California Preschool Learning Foundations - ECEZero2Three ...

Listening and Speaking
Language Use and Conventions.
The development of oral language is
one of the most impressive accomplishments
that occur during the first
five years of children’s lives (Genishi
1988). Oral language development
results from the interaction of a variety
of factors, including social, linguistic,
maturational/biological, and cognitive
influences, and these factors interact
and modify one another (Bohannon
and Bonvillian 2001). Research indicates
that social factors have a prominent
role on oral language development.
For example, the wide variation
in the rate of children’s early language
growth and later language outcomes
is directly related to differences in
maternal and other caretakers’ verbal
input (Baumwell, Tamis-LeMonda,
and Bornstein 1997; Girolametto and
Weitzman 2002; Hart and Risley 1995;
Landry and others 1997; Pellegrini and
others 1995; Tamis-LeMonda, Bornstein,
and Baumwell 2001).
The language use and conventions
substrand focuses on children’s use
of language for social and communicative
purposes. Four aspects of
language use are emphasized in the
foundations: using language to communicate
with others for a variety of
purposes, increasing clarity of communication
(i.e., phonology), developing
an increasing understanding of the
conventions of language use (i.e., pragmatics),
and using language for narrative
purposes. The first component of
the foundation emphasizes the child’s
Bibliographic Notes
California Department of Education • Preschool Learning Foundations, Volume 1
71
ability to use language for a variety
of different purposes. Each time children
produce language, an intention is
being expressed. As children develop
their language abilities during early
childhood, the range of intentions they
express expands. They use language
not just to request, reject, and comment,
but to acknowledge, to greet,
to understand, to solve problems,
to hypothesize, to regulate, and to
describe, among other uses.
The second component centers on
the ability of young children to learn
to use understandable pronunciation
and words. 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. Young children may
speak in ways that may contain pronunciation
errors and idiosyncratic
words. Usually their communication is
understood by familiar adults and children.
As children continue to develop,
they usually speak with clear pronunciation
and use common words. Their
speech is usually understood by both
familiar and unfamiliar adults and
children.
The third component of the foundation
focuses on children’s increasing
understanding of the conventions of
communication, including conversational
participation and the ability to
sustain a topic over turns, and the use
of appropriate verbal and nonverbal
communicative behaviors, including
adapting language based on communicative
partners and situations.
LANGUAGE AND LITERACY