Language Investigation - English Coursework

How does children’s language progress through the primary school years?

 Introduction..

My Language Investigation will be focused on the subject of primary school children and their language skills with their fellow pupils and teachers. I will look at the development children’s language takes as they progress through primary school, looking at children from Year 2, ages 6 and 7, and children from Year 6, ages 9 and 10. I have chosen to look at this subject as my future plans are to become a primary school teacher and I feel doing this extra work will increase my understanding of child development. It will help me look deeper into the ways children’s language and communication skills develop through school and also point out key aspects of the different age groups’ language. The Teacher Training course I have applied for looks for extra research made into this area and I believe this will benefit my application process. I will analyse the primary features of child directed speech in spontaneous conversation and look at the nature vs. nurture debates held by theorists like B.F. Skinner and Chomsky. As education boards are always changing, I believe any research into language development will be beneficial to the way children are taught.
My hypothesis is that I expect to find a clear advance through the developmental stages in the language of the Year 6s compared to the Year2s because over time they are exposed to the influence of other classmates and their linguistic patterns more frequently than the younger years, thus supporting the social interactionist’s view. Examples of this will be a more complex use of vocabulary from various semantic fields and syntax structures resulting in a more in-depth conversation and a clear understanding of turn taking. I also expect to gender differences in both lexis and grammar in each year group. Due to Year 6 stereotypically being more mature, I believe their language will involve fewer interruptions in gender contrast adjacency pairs whereas competition may be more common in the younger year as they are still learning conversation techniques and how to interact with the opposite sex. I expect conversation to have a specific semantic field as the context of lessons is focused on one learning adjective and therefore the language used will portray this. I aim to show my hypotheses through my research and also learn new aspects of language that children may develop as they age.   

Methodology..



My data was collected from my old primary school, involving staff and the students of two classes, Year 2 and Year 6. To ensure consent, I emailed the Head Teacher of my primary school to see whether I could come in and transcribe the children. I chose these age groups as I wanted to show progression in language through the primary school ages and felt the extremes of the scale would show this best.
The two groups consisted of:

Year 2 –

·        3 girls

·        3 boys

·        No Teaching Assistant present

·        Ages 6 and 7

Year 6 –

·        2 girls

·        4 boys

·        Teaching Assistant present

·        Ages 9 and 10

I was fortunate enough to have a fairly equal balance of genders in both transcript groups so any findings from the gender differences can be seen as fair. I was also notified before that the children, in particular the Year 2 class, were of the more able ability. The teacher of Year 2 also let me sit and work with a boy that struggled the most which highlighted the inter-year difference in development.  I recorded 5 minutes of each session and chose to transcribe all of it to get a wider range of data. Both groups were explained whilst I was present the context of my visit so they were aware of my intentions however this seemed to not affect demand characteristics whilst being recorded. In both classes I recorded the conversations between them over a task they had been set, in Year 6 on historical artefacts and in Year 2 a work sheet on their senses. This task gave me the most data as the questions including: ‘What is your favourite taste?’ and ‘What is your least favourite noise?’ gave them an opportunity to talk about themselves. I later transcribed extracts from these recordings. There were particular behavioural traits I expected to find; the Year 2 girls showed warmth towards me which suggests they saw the need to impress me. Politeness strategies were only present when the children spoke to me whereas they frequently overlapped and shouted at each other. My role in each year group also differed, in the Year 2 class I was left on my own so I became an active participant whereas in Year 6 I was a passive observer. This may have biased my results as I was able to construct the conversation with Year 2 and may have unconsciously driven it towards getting data for my investigation. 

Lexis..

From my transcripts, it appears that both year groups have progressed far into the post-telegraphic stage, in the Year 6’s case developing further. This can be seen by the use of negatives. The Year 2 class show their semantic awareness as they correctly use negative phrases and adverbial superlatives such as ‘haven’t done’ and ‘least favourite’ in various contexts. However, ‘least favourite’ could have been formulated from the repeated questions I asked including this phrase. This prediction can be supported by Jerome Bruner’s LASS theory that states that care givers can influence the child’s linguistic development by encouraging the child to respond, in this transcript, by using recasting of questions and downward converging to place emphasis on key words. Examples of this prompt include ‘your faaavourite food’ and ‘what food don’t you like’. Correct determiners were also used including the demonstrative determiner ‘that’s’ and possessive ‘my’. Although there is a virtuous error in the example ‘it my bedroom’ where the incorrect determiner ‘it’ is used, the child understands their mistake and corrects with ‘my’. The child may also have become confused between the verb ‘it is’ and possessive pronoun ‘it’s’. The same child also uses the prepositional phrase ‘is the second by the wall’ which also shows their ability to communicate details and directions.

The Year 6 transcript includes examples of questions that support their further advancement. One boy creates the question ‘would he be like making bread’. The auxiliary verb ‘would’ is used in this question as the boy is unsure of his answer therefore he has developed the ability to differ away from standardised ‘is it’ questions to express uncertainty. In doing so, this child demonstrates one area of difference from the Year 2s, where they have the semantic awareness before the phonological ability, this Year 6 exemplifies that he’s acquired both skills.

Idiolect from the Bristolian vocabulary also shows its influence in their language as both transcripts show examples of the common informal interjection ‘like’; a similarity between them. This shows that children’s language is greatly influenced by their surroundings and environment. This is supported by Deb Roy (2008) whose nurture theory says language is nurtured through a child’s surroundings from a young age. ‘In like seven pm’, also including an example of a virtuous error made in the incorrect preposition used, and ‘some like big heavy’ are examples of this idiolect from both transcripts. Another example where the children influence each other’s language is clearly shown in the Year 2 transcript as many of their answers to the questions copy the child’s before. For example: ‘That’s the same as me’, including a determiner ‘same’ and demonstrative pronoun ‘that’s’, is used by two children one after another.                                       

The use of interruptions can also distinguish the genders apart in linguistic terms. As shown visually in the graph below, both year groups found girls will interrupt/overlay another child’s speech; to greater extent in Year 2. It’s also worthy of noting that the Year6 boys do not interrupt at all however this could be due to the influence of a teacher. This rejects Zimmerman and West (1975) who found in a study that men interrupt 98% of the time in conversation. Due to the context of the transcript with Year 2 I expected my results as the work sheet given gave them the opportunity to talk about themselves more; a theory proved by Vygotsky (1978), therefore promoting competition between the adjacency pairs. The abundance of personal pronouns can also be explained because of this. The children show clear understanding of the difference between 1^st and 2^nd person pronouns as shown in an adjacency pairs conversation between two girls. ‘I’m not three’, ‘I was on about her’ and ‘you weren’t listening’ show the various pronouns used.

I also found that my language downwardly converged to the stage of the students in Year 2, I noticed this not so much in the teaching assistant with Year 6. My lexical choices simplified with an abundance of concrete nouns from the semantic field created by the lesson topic such as ‘go on then write mushrooms’. I also exchanged 1^st person pronouns for 3^rd person ‘we’ on many occasions like in the example ‘When we’re all done’. This example of downward convergence may have been used as I was aware I didn’t have equal status or as much influential power as a teacher. This contrasted with the approach the teaching assistant in Year 6 took as I found she did not adapt her language, instead her turn taking was longer and used examples of low frequency lexis such as ‘infer’. In the quotation ‘when mummy gives it to you’ I unconsciously converge to the little girl’s language using lexis that is typical of age 5/6. This may have been used to help the child understand better by using her linguistic choices. 

 Grammar..

The main syntactical functions found in these transcripts are mainly interrogatives and declaratives as, for the context of a lesson; questions are needed to prompt conversations and answers throughout. An abundance of interrogatives are used by the powerful participant, i.e me/teaching assistant, to conduct the lesson accordingly, for example prompts such as ‘Right what’s our next question then’. This is represented in the graph below. Repeated syntax structures are often shown by the children and linked to the question sheet they were given. This basic repetition forms the simple structured syntax repeated throughout the Year 2 transcript such as ‘my favourite sound is’ or ‘My favourite thing’. According to Tomasello (2000), children’s variation of performance when constructing syntax is down to their ability to make statistical generalisations over previously stored exemplars of sentences initially heard, despite not having system-wide syntactic schemes. This theory supports the abundance of repetition of syntactical phrases that the Year 2s create as they may use the phrases on the sheets as exemplars to form their syntactical performance around.

