Below is information regarding principles and practices of language and literacy development.

        Spend anytime around a baby who is acquiring spoken language and you soon realize how truly amazing the acquisition of language is.  How does one learn to speak?  There are currently four language acquisition theories:  behaviorist, innatist, cognitive, and social interactionist.  Below the theories as well as the stages of oral language development will be discussed.

The behaviorist theory believes that “infants learn oral language from other human role models through a process involving imitation, rewards, and practice.  Human role models in an infant’s environment provide the stimuli and rewards,” (Cooter & Reutzel, 2004).  When a child attempts oral language or imitates the sounds or speech patterns they are usually praised and given affection for their efforts.  Thus, praise and affection becomes the rewards.  However, the behaviorist theory is scrutinized for a variety of reasons.  If rewards play such a vital component in language development, what about the parent who is inattentive or not present when the child attempts speech?  If a baby’s language learning is motivated strictly by rewards would the speech attempts stop merely for lack of rewards (Cooter & Reutzel, 2004)?  Other cases against this theory include “learning the use and meaning of abstract words, evidence of novel forms of language not modeled by others, and uniformity of language acquisition in humans” (Cooter & Reutzel, 2004).

            The innatist theory states that learning is natural for human beings.  They believe that babies enter the world with a biological propensity, an inborn device, to learn language (Cooter & Reutzel, 2004).  This human built in device for learning language has been coined the (LAD) language acquisition device.  The innatist theory does somewhat explain how children can generate or invent language they have never heard.  Researcher, N. Chomsky backed this theory stating that children use the LAD to generate and invent complex speech.  Although this theory provides what some claim is a reasonable explanation about acquiring language, this theory lack sufficient evidence.  Some of the cases against this theory include, “timing of language learning varies greatly within cultures, environment shapes how much and what language is learned, and feedback from other language users affects language acquisition” (Cooter & Reutzel, 2004).

            The cognitive theory is often known as the compromise between the behaviorist theory and innatist theory.  “Cognitivists believe that not only do cognitive and maturational factors influence language acquisition, but also the process of language acquisition itself may in turn affect cognitive and social skill development” (Cooter & Reutzel, 2004).  The behaviorist theory explains why babies learn language while the innatist theory reveals why babies born to English-speaking parents speak English instead of Spanish.  The cognitive theory seems to explain the majority of the language acquisition questions and is a nice blend of the previous two theories, behaviorist and innatist (Cooter & Reutzel, 2004).

            The last theory, the social interaction, “assumes that language acquisition is influenced by the interaction of a number of factors – physical, linguistic, cognitive, and social,” (Cooter & Reutzel, 2004).  This theory shares many of the same explanations as the other three theories.  Vygotsky’s work is often placed with this theory because of the emphasis he placed on the importance of social interaction to learn language.  M.A.K. Halliday believes that children learn language out of need to function in society.  Babies acquire language in order to survive, have their needs met, and express themselves (Cooter & Reutzel, 2004).

            The stages and rates of oral language development just like reading development vary greatly from child to child.  The stages according to Cooter and Reutzel, 2004 include parents’ baby talk, the first 12 months, from the ages 1 to 2, from ages 2 to 3, from ages 3 to 4, and from ages 4 to 6. 

“Parents’ baby talk is when parents change their normal speech structures during interactions with their infants to encourage verbal interaction.  This is not strictly an English language practice; parents use baby talk across all languages and cultures. 

The first 12 months babies go through three stages.  During the first two months, babies cry primarily to indicate their need to be fed, changed, or attended in some manner.  During this early stage of speech development, “young infants make what linguists call vegetative sounds, such as burps, coughs, and sneezes” (Cooter & Reutzel, 2004).  Two to five months of age are marked with babies cooing and laughing.  Babies also develop three distinct types of crying; one for comfort, attention, and distress.  Six months to one year of age babies enter the stage of vocal play and babbling.  This stage is where the child begins to say “Ma Ma” and “Da Da”. 

From 1 to 2 years of age children begin to put two words together and are trying out the rules of language as they experiment with language. 

From 2 to 3 the broken two word sentences transform into more complex and natural forms of speech.  Children at this age begin to establish their own identity.  Children begin to use the words no and not, this is an important change in children’s language development. 

