Language, Communication, and Emergent Literacy
- Listening and Understanding
- Increases knowledge through listening
Benchmark a: Child shows understanding by asking and answering relevant questions, adding comments relevant to the topic, and reacting appropriately to what is said.
- Follows multi-step directions.
Benchmark a: Child achieves mastery of two-step directions and usually follows three-step directions, with teacher support and multiple experiences over time
- Increases knowledge through listening
- Speaking
- Speech is understood by both a familiar and an unfamiliar peer or adult
Benchmark a: Child’s speech is understood by both a familiar and an unfamiliar adult.
- Speech is understood by both a familiar and an unfamiliar peer or adult
- Vocabulary
- Shows an understanding of words and their meanings
Benchmark a: Child has age-appropriate vocabulary across many topic areas and demonstrates a wide variety of words and their meanings within each area (e.g., world knowledge: names of body parts, feelings, colors, shapes, jobs, tools, plants, animals and their habitats, and foods; words that describe: adjectives, verbs, and adverbs).
Benchmark b: Child has mastery of functional and organizational language of the classroom (e.g., same and different, in front of and behind, next to, opposite, below).
Benchmark c: Child understands or knows the meaning of many thousands of words including disciplinary words, (e.g., science, social studies, math, and literacy) many more than he or she routinely uses (receptive language).
- Shows an understanding of words and their meanings
According to what research tells us, children are born ready to learn language. This capacity, which is described as language acquisition ability, prepares the child to learn any language. As the child interacts with family members and participates in the environment, those interactions influence and contribute to defining the language that the child learns.
Learning a second language is an interesting and complex process. Language experts agree that the second-language-acquisition process happens over time. They also agree that it is influenced by many different factors. Sometimes, when two (or more) different languages are spoken in the child’s environment, the child may learn both. Living and interacting in an environment where a different language is used fosters and motivates its acquisition. Children may also acquire a second language when they are exposed to an environment where a language different from that spoken at home is used. This occurs most commonly when children are exposed to English at school and another language at home or in their community. A factor that influences the child to acquire a second language is the need to be able to communicate and feel part of his or her group. Communicating in the classroom becomes a strong source of motivation in learning another language.
Observations of second-language learners have also revealed that age may influence second-language learning. When children younger than age three are in an environment where one or more languages are used consistently, they tend to learn both languages at the same time, or simultaneously. After age three, many children already have developed their home language to a great extent. For those children, the development of the second language is considered to be sequential (that is, they learned the two languages one after the other). The children in your classroom may fit into either of these two categories. No matter where your children are in the process of learning English, the information and suggestions presented in this course should prove to be helpful.
