What major language development milestones occur in the school age years & beyond? 

• Focus on the process of language development in the school age years and beyond.
• Shifting sources of language input and metalinguistic competence.

Shifting Sources of Lang. Input

• Prior to school age years, children's sole source of language input in through the oral modality. 
• Beginning around 8-10 yrs, children shift to gaining more and more of their language input from text.

Pre-reading stage

• Birth until the beginning of formal education.
• Some of the most critical developments, including oral language, print awareness, and phonological awareness. 

Stage 1 (The Initial Reading, or Decoding Stage)

• Kindergarten and 1st grade; 5-7 yrs.
• Associate letters and their corresponding sounds in spoken words as they begin to decode words.
• 3 phases within the stage, same order. 

1st Phase

Word substitution errors that are semantically and syntactically probable. 

2nd Phase

Word substitution errors that have a graphic resemblance to the printed word. 

3rd Phase

Word substitution errors that have a graphic resemblance to the printed word, but also substitutions that are semantically acceptable. 

Stage 2 (Confirmation, Fluency, and Ungluing from Print)

• 2nd-3rd grade; 7-8 yrs. old
• Home decoding skills learned in Stage 1
• Proficient with high frequency words and use the redundancies of language in order to gain fluency.
• Gradually transition from learning to read to reading to learn.

Stage 3 (Reading for Learning the New: A First Step)

• Grades 4-8 or 9; 9-14 yrs of age
• Read to gain new information
• Solidly reading to learn by the end of the stage
• Expands children's vocabularies, builds background and world knowledge, and develops strategic reading habits. 

Stage 3A 

• Grade 4-6, ages 9-11
• Read about conventional knowledge of the world
• Able to read works of typical adult length, but not same level of reading difficulty as adults. 

Stage 3B

• Grades 7-8 or 9, ages 12-14
• Read on a general adult level
• Understanding 

Stage 4 (Multiple Viewpoints: High School)

• High School period; ages 14-18
• Increasingly difficult concepts and texts that decribe them
• Consider multiple points of view
• Builds upon knowledge in Stage 3

Stage 5 (Construction & Reconstruction- A World View: College)

• Age 18 onward
• Read selectively

Metalinguistic Competence

• Ability to think about and analyze lang. as an object of attention.
• Increases significantly in school-age years and beyond because many of the activities children engage in draw upon analysis of language.

Figurative Lang.

• Lang. that we use in non-literal and often abstract ways.
• Children must recognize that lang. is an arbitrary code.
• Used to evoke mental images and to sense impressions in others.
• Include: metaphors, similes, oxymorons, hyperboles, idioms, irony, and proverbs.

Metaphors

• Use an expression to refer to something that it does not denote literally, in order to convey similarity.

Similes

• Contain a topic, vehicle, and ground
• Make the comparison between the topic and vehicle explicit by using the word "like" or "as"

Oxymorons

• Figurative speech that combines 2 contradictory terms in order to achieve rhetorical effect.
• Ex. "Working vacation" "Orginal copy" "strangely familiar" 

Hyperboles

• Form of figurative lang. that use exaggeration for emphasis or effect.
• Ex. "I'm so hungry, I could eat a horse"

Idioms

• Contain both a literal and a figurative lang.
• Ex. "We're in the same boat"
• 2 major types: Opaque and Transparent
• Opaque: Demostrate little relationship between the literal interpretation and the figurative interpretation
• The figurative meaning of a transparent idiom is an extension of the literal meaning.

Irony

• Type of figurative lang. that involves incongruity between what a speaker (or writer) says and what actually happens.
• Verbal irony: Speaker says one thing but really means another thing.
• Dramatic irony: Audience is aware of facts that the characters are unaware of.

Proverbs

• Statements that express the conventional values, beliefs, and wisdom of society.
• One of the most difficult types of figurative language to master.
• Communicative functions served:

Achievements in Content

• 3 areas of notable content devlopment for school-age students: 

Lexical Dev.

• Upon graduation from high school, students will have command over 60,000 words.
• 3 different ways that school-age children learn new words:

Direct Instruction 

• Learning a word's meaning directly from a more knowledgeable source- another person or a dictionary.
• Children do not begin to use dictionaries to learn the meanings of words until about second grade (7 or 8 years)

Contextual Abstraction

• Using context clues in both spoken and written forms of language in order to determine the meanings of unfamiliar words.

Unfamiliar word in text

• PRAGMATIC INFERENCES OR LOGICAL INFERENCES ABOUT THE MEANINGS OF THE WORDS.