Children aged 3-4 begin using complex sentences and have a speaking vocabulary of 1,000 to 1,500 words.    Children begin to change basic sentences into questions.  This stage is often referred to as the why stage. 

From 4 to 6 years old, children seem to have “acquired most of the elements of adult language,” (Cooter & Reutzel, 2004).  Children by age for will have a vocabulary of 2,500 words which will grow to 6,000 words by the time the child reaches six years old.

The reading process is divided into five stages:  emergent literacy, beginning reading, building fluency, reading to learn and for pleasure, and mature reading. 

Children in emergent literacy are discovering basic concepts of print and the language it represents.  These children, usually preschool to first grade, often enjoy books and are associating pleasure with being read to and reading. 

The beginning reading stage often includes children from first grade; however, both younger and older students may be considered in this stage.  Learning individual words and acquiring a sight vocabulary are two aspects of the beginning reader stage. 

Children in the third reading process stage, building fluency, recognizes many words automatically and are reading passages several sentences long without stumbling over words.  These students comprehend what they read for the most part.  This is an in between stage, students are no longer beginners, but are not yet fluent to become independent readers.  The volume of reading that children do at this stage as well as their degree of success will have a tremendous impact on their progress to the next stage (Gillet, Temple, & Crawford, 2004). 

The fourth stage, reading to learn and for pleasure, are usually students in grades three and up.  These students are reading chapter books for pure enjoyment or homework assignments for learning purposes.  By this stage in the reading process, the gap between good readers and struggling readers begins to widen with regard to the amount of time they spend reading outside of school and the number of pages read each week. 

The last and final stage in the reading process is mature reading.  Readers in this stage are capable of making comparisons while reading information on a particular topic from a variety of sources.  These readers are able to use text read and generate original ideas of their own.  While readers in the lower grades exhibit some of these skills, this kind of adult reading is primarily found in and above middle school.  However, some high school and college students experience difficulty because they have not yet reached this stage in the reading process.

            Currently, the Spanish language is quickly becoming what many regard as America’s second language.  Our Spanish population is growing faster than any other ethnicity.  However, teachers are scrambling to meet the demands of English language learners.  Helping these children learn to read and write in English is critical and until recently, many teachers programs did not have classes or certifications in place to educate professionals with this overwhelming task.  According to Cooter and Reutzel 2004, “ELL students acquire receptive and expressive skills in the same basic ways as monolingual students.  These methods of learning include developing classification systems from the most basic to the very complex, increasing the length of utterances in both spoken and written forms, beginning with short and simple and gradually growing to the more complex, learning ‘language labels’ for concrete objects and experiences they have had, and the inclusion of immersion and learning-by-doing activities as the primary methods of language development,” (Cooter & Reutzel, 2004).  Other strategies for helping ELL students succeed in the classroom include labeling the room with environmental print, using sentence strips for dictated sentences, active listening to build fluency, and creating personal dictionaries. 

            English as a second language usually prevents learners from making full use of semantic, syntactic, and other clues in content reading materials.  The following strategies are recommended by Cooter and Reutzel to help ELL students with content reading demands.  Reduce the vocabulary load, preteach vocabulary concepts prior to reading, use prereading questions, graphic organizers, and postreading discussion groups.

To maximize the learning potential of every child, it is vital to enlist the aid of family members.  Parents are seen as valuable assets now more than ever as a result of No Child Left Behind legislation. Communication between school and home is critical.  Any communication or involvement for families is important.  Refrigerator reading is one strategy recommended to reach families.  Refrigerator reading includes monthly newsletters home to families with easy-to-do activities to help their children.  Family projects, voice mail, and buddy journals are some other strategies Cooter and Reutzel 2004 suggest to get families involved.  

            Learning the acquisition of spoken language is an important component of brain development.  The more vocabulary words children are exposed to the better success they will see in learning how to read.  The theories of language acquisition and the stages of oral langauge development are very important to know as a reading specialist to better prescribe specific reading strategies to students in today’s literate world. 

References

Cooter, R. B., & Reutzel, D. R. (2004). Teaching children to read: Putting the pieces together. Upper Sadle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

Gillet, J. W., & Temple, C., Crawford, A. N. (2004). Understanding reading problems: Assessment and instruction. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Click on the links below for strategies you can use for the following dimensions of reading.

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