Growing up with English

Barbara Mayor

U214B
Book 1
Chapter 3
 Introduction
Chapters 1 & 2 considered a range of
practices in spoken and written English
involving English-speaking adults.
Chapter 3 considers how English-speaking
children learn to take part in such
practices,

how they make sense of the English

language as a system,

and how they learn to make meaning

in English.

They learn how to and ‘crack the code’

of written language.
 Introduction
According to David Crystal
‘approximately one in three in the
world’s [seven billion] population
are now capable of communicating
to a useful level in English’ (Crystal,
2012, p.155)

and daily exposure to

English has become a fact of
life for many millions of
children on all six inhabited
continents.
 Introduction

David Graddol envisages ‘a

new generation of English-
knowing children’ around
the world, for whom English
represents a ‘basic skill’
(Graddol, 2006, pp.101, 72)
 reou
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 How infants communicate

Theoretical Linguist, Naom Chomsky

was the first to argue for a so-called ‘nativist’ position

that language is an innate human ability which is
biologically determined and follows a predictable
developmental path.
acknowledged, however, that some minimal language
input is required to trigger the language learning process,
and that this needs to occur in the very early years of life,
in other words, that there is a ‘critical period’ for
language acquisition.
 How infants communicate

According to him, children in ‘isolation’ neither

spontaneously develop language nor go on to develop
normal language competence beyond a certain stage of
maturation.

No baby is pre-programmed to speak English or any

other language, but it has been observed that as early
as being in the womb, or as an infant, (through
monitoring of movement, gaze, and natural cries
among babies) babies are primed to attend to the
particular ‘melody’ of the language that surrounds
them,
 How infants communicate

For Example

the frequent stress on the first syllable, and

their early experimentation with babbling
differentiates the particular sounds that are
meaningful in their linguistic community from
those which are not.
 How infants communicate
Ochs & Shcieffelin (1979),
Anthropologists

were among the first

Ochs identifies a range of
to argue that children ‘pragmatic alternatives that
begin by learning the are available to young
meaning of speech children even before single
acts and only words emerge . . . Touching,
gradually learn the pointing, and eye gaze. . .
language that reaching, holding up,
corresponds to these waving . . . Pushing away,
in the community head shaking, and the like
around them. (Ochs, 1979, p.13).
 How infants communicate

Gordon Wells has compared

So it could be said that
this to a ‘conversation
learning to speak is
without words’ between
initially a matter of
infants and their
learning the rules of
caregivers; he argues
social behavior and
that ‘infants come be
meaning making and
able to have and express
only later a matter of
communicative
learning the grammatical
intentions by being
rules by which these are
treated as if they could
realized in English or any
already have them
other language.
(Wells, 1985,p.24).
 How infants communicate
Caregiver & child-directed speech (CDS)

The baby’s first language experience in almost

all cultures is with a caregiver (mainly the
child’s mother and father) [an adult of
either sex who takes regular care of a child].

When communicating with babies, adults in

many English-speaking cultures tend to use a
simplified style of speech with exaggerated
intonation, referred to as child-directed speech
(CDS) , or more colloquially, ‘baby talk.’
 How infants communicate
Caregiver & child-directed speech (CDS)

The baby’s first language experience in almost

all cultures is with a caregiver (mainly the
child’s mother and father) [an adult of
either sex who takes regular care of a child].

When communicating with babies, adults in

many English-speaking cultures tend to use a
simplified style of speech with exaggerated
intonation, referred to as child-directed speech
(CDS) , or more colloquially, ‘baby talk.’
 How infants communicate
Jean Berko Gleason

“ Briefly we can say caregivers raised the fundamental

frequency of their voices, used simple short sentences with
concrete nouns, diminutives, and terms of endearment,
expanded the children’s utterances and in general
performed the linguistic operations that constitute baby-talk
style. . .One mother, for instance, spoke in a normal voice to
her husband, a high voice to her 4-year old, a slightly raised
voice to her 8-year old and when she talked to her baby she
fairly squeaked.”
 How infants communicate
The function and usefulness of CDS:

According to research, CDS serves 3 useful

functions:

However, cross-cultural studies (such as Pye, 1986) have

demonstrated that CDS is not essential to language
acquisition since children are able to acquire language in
cultures where CDS is not practiced. The difference in adult
input, however, may well have an effect on the kind of
language a child goes on to produce.
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Cognitive Perspectives on learning to talk

Research in the cognitive tradition seeks to understand

the mental processes within children’s minds, focusing
on the relationship between the outward form of their
utterances (especially the grammar and vocabulary) and
what these may reveal about their developing
understanding of language and the world.

