of language input
– Acquisition of metalinguistic competence
Shift in sources of language input
• Once children learn to read, they can acquire
language input from written text
• Beginning at age 8‐10 yrs, children shift to
getting more language input from text
• Oral language must develop both
independently of reading/writing activities
and in concert with them
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Oral language vs. reading/writing
• Oral language development is necessary for
developing reading and writing
– Phonological awareness
– Grapheme‐to‐phoneme conversion
– Print awareness
Oral language vs. reading/writing
• Reading/writing advances lexical knowledge,
phonological, pragmatic, and semantic aspects
– Reading/writing assists with talking more
effectively with teachers and peers
• Symbiotic relationship between oral language
and reading/writing!
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Stages of learning to read
• Prereading (Stage 0): Not reading yet
• Stage 1: Initial reading/decoding
• Stage 2: Confirmation, fluency, and ungluing
from print
• Stage 3: Reading to learn the new
• Stage 4: Multiple viewpoints
• Stage 5: Construction and reconstruction
Prereading stage (Stage 0)
• Birth to formal education
– Oral language develops
– Print awareness
– Phonological awareness
• Research demonstrates the importance of
prereading achievements for reading success
Stage 1: Initial reading/decoding
• Ages K – 1st grade
• Involves associating letters with sounds in words
1) First phase: Errors of substitution are semantically
plausible (Example: “The dog is growling” for The dog is
barking)
2) Second phase: Errors of substitution have a graphic
resemblance (Example: “The dog is green” for The dog
is growling)
3) Third phase: Errors of substitution have a phonological
resemblance and are semantically plausible (Example:
“The dog is going” for The dog is growling)
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Stage 2: Confirmation, fluency, and
ungluing from print
• 2nd to 3rd grade (7‐8 yrs)
• Hone skills from Stage 1 and gain confidence
(confirmation)
• Reading gains speed and becomes fluent
(efficient, well‐paced, error‐free)
• Reading becomes more automatic (“unglued
from print”)
Stage 3: Reading to learn the new
• 4th thru 8th/9th grade (9‐14 yrs)
• During this stage, children read for new
information
• By the end, they are reading solidly
• Over the course of this stage, children develop
the ability to read works of adult length (and
eventually of adult complexity)
Stage 4: Multiple viewpoints
• High school period
• During this stage, students learn to handle
increasingly difficulty concepts and texts
• Unlike in Stage 3, children can consider
multiple viewpoints
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Stage 5: Construction and
reconstruction
• College
• During this stage, readers read selectively
• Involves which portions of text to read –
beginning, middle, end, or some combination
• Readers use advanced cognitive processes of
analysis, synthesis, and prediction
• Readers are critical of what they read and can
muster arguments for different viewpoints
Examples
• Stage 3: “Yes, I read it in a book. The author said it
was true.”
• Stage 4: “I don’t know. One of the authors I read said
it was true; the other said it was not. I think there
may be no true answers on the subject.”
• Stage 5: “There are different views on the matter. But
one of the views seems to have the best evidence
supporting it, and I would tend to go along with that
view.”
Developmental milestones
• Two aspects of language development in the
school years:
– Shift in sources of language input
– Acquisition of metalinguistic competence
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Acquisition of metalinguistic competence
• Metalinguistic competence is the ability to
think about, analyze, and focus on language
• This ability increases substantially in the
school‐age years
• Specific achievements:
– Phonological awareness
– Figurative language
Phonological awareness
• Refers to children’s sensitivity to sound
structure of words
• Moves from “shallow” to “deep”
– Shallow during preschool years
Phonological awareness
• Preschool (shallow): word awareness, syllable
awareness, rhyme awareness, onset
awareness
• Late preschool/early school‐age (shallow but
moving deeper): phoneme identity
• Early school‐age (deep): phoneme blending,
phoneme segmentation, phoneme counting,
phoneme manipulation
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Figurative Language
• Figurative language refers to nonliteral or
abstract expressions
Types of figurative language
• Metaphors
• Similes
• Hyperboles
• Idioms
• Irony and sarcasm
• Proverbs
Metaphors
• Metaphors convey similarity between two
concepts or ideas by equating one with the
other
• Examples
– “She’s a fish”
– “She’s a jewel”
– “She’s a rock”
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Similes
• Similes use “like” or “as” to convey similarity
or likeness
• Examples:
– “like water off a duck’s back”
– “quiet as a mouse”
Hyperboles
• Hyperbole involves exaggeration for emphasis
or effect
• Examples:
– “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse”
– “That was so funny I nearly died laughing”
Idioms
• Idioms are expressions that have a literal and
figurative meaning
• Examples:
– “Hold your tongue”
– “We’re in the same boat”
– “You’re pulling my leg”
– “Shoot the breeze”
– “He drank me under the table”
– “He’s swimming upstream”
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Irony and sarcasm
• Irony and sarcasm are types of figurative
language in which a speaker’s intentions differ
from the literal meaning he/she uses
• Irony and sarcasm both refer to unmet
expectations but differ according to whether
the statement refers to an individual
Irony and sarcasm
• Scenario 1: On the way to the park, Tim comments to
Jan that the weather is perfect for a picnic. As they
unpack their food, it begins to rain. Jan comments,
“What perfect weather for a picnic.”
