The Importance Of Oral Language Development

1.0 Introduction

Over the years, research has been done on children’s oral language development and their literacy competency through their creation of narratives (Curenton, Craig, & Flanigan, 2008; Fitzhugh, 2010). According to Milosky (1987), children’s literacy development can be predicted through the use decontextualised oral language skills (DOLS), where the listener is unfamiliar with the information given by the speaker. This requires children to use literate language features, to “increase explicitness and reduce ambiguity” during decontextualised discourse (Curenton & Justice, 2004).

This project aims to investigate a child’s ability to use DOL and how the home and linguistic environment can influence language development. Through this research, student teachers will acquire basic skills in data collection and analysis. It also aims to provide student teachers with the experiential learning in applying learnt theories in the discussion of our findings.

2.0 Participant

The participant is a six years, one month old Singaporean boy of Chinese descent. He lives with his mother and father and has two siblings aged eleven and four. English is his dominant home language with the occasional use of Mandarin. He is currently in Kindergarten Two. He has an introverted personality and is slow to warm up to unfamiliar faces.

2.1 Data collection and analysis

Two data collection methods were used: Parent interview and two oral elicitation tasks. A handphone was used to record the child’s narrative production and the interview with the parent. We played toys and interacted with him for thirty minutes. Thereafter, we proceeded with the tasks.

Elicitation tasks (favourite story and picture narration)

For the child’s favourite st...

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... comparison and description.

Summary of Language features

Overall, the types of themes used were consistent throughout both narratives. The topical themes of the subsequent clauses were not always related to the themes or rhemes of the preceding clauses, making it difficult to predict subsequent events. He was able to use conjunctions to link up events in a systematic order and use of reference to highlight characters, objects, and events. He was able to construct noun phrases, verb phrases, and prepositional phrases to make his narratives more elaborated. The extensive usage of adverbials demonstrate his ability to link sentences and explain how, when, where and why the actions took place. He was able to use topical words to express meaning. Although he possesses some knowledge about past tense verbs, he has yet to grasp the concept of irregular verbs.