California Preschool Learning Foundations - ECEZero2Three ...

Listening and Speaking—
Language Use and Conventions,
Vocabulary, and Grammar
The rate of children’s early language
growth and later language outcomes
is directly related to the verbal input
that children receive when communicating
with adults and other children.
Detailed within the three substrands is
the sequential progression of children’s
developing understanding of language
use and conventions, vocabulary, and
grammar.
Language Use and Conventions.
The substrand of language use and
conventions covers a broad range of
knowledge and skills, including using
language to communicate for a variety
of purposes, using accepted language
and style when communicating with
adults and children, understanding
and using language to communicate
effectively with others, and constructing
narratives with language. In preschool,
children are developing the
ability to use language for a range of
purposes, such as describing, requesting,
commenting, greeting, reasoning,
problem solving, seeking new information,
and predicting. Children nearing
four years of age are expected to generate
an appropriate response to at least
one comment made during a conversation,
and those nearing five years of age
are expected to maintain a conversation
for several turns.
Another development in the area of
language use and conventions is learning
to use accepted language and style
during communication. It is important
to note that accepted language
or behavior is that which commonly
occurs in the child’s environment or
community. For example, in some
environments people make eye contact
California Department of Education • Preschool Learning Foundations, Volume 1
when they speak, while in other communities
they do not. At around 48
months of age, children typically can
make themselves understood when
they communicate with familiar adults
and children. At this age they may
make pronunciation errors or sometimes
use words in unusual ways that
are understood by people who know
them, but not by people who are unfamiliar
with them. As children develop,
they increasingly speak in ways that
most familiar and unfamiliar adults
and children can understand. This
development pertains to the articulation
of specific words and the expression
of specific sounds rather than
to the overall way in which children
speak or whether they speak with an
accent.
At this age children also begin constructing
narrative by engaging in
extended monologues that communicate
to the listener an experience,
a story, or something desired in the
future. As children get older, such stories
become more detailed, linear, and
geared toward the perspective of the
listener. When children are about 48
months of age, their narratives may
consist of several unrelated ideas,
characters, or events. Children near
five years of age begin to produce narratives
that convey a causal or temporal
sequence of events (e.g., “After
naptime we woke up. Then we had a
snack and went outside. Then . . . ”).
For children at the older age, the narratives
tend to be longer, make more
sense, and provide more information
than those of younger children. Teachers
can support young children in the
area of language use and conventions
by repeating and extending what children
say in conversations. Teachers
can also provide opportunities for chil-
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LANGUAGE AND LITERACY