A cognitive perspective usually seeks to investigate

what is common to all normally developing children,
rather than what makes each child different.
Cognitive Perspectives on learning to talk

It has provided a body of evidence

that
the linguistic that the key stages in the
development of acquisition of English are
constant even though
monolingual English
each child’s rate of
speaking children progress and actual
follows a predictable linguistic output will
path, and differ.
Cognitive Perspectives-Grammatical development

Regarding how
children learn
(1986) argues th grammar, Cho
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Cognitive Perspectives-Grammatical development

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orn with an
awareness that
language is com
of certain buildin posed
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 Cognitive Perspectives-Grammatical development

In English children first learn the SVO word order

of a sentence, and later they get to know that
they need to add special endings (inflections) such
as –s for plural and past tense.

Once they have the benefit of input to trigger the

learning process, children very rarely opt for word
orders that are not permitted in the language
spoken around them.

According to Stephen Pinker, children get it right

almost 95% of the time.
 Cognitive Perspectives-Grammatical development

Telegraphic Language

DEFINITION
is one of the most commonly reported
phenomena in English speaking children, between the
ages of 18 months and 2 years.

 Telegraphic speech is the production of two-word ‘mini

sentences’ expressing simple semantic relations such as
action, or belonging.

 This is a kind of emergent grammar.

Cognitive Perspectives-Grammatical development

CHILD’S UTTERANCE ASSUMED MEANING IN CONTEXT

Dolly hat That’s Dolly’s hat

Bottle juice I want a bottle of juice
Shoe wet My shoe is wet
Chocolate gone The chocolate has gone
Hayley talk Hayley is talking
Want Teddy I want Teddy
Bang bottom I banged my bottom
Cognitive Perspectives-Grammatical development

These ‘sentences’ usually consist of content words only.

It seems that function words, like
articles (the, a, an) pronouns (my, I)

prepositions (of, in, on, with) auxiliary verbs (is,have)

morphological inflections (-s, -ed, possessive ‘s , -ing)

are normally acquired relatively late.

Cognitive Perspectives-Grammatical development

Once grammatical inflections, such as the

ones mentioned above, start to appear in
the child’s language, it has been
observed that normally developing
English-speaking children actually appear
to move ‘backwards’ in their learning and
start making more mistakes.
Cognitive Perspectives-Grammatical development

This is because they gradually replace simple imitation

she held two mice with the application of certain

set of rules she holded two mouses before settling on the

unique mix of rules and special cases.

Cognitive Perspectives-Grammatical development

Children’s early mistakes in generalizing rules

are thus a sign of creative minds at play, rather
than the mere imitation of adult speech.

Pinker remarks that “a child who echoed back

a parent’s sentences verbatim would be
called [a poor communicator] not a powerful
learner’ (Pinker, 1994, p.416).
Cognitive Perspectives-Grammatical development

Drawing on Chomsky’s active linguistic performance

ideas (innateness &
universal grammatical), a
& their underlying knowledge
distinction has been
of the language system or
drawn between the child’s
linguistic competence.
Cognitive Perspectives-Grammatical development

A child may thus be sensitive to a distinction

between their own developing language and
that of a mature speaker, even though they
are unable to reproduce precisely what they
hear.
 Cognitive Perspectives-Vocabulary development

Another strand of research in

Much of such research focuses
cognitive tradition treats
on lexical/ vocabulary
language learning as closely
development, with emphasis on
related to a child’s experiences
both the size of vocabulary and
and understandings of the
the types of words produced.
world.

