California Preschool Learning Foundations - ECEZero2Three ...

LANGUAGE AND LITERACY
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the world. As children develop new
words, those words naturally fall into
different categories, such as words
that describe food items, different animals,
and family members. During the
preschool years, as children gradually
expand their use and understanding
of words within a category, they also
learn the “superordinate terms” (the
names of the categories) by which to
group these words. Examples of superordinate
terms often acquired during
the preschool years are colors, animals,
shapes, family members, friends, bugs,
toys, and vegetables (Owens 1999).
As children grow and are exposed to a
range of new experiences, they learn
words from across a variety of grammatical
classes and from a range of
“ontological categories” (Clark 1993).
These categories include objects,
actions, events, relations, states and
properties. Relating words and concepts
within these ontological categories
helps the children create meaning
within their environment.
Another important element of vocabulary
development is the attainment
of a core group of terms that describe
relations between objects. Young
children’s vocabulary becomes increasingly
refined to show an understanding
of and relay information about position
and location (e.g., in, on, under,
above), amount, and size (e.g., small,
big, huge). For instance, three- and
four-year-old children are able to
produce and comprehend locational
terms, such as in, on, above, below,
in front, of, next to, under, underneath,
and beside (see Owens 1996). During
the same period, they also begin
to use terms that specify amounts,
such as more, less, all, and none, and
physical relationships among objects
on the basis of size and texture, such
as hard/soft, big/little, and short/tall.
Three- and four-year-old children also
begin to use the comparative -er and
the superlative -est (big, bigger, biggest;
long, longer, longest) to be discriminating
about the sizes of objects.
The superlative form usually emerges
before the comparative form, so that
children use and understand terms
like longest and largest before they do
the terms longer and larger (Owens
1996). Also, children’s accuracy in
comprehension of such terms tends
to precede their use.
The development of an extensive
vocabulary provides children with
more sophisticated and precise ways
to represent the world around them
through the use of language. In the
first few years of life, the language
of children is developed enough to
allow them to describe the immediate
world—the persons, objects, and
events in the immediate vicinity. Often,
children’s language must be contextualized,
or supported by the immediate
context. As their vocabulary and
language concepts expand, children
can be more decontextualized in their
language use and comprehension. This
movement from the concrete and contextualized
to the abstract and decontextualized
plays a critical role in the
development of “academic language”
(also called literate language) (see
Curenton and Justice 2004) and the
vocabulary used to produce and comprehend
the relatively abstract content
of written language. Use of an “academic
language style” helps children to
represent explicitly and precisely the
world around them through the use
of language and allows them to communicate
effectively in the type of language
most commonly used in school
settings (Charity, Scarborough, and
Preschool Learning Foundations, Volume 1 • California Department of Education