Normal Language and Literacy Development
Normal oral language and literacy development are inextricably linked, according to Saskatchewan's Education Ministry. Children usually follow a rough timetable for when, and in what stages, they learn both oral and written language. However, not all children fall within the general time frames and factors such as speech and language disabilities can affect their development in both categories.
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How Oral Language Development Affects Literacy
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Normal early oral language development plays a critical role in literacy development by laying the foundation for listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. Oral language development prepares for literacy in four main ways. First, it develops vocabulary and concepts, such as word meanings and pronunciations. Second, normal oral language development creates a basic understanding that language uses structures to communicate, such as proper word order and verb-subject agreement. Third, it provides an understanding of how to communicate in traditional, as well as culturally-specific ways, and lastly, oral language builds the desire and ability to use speech for numerous purposes.
First Stages of Normal Oral Language Development
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Those cute little baby coos and babbles are actually the first signs of normal language development. By making spontaneous long vowel, cooing sounds like "ooh" and "aah," babies are learning to manipulate their tongues, mouths and breathing. As vowels require less skill than consonants, they are figured out first--usually starting around six weeks old.
Babbling is a bit more complicated and generally begins between four and six months of age. These first babbling sounds are more varied and complex than coos--repeated vowel-consonant combinations, like "ba-ba." Between eight and ten months, baby babbles become even more complicated, using variations in intonation and speech rhythms to mimic adult speech.
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One Year to Three Years
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At around a year old, babies begin to use words or word-like units called idiomorphs. Idiomorphs are stable, word-like sounds used to consistently refer to an object. This is a breakthrough in language development, as it indicates the child has an understanding that certain, stable words refer to certain, stable concepts or objects.
In telegraphic speech, which begins at toddlerhood, children link several words together in sentences or sentence-like statements. However, those at this stage only use content words (such as nouns) and not conjunctions, articles, prepositions or word endings.
Language Fluency
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Between three and four years of age, those on the normal language development timetable are moderately fluent in the language used at their homes. They use at least oral language at this point for a variety of purposes, such as expressing thoughts and wishes or responding to and asking questions.
Literacy Development
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Literacy development occurs in several phases and the early stages usually happen between five and eight years old. However, literacy may develop much less sequentially than oral language development; children are known to accelerate their skills in one area while seeming to slightly regress in others. Generally, early readers understand that reading needs to make sense and that a book's meaning will remain the same from one day to the next. They can also identify most letters by name and some words, use some letter/sound knowledge (i.e.: the sound of the first letter) to assist in discerning words, understand the meaning of some punctuation and use pictures, story patterns, memory and context to make sense of what is written. Literacy development normally continues to progress from this point on.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit reading image by Renata Osinska from Fotolia.com