Inventories (lists) of young

learners’ comprehension and One main observation is
production of English words (e.g.
Bancroft, 2007, p.20) and these
that children tend to use
attempt to categorize functions overextentions of word
of these early words (Aitchison, meaning/sense reference.
1994m p.170ff).
Cognitive Perspectives-Vocabulary development
 Cognitive Perspectives-Bilingual Children
We had so far been discussing monolingual English-
speaking children.
But many infants around the world are learning English
quite naturally alongside one or more other languages.

These are first type bilingual children. Others acquire it as a

second language in childhood contexts outside the home.

Research with the latter group lends support that there

may be a natural order of acquisition of grammatical
structures within English, regardless of the child’s first
language.
 Cognitive Perspectives-Bilingual Children

Mistakes non-native English speaking

children make, that we automatically
attribute the fact that English is not their
first language and to interference
between the two systems, may very well
be simply mistakes that a native speaking
child makes, as part of the developmental
stages we described earlier.
 Cognitive Perspectives-Bilingual Children

For example, we may refer to the study by Roar Ravem

(1974) of his own natively Norwegian children’s
production of the sentence Where is Daddy going? as
Where Daddy go? Whereas the influence of Norwegian
should have lead to use Where go Daddy?

One of the ways that bilingual children come to know what

is ‘English’ and what is not is that they first tend to
distinguish the different sound systems of their languages,
followed by the vocabularies and then the grammars.
 Cognitive Perspectives-Bilingual Children

Whether the child sees the two languages as one system

or two, mostly has to do the language practices of the
individual child is exposed to and whether the two
languages are kept separate or regularly used side by
side.

This takes us again to the social aspect of

language learning, the social, rather than the
cognitive perspective.
Social Perspectives on learning to talk

Whereas cognitive
perspectives on language According to this view,
learning focus on language learning is
processes internal to the seen as part of the
child’s mind in making
child’s socialization into
sense of language as a
a community with
system social perspectives
focus on the role of distinctive language
language in social practices, and language
context, with emphasis itself is seen as a
on communicative resource for its users.
function.
Social Perspectives on learning to talk

As Michael Halliday Social perspectives ,

observed, from an early therefore emphasize
age a child ‘uses his voice the ‘pragmatics’ of
to order people about, to language use, focusing
get them to do things for on how children learn
him; he uses it to demand to take part in
certain objects or conversations with
services; he uses it to others, and how they
make contact with use language to
people, to feel close to perform particular
them (Halliday, speech acts and to
1975,p.11)
express social identities.
 Meaning Making
Semantic Relations expressed by Children

Pioneer researcher Roger Brown and

researchers de Villiers and de Villiers have
studied children’s early utterances and admit
that they are often open to interpretation
(Mommy off), they identified what Brown
believed to be the eight most basic semantic
relations expressed by children at the two
word stage, including: Agent-Action, Action
Object, Agent – Object, ….
 Meaning Making
Semantic Relations expressed by Children

 De Villiers and de Villiers built on Brown’s fundamental

work and said that:
English-speaking children … talk about actions, what
happened to what and who does what….are concerned,
not to say obsessed with the relationships of
possession . . . location…. labeling… and nonexistence.
Children learning different languages , among them
Samoan, German, French, and Russian, seem to encode
the same limited set of meanings in their first sentences.
 Formulaic language

Much of our entire regular

Much of what children are input and output is not
heard to say seems to be processed analytically,
acquired simply by even though it could be,
copying those around but rather in socially
them. contextualized chunks of
formulaic language.

Children are able to deduce the meaning of whole phrases

from the communicative context without necessarily
analyzing them into their component parts.
 Formulaic language

Activity 3.7
page 104
Children as cooperative conversationalists

Even before children

utter their first It is often the social
recognizable word, routines of language
there are many ways in that children learn first
which the patterns of … such as the
discourse between ‘pragmatic particles’
children and caregivers meh and a in the
differ according to the questions by the
culture, or cultures in Singaporean English
which they are being speaking girl .
brought up.
Communicative Competence

Linguist
Communicative
competence Del
Hymes
 Communicative Competence

According to Hymes (1972):

A normal child acquires knowledge of

sentences, not only as grammatical but also as
appropriate. He or she acquires competence
as to when to speak, when not, and as to what
to talk about with whom, when, where , what
manner (p.277)
 Speaking as a child
There are certain social acts that children regularly get to perform as
children, and this has led to increasing interest in children’s language as
an object of study

Sensitivity to relative status in relationships is particularly

apparent if we look at children’s developing recognition
and use of the different ways of performing the speech
acts of making requests and issuing commands in English.