Morphological Analysis

• Analyzing the lexical, inflectional, and derivational morphemes of unfamiliar words in order to infer their meanings.
• Younger children (ages 6-10) become proficient is using morphemes to infer the meanings of new words, whereas older counterparts (ages 9-13) learn to become proficient at using morphological info in conjunction with context clues. 

Polysemous

• More than one meaning.
• Provide multiple defns for words that have several common meanings as they develop, but difficulty understanding the secondary meanings of words that dear little or no relation to the primary meaning. 
• Being able to supply multiple meanings for words requires not only lexical knowledge, but also metalinguistic knowledge. 

Phonological Ambiguity 

Varying pronunciations of a word.

Surface-structure Ambiguity

Varying stress and intonation.

Depp-structure Ambiguity

Noun that serves as an agent in one interpretation and as an object in the alt. interpretation. 

Literate Language

• LANGUAGE THAT IS HIGHLY DECONTEXTUALIZED.
• Child's ability to use language without the aid of context cues for supporting meaning.

Achievements in Form 

• 3 areas of school age development in lang. form include:

Complex Syntax

• DEVELOPMENTALLY ADVANCED GRAMMATICAL STRUCTURES THAT MARK A LITERATE LANGUAGE STYLE.
• Occur relatively infrequently in spoken language, but use in written language is one indication of achievement of more advanced grammar.

Vowel Shifting 

Change the form class of a word by adding a derivational suffix. 

Achievements in Use

3 important achievements in language use during this period include: 

- Functional flexibility

- Conversational abilities 

- Narrative dev

Functional flexibility 

• THE ABILITY TO USE LANGUAGE FOR A VARIETY OF COMMUNICATIVE PURPOSES, OR FUNCTIONS.

Conversational Abilities

By about age 7, children begin to use indirect language, including hints and they recognize others' indirect requests for action. 

Asperger Syndrome (AS)

Pervasive developmental disorder, or autistic spectrum disorder that presents challenges in social interaction and communication for those who have it. 

Strategy for improving Communicative abilities for children with AS 

• Creating structured peer relationships: A few peers commit to interacting with the student and to providing social support to him or her.
• Goals: Learning how to have fun with others, how to experience a sense of togetherness, how to fix interpersonal problems, and how to enjoy the input of others. 

Story Grammar

• Includes all of the components of a narrative (e.g., setting, episodes) as well as the rules that govern those components.

- Setting and episode structure 

Hedges

• Linguistic devices that soften utterances by signaling imprecision and noncommitment. 

How do people measure lang. dev. in the school age years & beyond?

• Standardized tests
• Naturalistic language situations for collecting lang. samples
• Elicitation procedures

Formative Evaluations 

Focus on the process of lang. dev. 

Summative Evaluations

Focus on the products and final outcomes of lang. learning and dev.

Screenings

Identify students who require extra assistance in certain areas. 

Diagnostic Assessments

Obtain an in-depth probe of a child's instructional need. 

Progress moitoring Assessments

Document children's rate of improvement in an area and compare the efficacy of curricula and interventions. 

Outcome Assessments

Document discrepancy between expected outcomes and observed outcomes in a particular area. 

Reseachers and clinicians assess children's language content by

• Analyzing lang. samples
• Using elicitation procedures
• Standardized tests

Elicitation Procedures

• Have a child define words
• Play games in which the child will need to use the word class of interest. 

Standardized Test

Peasbody Picture Voc Test, 3rd Edition

- Norm-referenced measure of receptive voc.

- Used through adulthood

Level 1 (Ages 5-8)

Subtests which measure expressive voc., word defns, receptive voc., & word opposites.

Level 2 (ages 8-17)

• Subtest which measure word defns, multiple contexts, synonyms, and figurative usage.

- Used to identify students who excel in semantic knowledge, as a resource for gifted and talented assessment. 

Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation 2

• Children & adolescents through 21 years of age
• Articulate consonant sounds by sampling both spontaneous and imitative sound production using pics and verbal cues from the examiner. 

Language Samples

• Code the transcript for communication units (C-units) or terminable units (T-units)
• C-units: incomplete sentences and sentence fragments (used in oral samples)
• T-units: complete sentences (used in written samples)
• # and type of noun phrases, verb phrases, questions, and negation strategies a student uses.

Standardized Test

• Test of Language Dev.- Intermediate, 3rd Ed.
• 8 years- 12 years, 11 months
• Understanding and meaningful use ofspoken words, as well as different aspects of grammar.
• Subtest: Sentence Combining, Word Ordering, & Grammatic Comprehension

Assessing Lang. Use

• MEASURE THE EXTENT TO WHICH STUDENTS CONTROL CONVERSATIONAL TOPIC AND PRODUCE CONTINGENT VS. NON-CONTINGENT RESPONSES IN CONVERSATION.
• Standardized Assessment: