Oral language development includes critical skills that let children (1) communicate—listen and respond when other people are talking. (2) understand the meaning of a large number of words and concepts that they hear or read. (3) obtain new information about things they want to learn about, and (4) express their own ideas and thoughts using specific language.

Oral language development is a critical foundation for reading, writing, and spelling, and it is the “engine” of learning and thinking. Research suggests that young children’s ability to use language and to listen to and understand the meaning of spoken and written words is related to their later literacy achievement in reading, writing, and spelling.

Oral language skills start developing in infancy and continue to develop throughout life.

INFANTS listen to and become aware of sounds of the words being spoken by the adults around them. Very early on children begin to communicate their own needs through sounds and gestures.

TODDLERS use language to express feelings and ideas and seek information. They begin to talk in simple sentences, ask questions and give opinions about likes and dislikes.

YOUNG PRESCHOOLERS build a larger vocabulary from the language of people around them and from new ideas in books. They tell make-believe stories and talk about things and events that are not in the here-and-now, such as things they cannot see, events that have already happened or might happen in the future. They use language that is more complex, with complete sentences and sentences with multiple parts.

National Early Literacy Panel; Learning to Talk and Listen: https://lincs.ed.gov/publications/pdf/LearningtoTalkandListen.pdf

Justice, L.M. (2004). Creating language-rich preschool classroom environments. Teaching Exceptional Children, (37)2. http://ici-bostonready-pd-2009-2010.wikispaces.umb.edu/file/view/Creating+L...

Justice, L.M. (2004). Creating language-rich preschool classroom environments. Teaching Exceptional Children, (37)2. http://ici-bostonready-pd-2009-2010.wikispaces.umb.edu/file/view/Creating+L...

"Exposure means that children experience high-quality linguistic input both passively and actively within the classroom (Bunce, 1995). They are exposed to language throughout the day in diverse contexts and interactions. In
some of these exposures, the child may not be an active participant; rather, children may be passive observers of the language that is used around them. Children do not need to overtly produce or imitate language to acquire key language forms and concepts, since incidental
exposures to language in which children are merely bystanders can be sufficient for language learning to take
place (Akhtar, Jipson, & Callanan, 2001). Nevertheless, active experiences are also important for language acquisition, and children require opportunities
to use their language when they interact
with others."

Justice, L.M. (2004). Creating language-rich preschool classroom environments. Teaching Exceptional Children, (37)2. http://ici-bostonready-pd-2009-2010.wikispaces.umb.edu/file/view/Creating+L...

"Deliberateness means that the adults in the classroom are intentional in the language that they choose to use with children. When talking with children, adults in language-rich classroom environments make knowledgeable choices in the words, grammar, and sounds that they use so that they can stimulate children's ongoing achievement of new skills. Adults provide children with meaningful variation in the language to which they are exposed. For instance, when interacting with children, adults vary the abstraction level of the language that they use. Variations in the abstraction level allow children to participate in perceptually oriented conversations in which they use language to label, imitate, and describe, as well as in conceptually oriented conversations that engage children in using language to hypothesize, summarize, predict,
decide, and reason (van Kleeck, Gillam, Hamilton, & McGrath, 1997)."

Justice, L.M. (2004). Creating language-rich preschool classroom environments. Teaching Exceptional Children, (37)2. http://ici-bostonready-pd-2009-2010.wikispaces.umb.edu/file/view/Creating+L...

"High-quality input means that adult language in the classroom is characterized by diverse content, form, and use. Content, form, and use are the three
interrelated elements of language that form the complex whole of oral language.

Content consists of the words that are used and the concepts that are expressed; this term is more or less synonymous with vocabulary, or semantics. Children experience many different word types, including adjectives, nouns, verbs, prepositions, and adverbs. Children are exposed to the ways that important societal concepts are expressed, such as kinship (brother, uncle, aunt), time (tomorrow, yesterday), and shelter (house, apartment). Children are exposed to gradations of precision in using vocabulary (old, stale, musty), learn the multiple meanings of words (run), learn to organize concepts (farmer, nurse, pharmacist), and learn how to play with words (a grasshopper man is a man who collects grasshoppers). Children are exposed to diverse ways to express similar things (that towel, that white towel, the towel
he has).