It would appear that children take some time to develop

sensitivity to the full adult repertoire for ‘getting people to
do things’.
 Speaking as a child

Example of 7-year old boy confusing status

and defining himself as ‘big’ (p.107)

7-year-old boy: [to 11-yrar-old girl] Bring your li’l self

here.
Bystander: Who you think you are?
7-year-old boy: I think I’m somebody big.
 Speaking as a child
In order to choose the
appropriate expression
for the occasion, a child In many (but by no
not only needs to be means all) English-
aware of the range of speaking
linguistic forms available
communities, the
to perform the speech
acts of requesting or word ‘please’ serves
demanding, but also a powerful
needs to have a sense of interpersonal
how likely the addressee function.
is to comply with the
request.
 Speaking as a child

Children also
Children are resort to indirect
sensitive to its means of getting
effect, perhaps what they want,
because of explicit such as asking
teaching. questions or
making hints.
 Speaking as a child

It is important to remember that adult-

child role relationships are not reciprocal.
When adult researcher tried jokingly to use
language more typical of a child, it caused
some bemusement (confusion) in the
young listener.
Learning to read
and write in
English
 Emergent Literacy

From the beginning of their life, children growing up in

communities where literacy plays an important part,
(and they) react to the written environment around
them, making sense of its functions and forms.

For children, taking part in literacy practices doesn’t

depend on being able to read and write in the adult
sense. Particular genres of text, such as product labels,
restaurant sings, street banners, and so on, may be
recognized long before individual letters are known.
 Emergent Literacy
Children attempt to write, before they can make intelligible signs
(e.g. the child writing her name on the list to get a turn in Soft
play at school , producing ‘pretend’ shop signs, shopping lists,
telephone messages, newspapers, and so on) Children will (also)
use many strategies to work out what adults are doing with
magazines, pens, computers and all the other things associated
with literacy, and will attempt to join the adult literate world in
different ways (See examples on understanding literacy p.110)

These first discoveries of reading and writing have been

described by some as emergent literacy (p.109).
Cognitive perspectives on learning to read and write

A child’s eye view – what do children encounter?

What are a child’s first experiences with literacy?

The different writing systems

Systems where meaning or
the symbol Systems where
represents an the symbol
object represents sound
 Cognitive perspectives on learning to read and write

1. Systems where the symbol represents an object, or

meaning
Logographs Pictographs
also known as ‘logograms’ also known as ‘pictograms’
(where a symbol stands for a (where an image denotes an
whole word) entire phrase or concept)

as in the Arabic- based such as many road traffic signs

numerical system, various [two cars to represent no
weights and measures such as trespassing], and pictorial
kg, $, £, H for hospital, or the symbols for male and female
heart shape sometimes used toilets.
to represent ‘love’.
 Cognitive perspectives on learning to read and write

2. Systems where the symbol represents sound

The Alphabetic system The Syllabic system
where the symbol/ the letter/ where the symbol/ the
the grapheme stands for a character stands for a sound,
sound, more specifically the more specifically the syllable)
phoneme)
as in the English writing as in Japanese.
system for the most part and
in languages such as Arabic,
Spanish, French….
Cognitive perspectives on learning to read and write

The child’s world of

Mathematical and
written texts is not
musical notation,
limited by the adult
map signs, computer
divisions into
graphics…. need to
‘writing’ and ‘not-
be worked out for
writing’, and part of
their individual
the task facing them
meaning as well as
is what to identify as
their place as part of
‘English’.
a system.
Is English literacy harder to acquire than literacy in other
languages?

 Which of the two principles does the English writing system

follow

Symbol represents sound?

Symbol represents meaning?

Is English literacy harder to acquire than literacy in other
languages?

English worlds are written from left to right, whereas

Arabic or Hebrew for example, which are both
alphabetic, words are written from right to left.

