Language Development in a Young Child

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Language skills are fundamental to child social and psychological development, because language provides the means by which children learn about the world and other people. Parents impart language skills cues to their children by teaching coded and decoded messages. Some parental messages are encoded subtly, as with emotional responses. For example, Paulson, Keefe, & Leiferman (2009) found that parental depression impacts the reading habits of parents, which in turn impacts the reading habits of children. Parents who read regularly to their children, but who also solicit a two-way dialogue, promote more advanced reading skills in their children vs. parents who only offer one-sided conversation (Zimmerman, et al., 2009).

Furthermore, language shapes the child's social identity construction and conceptions of reality. The importance of language in social identity construction and reality construction is evident as early as infancy (Hoff, 2012). Identity becomes a salient feature of language development as children get older. This is in part due to the cultural implications of language as being a marker of culture (Hoff, 2012). As children mature into adolescents, the importance of language becomes more salient in marking personal boundaries of identity.

Reading is a unique function of language. While seemingly unrelated to verbal language skills for social development, reading skills nevertheless play an important part in overall language skills evolution in children. Vocabulary mastery is a two-way street, with reading improving vocabulary awareness, and vocabulary awareness also resulting in improved reading scores (Hoff, 2012). Vocabulary mastery influences attitudes toward reading, too (Hoff, 2012). Furthermore, spoken and reading language skills are linked in learning disabilities (Hoff, 2012). Whereas phonological development in reading skills is more important at the early ages, reading comprehension is more important later. In general, attitudes toward reading are important to understand because each child will have a different perception of the role reading plays in their life and in social situations in general. Parental influences, peer group influences, and cultural variables will all have a bearing on the child's attitudes toward reading as well as possibly reading aptitude.

This study evaluates six children from three different age cohorts to illustrate core concepts of language development in childhood. It focuses on attitudes toward reading and reading practices, which are believed to change over time. The design of the study was selected because research shows that "language develops over an extended time span," (Dickinson, Golinkoff & Hirsch-Patek, 2010, p. 305). It is particularly important to understand childhood perceptions of reading because reading and language literacy are linked with school achievement (Wells, 1986). Based on literature on reading development in children, it is hypothesized that the older children will demonstrate increased appreciation for the role that reading plays in their lives vs. their younger counterparts.

Participants

Participants were randomly selected from three public elementary schools in the county, from a pool of students without learning disabilities and with average (median for their grade) grades in language arts. Two children in each age cohort were selected: age 4, age 6, and age 8, for a total of 6 participants. All parents were offered informed consent forms, and returned those forms prior to the start of the research. The child participants in the study were offered verbal informed consent, in which the researcher told them about the interest in how children learn about reading, and how they perceive reading, and why the research was important. Of the six participants, two were raised in a bilingual English-Spanish household. The remaining four children were raised in monolingual English households.

Methods

The children were brought to a school classroom set aside for the purpose of this study. Materials for the research were books acquired from the local public library, which were selected for age appropriateness in each category. Pulling cards from a hat, the researcher randomly selected which group to interview first. The age 6 children were interviewed first, followed by the age 8 children, and finally, the youngest group. The randomization was done so that there would be no bias in going from one group to the next in chronological order. Groups were interviewed separately, to prevent the younger children from being influenced or intimidated by the older ones. In all cases, parents were asked to sit in the back of the room but to not interfere unless asked to help the child answer the questions.

Interviews were unstructured, but focused on the following details. First, the children were asked to hold a book. Second, the children were asked to start reading out loud. Third, the children were asked what the spaces were between the words. Fourth, the children were asked what the punctuation marks were for. Fifth, the children were asked why reading was important. Sixth, the children were asked if they liked to read. Seventh, the children were asked how they learned to read. These questions were varied slightly for each age group. For example, regarding question four about the punctuation marks, the children in the oldest group were asked to read out loud a sentence with punctuation marks for emphasis.

Results

As predicted, the children differed in terms of their perception of reading between each age group. The youngest children held their books tentatively, but looked at them intently and with curiosity. All children in the 6 and 8 groups held the book confidently facing them.

When asked to read, the youngest children flipped through the book and paused hesitantly at the table of contents. They then looked at the researcher for support and smiled or pointed. The aged 6 children turned to the first lines and started reading. One of the aged 8 children asked, "Just start anywhere?" The other aged 8 child read the title first and then started reading immediately from the first line.

When asked what spaces were, one child aged 4 said, "because there's a new word." The other shrugged and said "I don't know." One of the age six children said, "spaces are the spaces between words." The other age six children said that spaces were there "because you have to know where the words are." The age eight children both said that words were separated by spaces, and seemed exasperated by the question.

The children likewise demonstrated age-specific identification of punctuation marks. The aged eight students struggled only with the semicolon and colon. The aged six students were able to define the purpose of commas ("pause") and period ("stop"). The age four students recognized the symbols but did not understand what they meant. All the children except for one-four-year-old said that they liked to read. When asked how they learned to read, there was no age variance. Most of the six and eight-year-olds said that school helped them to read, and all but one of them also said that their mom or dad taught them to read. The four-year-olds said, "Mom."