Form refers to the way that word structure and sentence structure are organized grammatically and phonologically. Children experience many different
grammatical constructions, including elaborated noun phrases (the old dark house), various verb constructions
(walks, is walking, will walk, walked), and prepositional phrases (under the table). Children hear sentences that are simple, complex, and compound; and they are exposed to diverse ways to link ideas syntactically (e.g., If you want a sticker, you need to come and get one). Children experience question types of many different constructions, including auxiliary inverted (Is he going?), tag (He is going, isn't he?), and the who, what, when, why, where forms of questions.

Use refers to the ways that language is used in functional contexts to achieve social purposes. Children are exposed to the many ways that language is used for social and functional purposes. Children are exposed to diverse speech acts (label, repeat, answer, request, greet, protest) and learn conversational moves (initiating a topic, maintaining a topic, closing a topic). They listen to and produce stories that are organized temporally and causally, and they are exposed to strategies for solving communication breakdowns.
They are encouraged to initiate with their peers, to take turns, and to negotiate for objects. They learn how to
talk to different people (friends, teachers, librarians) in different settings (schools, stores, homes).

Children's content, form, and use achievements directly
reflect their experiences with language in the world around them (Hart & Risley, 1995). Thus, exposing children to language that is diverse in these three areas
is an important feature of the language."

Justice, L.M. (2004). Creating language-rich preschool classroom environments. Teaching Exceptional Children, (37)2. http://ici-bostonready-pd-2009-2010.wikispaces.umb.edu/file/view/Creating+L...

"Recurrence refers to the importance of repetition to children's acquisition of important linguistic concepts. This point is demonstrated well in studies that have investigated young children's acquisition of new vocabulary words when someone reads storybooks to them. Robbins and Ehri (1994), for instance, showed that the probability that young children would learn a new word from a storybook was considerably greater if the word occurred twice in a storybook rather than only once. Penno, Wilkinson, and Moore (2002) found that children's use of new vocabulary words from storybooks increased in a progressive manner from the first reading session to the third one as children experienced new words repeatedly over readings. In language-rich classrooms, repetition is valued and is an integral part of the classroom routine. Children receive multiple opportunities to experience specific linguistic concepts in diverse contexts of use, and classroom experiences are organized to foster repetition."

Justice, L.M. (2004). Creating language-rich preschool classroom environments. Teaching Exceptional Children, (37)2. http://ici-bostonready-pd-2009-2010.wikispaces.umb.edu/file/view/Creating+L...

"Adult responsiveness means that adults frequently and consistently respond to a child's communicative acts
in a way that is sensitive to the child's developing competencies. High levels of responsiveness by teachers and parents—particularly when adult responses focus on child-initiated topics—have repeatedly been associated with robust language gains by children
(Girolametto & Weitzman, 2002).

In addition to being responsive to all communicative acts of children, adults should ensure that their responses are contingent; a contingent response is one that responds to a child's communicative intent rather than to the 'correctness' of the child's act. For instance, an adult who responds "Oh, that wasn't very nice!" to a child's "Her hitted me!" is responding contingently; the adult has focused on the child's meaning and communicative intention rather than on the words and grammar that the child used."

Justice, L.M. (2004). Creating language-rich preschool classroom environments. Teaching Exceptional Children, (37)2. http://ici-bostonready-pd-2009-2010.wikispaces.umb.edu/file/view/Creating+L...

Shared Conversations: Talking with Children
Children of all ages enjoy talking with the adults in their lives, including their parents, teachers and caregivers. Talking is one of the most natural things we do with the children in our care, sometimes without even thinking about doing it. When we talk about our day, sit down to snack or lunch we can help build important language skills through our conversations. Caregivers can do more intentionally to build children’s oral language development. They can help children build language skills both through their own language interactions with children and by setting up an environment that gives children lots of reasons to talk and things to talk about.

One of the best ways that caregivers can help children develop their oral language skills is through shared conversations with them. Shared storybook reading provides an especially good platform for conversations with children. These language interactions are the basis for building children’s understanding of the meaning of a large number of words, which is a crucial
ingredient in their later ability to comprehend what they read.

Children need practice having conversations with the important adults in their lives. By talking with preschool children, you can help children build speaking and istening skills.