Chinese which is predominantly logographic was from

top to bottom, and Japanese which has syllabic and
logographic symbols, writing may be either vertical
or horizontal.
 Is English literacy harder to acquire than literacy in
other languages?

Disadvantages or challenges of the alphabetic system:

 The orthography (or spelling system): In languages such as

Spanish, Arabic, Finnish or Welsh (phonetic languages) –
there is a very close relationships between the phonemes
and their letters.
 Is English literacy harder to acquire than literacy in
other languages?

English writing is more complex, as

 there are fewer symbols in the twenty-six letter alphabet of English than
there are sounds in the spoken language 113), so there is little consistency
in the grapheme-phoneme relationships, partly as a result of frozen
spelling, reflecting earlier pronunciation, and partly because of the large
number of words imported/borrowed from other languages.

Some symbols are used to represent more than one sound:

C as a letter/ grapheme corresponds to either /s/ or /k/
phonemes
/f/ as a phoneme is represented in many graphemes , (f in fan, ph
in phone, gh in enough)
Is English literacy harder to acquire than literacy in other languages?
Disadvantages or challenges of the alphabetic system: Some inconsistencies:

there are silent letters, and there are many

letter combinations which may have to be
memorized as though they were logographs
(e.g. knight/fight/light/right…through)

some combinations can be treated as

morphemes or syllables (e.g. the ending –tion
station)

the standard orthography does not correspond

precisely to any particular accent.
 Is
Is English
English literacy
literacy harder
harder to
to acquire
acquire than
than literacy
literacy in
in other
other languages?
languages?
Disadvantages
Disadvantages or
or challenges
challenges of
of the
the alphabetic
alphabetic system:
system: Some
Some inconsistencies:
inconsistencies:

This lack of consistencies causes problems for the child learning English,
problems not faced by other European counterparts whose phonetic
language is transparent (Richard Hanlely, Reading A pp. 120-1).
1) When children read a word in transparent orthography that is part
of their speech vocabulary, they can reliably generate its spoken
form and access its meaning even if they have not encountered the
word in written form before.
-- This strategy is not successful for many words in English, e.g. lack of
linear reading [pin – pine/ medicine, medical], words like one (not
the author’s examples)
2) The existence of exceptions means that letter-sound correspondences
that apply in regular English are likely to be more difficult for
children to learn. Decoding skills may take longer to develop in
opaque writing systems.
 Is English literacy harder to acquire than literacy in other languages?
Disadvantages or challenges of the alphabetic system: Some inconsistencies:

o Two main reasons for the lack of correspondence between

pronunciation and spelling/ lack of grapheme to phoneme
correspondence in modern English are/ Why English is not
transparent in its orthography:
i. First , although the pronunciation of many words has changed over the
centuries, their spelling remains frozen in its earlier form. For example
the now silent k in knight was sounded out at the time when its
written form was established. Another example (not the author’s) is
the word blind – which is spelled as the word used to be pronounced
before the vowel changed into a diphthong {the Great Vowel Shift}.
ii. Second, when foreign words are imported into English, the written
form of the word was kept (the original spelling) in the language from
which it originated . For example, café (not spelled as caffay) , beautiful , or
Fajita.
Is English literacy harder to acquire than literacy in other
languages?

Strategies to help young learners to overcome the disadvantages

of English orthography:
Using the concept of onset & rime to teach children helps in
configuring common initial or final syllabic combinations,
usually CV (consonant vowel in languages other than English
such as Italian or Spanish) but often consonant clusters in
English.

Onsets and Rimes are letter combinations used respectively at

the beginnings and endings of English words, example, bl-ock,
st-ock, r-ock, where –ock is the rime, and bl, etc. are the
onsets {or ch-air, ch-in, ch-eck)
Is English literacy harder to acquire than literacy in other
languages?

Hanley, drawing on the work of Goswami, suggests that

learners’ attention may be drawn to:
- the greater orthographic consistency of English
spelling at the level of the syllable or morpheme.
e.g. –plural –s, -ly , ation, -ment, er/or (for the doer)
- the way in which words break down into onset
and rime (p.114)
 Is English literacy harder to acquire than literacy in other
languages?