– This is sarcasm because Jan comes across as criticizing Tim.
• Scenario 2: Tim and Jan walk to the park to have a
picnic. As they unpack their food, it begins to rain.
Jan comments, “What perfect weather for a picnic.”
– This is irony because Jan’s comment is not intended as a
criticism of something Tim said or did.
Proverbs
• Proverbs express conventional values, beliefs
and wisdom of a society
• Examples:
– “It’s better to be safe than sorry”
– “Practice what you preach”
– “A stitch in time saves nine”
– “Practice makes perfect”
– “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”
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Language form
• Morphophonemic development involves
understanding the changes in sounds with
different morphemes
• Examples:
– Pronouncing the plural “’s” ending (as [s], [z] or
[əz])
– Changes in vowel pronunciations when adding
suffixes (decide‐decision, sane‐sanity, ride‐ridden)
– Use of stress for emphasis vs. in compounds (hot
dog vs. hotdog, green house vs. greenhouse)
Language form
• During school‐age years children develop the
ability to use derivational prefixes and
suffixes
• Examples
– Prefixes: un‐ (unhealthy, unrest, undo); dis‐
(disregard, distrust); non‐ (nonstop, nonsensical)
– Suffixes: ‐hood (childhood, adulthood); ‐ment
(excitement, judgment); ‐ly (happily, merrily)
Language form
• During the school years children also achieve
advanced grammatical structures that mark a
“literate”, decontextualized, language style
• Examples
– Passive voice (“Mistakes were made”)
– Future perfect tense (“I will have arrived by 9
p.m.”)
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Persuasion
• Children also develop skills in persuasive
writing
– Examples: Letters to a congressperson, cover
letter for a job
• Persuasive writing is a challenging skill
requiring awareness of what others believe
and value and ability to present ideas in
logical sequence
Skills for persuasion
• Adjust to listener (e.g., age, authority, familiarity)
• State advantages and reasons to comply
• Anticipate and reply to counterarguments
• Use positive techniques like politeness and
bargaining as strategies to increase compliance
• Avoid negative strategies like whining or begging
• Generate a large number and variety of arguments
• Control the discourse assertively
Language content
• The lexicon develops substantially through:
– Direct instruction
– Contextual abstraction
– Morphological knowledge and analysis (cf.
derivational morphemes)
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Language content
• Individuals develop understanding of
ambiguity in words (e.g. homophones like
bear, bare; homographs like record, record)
• Individuals develop understanding of
sentence‐level ambiguity
– The general sang to the girl on the balcony.
Language content
• Individuals develop a highly decontextualized
language style called literate language
– Contextualized: I wanted him to do that.
– Decontextualized: I had been hoping for some
time that my brother would go to the post office
to mail the present for me so I could shop for a
new vehicle.
Narrative and conversation
• Whereas younger children just move forward
in time in narratives, older children move
forward and backward in time
• Children learn to add expressive elaboration
to narratives that add artful elements
• They begin to add detail to the setting and
characters and use repetition for emphasis
• Ability to carry on conversations improves
(maintaining topic, conversational repair, etc.)
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Language and gender
Language and gender
• Gender differences become apparent in terms
of conversational styles and vocabulary
• Research has shown that females tend to use
a less assertive style, including:
– Use more tag questions (“You like fish, don’t
you?”)
– Using rising intonation more often
– Use polite requests more than commands
Language and gender
• Females tend to use more politeness
strategies, including:
– Compliments
– Apologies (“I’m sorry, but would you mind…”)
– Hedges that weaken intensity (“I kind of think
that…”)
– Boosters that add enthusiasm (“I’m really
interested to hear that…”)
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Language and gender
• Women face conversational partners and
make eye contact more often
• Men change topics more often, while women
tend to exhaust topics thoroughly
• Women use fillers like uh‐huh and yeah more
often
Language and aging
Language and aging
• As adults age they sometimes experience tip‐of‐the‐
tongue phenomenon where the word is “on the tip
of someone’s tongue”
• Older adults tend to speak more slowly
• Forgetting names becomes more common
• Older adults tend to have difficulty processing
emotional expression in language (affective prosody)
• Older adults can have difficulty with understanding
word or sentence meanings
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Language assessment
• Practitioners may use formative evaluations
to focus on the process of students’ language
development
• Practitioners may use summative evaluations
to assess the products and final outcomes of
the language learning process
• A variety of tools are available for screenings,
comprehensive evaluations, and progress
monitoring
Summary: School‐age years
• Gaining language abilities from written texts
and developing reading skills
• Develop understanding of figurative language
• Morphophonemic changes, derivational
morphology, and advanced grammar
• Understanding multiple meanings and
ambiguity
Summary: School‐age years
• Developing of narrative and conversational
abilities
• Improved ability to use persuasion
• Differentiation of vocabulary and
conversational strategy by gender
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