Year 6 show their advanced semantic awareness by creating an abundance of complex syntax to give the conversation more depth. Their structure of sentences varies between complex, compound and simple where appropriate, showing they understand Grice’s maxim ‘to be clear’ when expressing only the relevant information. This fulfils Halliday’s function of representational language as they use language to exchange already possessed knowledge between the group. The range of syntax types can also be exemplified in the quotation ‘That’s the same as me’. In this utterance the child uses the basic conjunction ‘but’ to transform a previous simple syntax into a compound.  This can support the Year 2’s progression through the post-telegraphic stage as certain students can transition their language between the types.

Although the students show a clear understanding of syntax structures there are examples of virtuous errors made where modification or incomplete sentences are present. In the quote ‘So it says your favourite favourite fravrite fravrite..’ a repeated intensifier is used for emphasis on the adjective, described by ‘an informal, expressive feature attaches to multiple intensification’ Cacchiani (2003). Rising intonation can also account for intensified language where specific tensifiers are not used. Here her pronunciation wains as she picks up speed, this may be due to her wanting to show off her phonological ability. Often the children use short incomplete utterances instead of completed syntax for example ‘(6) actually muuushroooms [laughs]’. Here Child 2 joins the conversation at a side sequence expecting to be understood. This can be supported by Piaget’s prepositional phase theory where children are egocentric in seeing things from only their view.

The structure of syntax also varied between the teaching assistant and I. The TA’s turns appear to be significantly longer, although this will have been down to the technique of a teacher, and it appears her syntax can get complicated. An abundance of compound sentences are used in the opening line where she connects them with fillers such as ‘um’ and the connective ‘and’ which makes her speech seem uncertain. Contextually this may have been because she was aware to start she was being recorded and so demand characteristics occurred. Despite this, her syntax often jumps from subject to filler which may contribute to why a lot of the responses from the students are simple in structure and uncertain from the abundance of fillers present. 

Two features of grammar that both Year 2 and 6 also possess is the ability to use variations of tenses and time phrases to express experiences related to the semantic field. In Year 2, one child exemplifies this technique in the quotations ‘you’re three now’ and ‘I thought you said’. By using the temporal noun ‘now’ as a time phrase and past participle ‘thought’ she is actively controlling her use of tenses to show she understands further than the concept ‘the moment’. In Year 6, the act of using a past participle to relate to an experience is also used in the quote ‘I’ve seen som-um’. By reflecting on the past, he also shows he can use experience to contribute to the conversation’s subject, thus increasing the depth of the conversation. 

Conclusion..

From my transcripts I believe I have a shown a clear progression in language acquisition through the primary ages. As both years showed specific post-telegraphic traits there was no extreme language barrier between the two however, they do show difference in the ability of the skills they possess.
Their lexical ability was found to be similar; they both showed that their lexical awareness outstripped their phonological ability in cases. The year 2’s varied use of negative phrases and determiners also suggests that they are advanced for their age. However, their ability to ask questions may have also been formulated from the abundance of interrogatives I was asking as the powerful participant. My results show the need for both nature and nurture in child language acquisition however, these varied in quantities. The younger children’s language shows to be more effected by the innate processes we activate during the critical acquisition period than the older children whose language is more nurtured through imitation and experience of others.

As I expected, grammatical choices also mirrored those in lexis. As the children grew up a wider range of syntax structures were used, in the Year 6 group there was an abundance of complex declaratives compared to the Year 2 group which focused more on simple or compound. Repetition was key to the formulation of some utterances, constantly rehearsing the sentence and its meaning may have benefited the student for future use. Declaratives and interrogatives structured the utterances they made, due to the context of a lesson this was expected.

Key levels of speaking and listening set by the government suggest that there is also a difference in the level each year is in. Year 2’s language traits show they are mixed between Level 1 and 2, however considering they are ‘more able’ children, this may be why they are boarder line Level 2. Year 6 however appear to be at Level 4, their language is adapted well to the purpose and show examples where they can respond to each other.

Evaluation..

I think my investigation went well as I was able to organise getting primary data from a primary school where children’s language is most natural. This first-hand practice at transcribing my own data showed me where I could have improved. I feel my Year 2 transcript had more qualitative data than that of my Year 6 therefore, if I could do it again, I would ask to not be with a member of staff and get the children to interact more to show natural language patterns. I may also reduce the group sizes down to 4 so that I could analyse the language in more detail and of fewer pupils.