Advantages of learning to read in the alphabetic or syllabic

system :

One of the main advantages of learning to read in an

alphabetic or a syllabic system is that, once the initial
breakthrough in understanding happens, any new word can
(more or less) be worked out, while learning of new
logographs has to continue for many years.
 Is English literacy harder to acquire than literacy in other
languages?

Potential advantages to the lack of grapheme/ phoneme

inconsistencies are:

 Homophones with different etymologies (like knight and night/ no &

know) may be distinguished by spelling.
 Morphemes may retain the same surface form in different contexts,
for example, plural –s in words like rocks or rods [are pronounced
differently but spelling rods as rodz will lose the plural form
inflectional morpheme –s]; and ability to know that foxes is spelled
with an ‘s’ like rocks and not as foxiz (compare the past tense
morpheme –ed, which varies in pronunciation in words like wanted,
laughed and called) (Hanley, discussed in Mayor 114).
Social perspectives on learning to read and write Engaging in
literacy practices

Shirley Brice Heath conducted an

ethnographic study (Heath, 1982) that
revealed differences in preschool literacy
practices among three communities in the
American Piedmont Carolinas that she
called Trackton, Roadville & Maintown.
(VERY IMPORTANT see p.116, 117 for
Activity 3.12 & Comment)
Social perspectives on learning to read and write
Becoming bi-literate

All children experience a range of forms and functions of

writing. However, children acquiring literacy in bilingual
or multi-lingual communities are additionally faced with
working out the particular forms and functions of a
variety of different scripts or orthographies.

Mukul Saxena (1993), for example, describes the complex choices

available for spoken & written communication among the British
Panjabi community in Southall, London (See areas of variation,
languages used, literacy practices involved, which language is used
in which domains, who in the family uses which language, etc.)
Social perspectives on learning to read and write
Becoming bi-literate
It is clear that young children who have the opportunity
to do so are able to develop two or more literacy
systems alongside each other with relative ease (See
example of Raki, writing left to right in all English,
Urdu and Bengali, Mayor p.118).
Biliterate children widen their horizons with respect to
the making and placing of marks on the page. The have
to recognize what counts as important in each script and
be able to produce their own version, whether this
involves writing [in an unfamiliar orientation] or using
Chinese stroke patterns are compared to English (128).
 Social perspectives on learning to read and write
Becoming bi-literate
Comments on Reading B

Refer Reading B (pp.127 -134) + Comments p. 118,119.

In Reading B, Young children learning different writing systems
by Charmian Kenner, there are various points made about
special skills or attributes that the bi-literate children may be
acquiring.
 Biliterate children develop a wider range of ‘visual and
actional capabilities’.
Gunther Kress [1997] explains that all modes of
representation offer different potentials [capabilities] and
potentials [for action]. Each writing system uses the visual and
actional modes in particular ways. (p.129)
 Social perspectives on learning to read and write
Becoming bi-literate
Comments on Reading B

 They learn ‘to recognize what counts as important in

each script’ and to ‘identify what really matters when
distinguishing one letter or character from another’; in
so doing, they build up ‘a vocabulary for concepts of
shape, angle and size.’
When children produce written symbols they have to
pay attention to a number of different facets –
the type of stroke to be used, directionality, shape,
size, spatial orientation, placement on the page -- and
these will be culturally specified in the teaching
experience by the child.
 Social perspectives on learning to read and write
Becoming bi-literate
Comments on Reading B

Check what matters in Arabic, and how writing facets of Arabic to help in visual
discrimination are explored and taught (p.131)- a) writing words on the
board, requested children themselves to write on the board, asking children
to trace
 They learn to ‘adapt to different contexts’ and in particular, to recognize
that their classmates ‘might not have the same expertise’.
 They develop interest in ‘exploring connections’ between their writing
systems. See example of 6 year old Selina’s drawing of both her mother and
sister, with comments in English “I love my Mum” and “I love my sister”
below the images (p.127), and Chinese characters on top of each of the
images, saying “Love” for her mother, and the other “Girl Power” [an
English concept adapted from one of her western pop star icons, for her
sister.
 They can use their different scripts to express a distinctive personal identity.
Selina’s world is lived simultaneously in both English and Chinese.