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Oral Language Development

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Children develop oral language at a very early age. Almost every sound a human being makes can be considered communication. As children grow up, they are constantly observing and practicing communication and oral language. What they know about oral language has an effect on the development of their literacy skills. "Students who had difficulty with early speech communication skills were believed to be at risk for reading…and consequently writing" (Montgomery, 1998). Therefore, the development of oral language has an effect on the ways in which emergent readers develop literacy.

Transcribed dialog taken from a personal interview with a 3-year-old girl named Gianna will be referred to in this paper. Gianna's dialog will provide …show more content…

al., 1998, p.536). Gianna understands this. Most of her sentences show syntax. For example, she says "I like to touch him" and "Look, now I'm using yellow." (DiNobile, 1998). Both of these examples are grammatically correct.

Syntax is basically the same with regard to reading. When a student reads a sentence in a book, she typically understands the material because it is worded just as it would be spoken. "Readers use their knowledge of the meaningful arrangement of words in sentences to construct meaning from text" (Vacca et. al., 1995, p.26). For example, a sentence that reads, "my book is green" makes sense. If it were worded, "green book is my," it would not make sense to the reader.

In the two-word stage of oral language development, children between 18 and 20 months of age, begin to use two-word statements. " During this stage, children rapidly learn the value of language for expressing concepts, and especially the power of language to aid them in communication their desires to others" (Dworetzky, 1996, p.241). There are four different types of two-word phrases. Children use two-word phrase to locate or name something, to demand or desire something, to indicate possession, and to question

something. A few examples are "there book," "more milk," my shoe," and "where ball" (Dworetzky, 1996, p.241).

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