Talking with other people—using language to ask questions, to explain, to ask for what they need, to let people know how they feel—is one of the important ways that children build language and understanding. Learning to listen while others talk is another important avenue for learning.


National Early Literacy Panel; Learning to Talk and Listen: https://lincs.ed.gov/publications/pdf/LearningtoTalkandListen.pdf

TURN-TAKING. The richest talk involves many “back-and-forth” turns in which the provider builds on and connects with the child’s statements, questions and responses. These extended conversations help children learn how to use language and understand the meaning of new words they encounter listening to other people or in reading books. They also often involve different
kinds of sentences—questions and statements—and may include adjectives and adverbs that modify the words in children’s original statements, modeling richer descriptive language.

For example, a child may start a conversation by showing the caregiver a just-completed drawing:
Child: “Look, it’s me in the garden with my Grandma.”
Teacher: (builds on the child’s statement and asks a question that encourages the child to continue), “Yes, I see. Your grandmother is holding something in her hand. What is it?”

Child: “It’s carrots. We planted the seeds together. Grandma told me how to put the seeds in the dirt, but not touching each other.”

Teacher: (asks a question that encourages the child to use language to express an abstract thought) “What would happen if the seeds did touch each other when you planted them?”

The caregiver could then continue by talking with the child about plants and how they grow from seeds, and what needs to be done to keep a garden growing. Extending the conversation back-and-forth allows the
caregiver to introduce new concepts and helps children build language knowledge as well as learn how to express their own ideas in words.

National Early Literacy Panel; Learning to Talk and Listen: https://lincs.ed.gov/publications/pdf/LearningtoTalkandListen.pdf

eye contact, on kids level, repeat back what you hear them say

The questions you ask determine the level of oral languge complexity that children will demonstrate in conversation.

Remember those?
Closed ended questions (quiz): label, locating objects

Open-ended questions: describe, recall, critical thinking (summarize, define, compare, contrast, provide judgements),

Follow-up questions to keep the conversation going

1. Hearing and using rich and abstract vocabulary
2. Hearing and using increasingly complex sentences
3. Using words to express ideas and to ask questions
about things they don’t understand
4. Using words to answer questions about things
that are not just in the here-and-now

National Early Literacy Panel; Learning to Talk and Listen: https://lincs.ed.gov/publications/pdf/LearningtoTalkandListen.pdf

Marion Blank's Levels of Questioning http://askaspeechie.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Blank-handout.pdf

label & locate - concrete, labeling of observable items
1. Hearing and using rich and abstract vocabulary
2. Hearing and using increasingly complex sentences

What is it? (Who's that? What do you hear?)

Which one is the same?
What color/letter/shape is it?
What are you doing?
What do you see (in the book, in the classroom, outside)?
Which one do you like?


Can expose children to more complex vocabulary using repeat & extend strategy. Child says, "It's cold outside," you say, "Yes! I noticed it was chilly this morning." OR narration, "Wow, you are using compression to keep your block tower from falling down. The top blocks are pushing down through the center of all the rest!"

describe, recall, observe & remember
1. Hearing and using rich and abstract vocabulary
2. Hearing and using increasingly complex sentences

What did you do over the weekend?
What do you notice about the butterfly?
How does it taste/smell/feel?
Tell me about your drawing.
The three bears are going for a walk. Why are they going for a walk? Talk about a time when you went for a walk with your family.

Pretend Play - opportunity to "talk about" a number of topics...the materials you provide help them "set the stage"

Supporting Thinking Skills - order/reorder, summarize, define, compare, contrast
3. Using words to express ideas and to ask questions
about things they don’t understand

Tell me how to do this.
What is the problem?
How many ways can you sort the shells?
Tell me a story.
What happened?
How are these the same or different?
What's another way to ...?

predict, solve problems, explain increasingly abstract concepts, evaluate
4. Using words to answer questions about things
that are not just in the here-and-now

What will happen if...?
Why?
What could you do?
Why can't we...?
How can we tell?
What could we use?
Why is... made of...?

How do we know the earth rotates around the sun?
What could Cooper say to help Izzy feel better?
Why do you think these objects float, but these sink?
Which way works best to stick your collage materials to the paper?
Why do you think the swallow builds its nest with mud, but the eagle uses large sticks and limbs?