Children's Early Decontextualized Talk Predicts Academic Language Proficiency in Midadolescence

Uccelli, Paola; Demir-Lira, Özlem Ece; Rowe, Meredith L.; Levine, Susan C.; Goldin‐Meadow, Susan

doi:10.1111/cdev.13034

Cited by 125 publications

(66 citation statements)

References 40 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…This finding indicates that children's home literacy environment may represent a common source of stable individual differences in vocabulary and grammatical development. This observation was not completely unexpected, as several longitudinal studies have demonstrated long‐lasting socioeconomic disparities in children's language skills (Hart & Risley, ; Huttenlocher, Waterfall, Vasilyeva, Vevea, & Hedges, ; Rowe, ; Uccelli, Demir‐Lira, Rowe, Levine, & Goldin‐Meadow, ). However, we were still somewhat surprised by the magnitude of the home literacy effects, considering that all of the predictors were very rough measures with a restricted range of scores in the sample and a nontrivial degree of missing data.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 65%

Is there a direct relation between the development of vocabulary and grammar?

Brinchmann

Braeken²,

Lyster

2018

Developmental Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Previous studies of individual differences have revealed strong correlations between children's vocabulary and grammatical abilities, and these data have been used to support theoretical accounts positing direct developmental relations between these two areas of language. However, between-person differences do not necessarily reflect intra-individual dynamics. Thus, in the present study, we analysed longitudinal data from three annual assessments of vocabulary and grammar in 217 children (M = 4 years and 3 months at first assessment) using a modelling strategy with some utility in distinguishing relations at the between- and within-person levels. The results revealed strong correlations between grammar and vocabulary at the between-person level, but the evidence of direct dependencies between the variables at the within-person level was rather limited. Specifically, we found a small direct contribution from grammar to vocabulary for children between the ages of 4 and 5, but there was no evidence of any direct contributions from vocabulary to grammar. Further analyses suggested that the home literacy environment may represent a common source of individual differences in children's vocabulary and grammatical skills. In light of these results, we argue that the evidence of direct relations between vocabulary and grammatical development in preschool-aged children may not be as strong as previously assumed.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 65%

Is there a direct relation between the development of vocabulary and grammar?

Brinchmann

Braeken²,

Lyster

2018

Developmental Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…More research will be also essential to understand the relation between the cross‐disciplinary academic‐language skills tested here and learning in a particular discipline, such as science, history, or mathematics. Research on the precursors of academic language and on opportunities to learn S‐CALS in and outside of school throughout development also needs to be conducted (Uccelli, Demir, Rowe, Goldin‐Meadow, & Levine, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Academic Language as a Predictor of Reading Comprehension in Monolingual Spanish‐Speaking Readers: Evidence From Chilean Early Adolescents

Meneses

Uccelli²,

Santelices

et al. 2017

Reading Research Quarterly

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Although literacy achievement has improved in Chile, adolescents’ underperformance in reading comprehension is still a serious concern. In English, core academic‐language skills (CALS) have been found to significantly predict reading comprehension, even controlling for academic vocabulary knowledge. CALS are high‐utility language skills that support reading comprehension across school content areas. Guided by an operational definition of Spanish CALS (S‐CALS), three goals drove this study: to develop two psychometrically reliable tests, the S‐CALS Instrument and the Spanish Academic Vocabulary (S‐AVoc) Test; to explore the dimensionality of core academic‐language proficiencies, as measured by these two tests; and to examine the contribution of core academic‐language proficiencies to reading comprehension. A cross‐sectional sample of 810 Chilean students (grades 4–8) participated in four assessments that measured standardized reading comprehension, word‐reading fluency, Spanish academic vocabulary, and S‐CALS. Using classical test theory and item response theory analyses, results yielded robust reliability evidence for both instruments. Consistent with prior research, S‐CALS and academic vocabulary scores displayed upward trends in higher grades yet considerable within‐grade variability. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that S‐CALS and S‐AVoc were best conceptualized as part of a higher order construct, the Spanish core academic‐language and vocabulary skills (S‐CALVS). The aggregated S‐CALVS scores predicted reading comprehension, beyond the contribution of grade, school factors, and word‐reading fluency. This study advances our scientific understanding of CALS as relevant for adolescent literacy beyond the English language. The high‐utility school‐relevant language and vocabulary skills offer promising tools to inform and evaluate innovative reading comprehension interventions for Spanish‐speaking adolescents.

show abstract

“…Taken together, the literature shows that book-reading and oral story-telling have a positive effect on vocabulary development, not only in monolingual children (e.g., Mol & Bus, 2011;Uccelli et al, 2018), but also in bilingual children (Patterson, 2002;Scheele et al, 2010). The results on the effect of watching TV are mixed (Chonchaiya & Pruksananonda, 2008;Hudon et al, 2013).…”

Section: Book-readingmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Katz (2001) found that parents' use of pretend utterances while playing with their three-year-olds related to children's receptive vocabulary and their skill at providing formal definitions in kindergarten. A recent study that focused on children's oral story-telling instead of parents' oral story-telling showed that children who produced a larger proportion of explanations, narratives, and pretend utterances at age 2;6 had significantly higher levels of academic language proficiency at the age of twelve (Uccelli, Demir-Lira, Rowe, Levine, & Goldin-Meadow, 2018). Not surprisingly, children's production of oral story-telling is very strongly associated with their parents' production of oral story-telling (Demir, Rowe, Heller, Goldin-Meadow, & Levine, 2015).…”

Section: Book-readingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…During decontextualized conversations, children cannot rely on pointing or other non-verbal cues, which means that they can only make use of the language itself to understand and convey meaning. As a result, decontextualized speech contains more diverse vocabulary and more complex morphosyntactic structures than contextualized speech, which makes it an important predictor for language development (Demir et al, 2015;Reese, 1995;Rowe, 2012Rowe, , 2013Uccelli et al, 2018).…”

Section: Book-readingmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Language activities in a minority–majority language context: book-reading at home is more important for Frisian than for Dutch

Bosma

Blom

2019

J. Child Lang.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Previous research has shown that in a minority–majority language context, the quantity of language input at home is more important for the development of the minority language than for the development of the majority language. In the current study, we examined whether the same holds true for the frequency of specific language activities at home. In a group of five- and six-year-old Frisian–Dutch bilingual children (n = 120), we investigated to what extent vocabulary and morphology knowledge were predicted by reading activities, watching TV, and story-telling activities in both languages. The results showed that reading in Frisian predicted both Frisian vocabulary and morphology, while reading in Dutch only predicted Dutch vocabulary. This shows that reading at home is most important for the development of the minority language. This especially holds true for the acquisition of Frisian morphology, a domain that is known to be vulnerable in language acquisition.

show abstract

Children's Early Decontextualized Talk Predicts Academic Language Proficiency in Midadolescence

Cited by 125 publications

References 40 publications

Is there a direct relation between the development of vocabulary and grammar?

Is there a direct relation between the development of vocabulary and grammar?

Academic Language as a Predictor of Reading Comprehension in Monolingual Spanish‐Speaking Readers: Evidence From Chilean Early Adolescents

Language activities in a minority–majority language context: book-reading at home is more important for Frisian than for Dutch

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About