Framework for language development

Language plays a primary role in children’s mental development, particularly in terms of developing scientific concepts and systematic thought. This makes it important for schools to offer home language instruction as a language of learning and teaching (LOLT). The most important question to ask is what happens when children do not use their home language as language of learning?

In order to establish the baseline of language development, work on English language acquisition is included which synthesises research on children’s language development and its effects on literacy. It is acknowledged that this research reflects children’s language development in optimum situations where they are using their home language as language of learning in highly literate situations. However, this research reflects the levels of learning to which a language in education policy should aspire and helps in framing age appropriate levels of competence (Pereira 1984:58).

Research on language development shows that most children come to school with a fairly advanced competence of language (Cummins 2003:45). By the time they come to school they have mastered the sound system of their language, a large vocabulary and are able to systematically link it up. They have also gained the social conventions

associated with their home language. Although language develops at a very fast pace during the first few years, children continue to acquire language throughout their life time although at a much slower rate. Pereira (1984:60), for example, in his research on English speaking children both in the USA and the UK, discovered that as children mature they use language with greater fluency. Pereira (1984:65) claims that, in terms of comprehension, there are still grammatical constructions which many children do not understand.

The period of active language acquisition is during the early school years and around the age of eleven years (Cummins 20001:7). This is indicated by a large increase in new grammatical constructions and high error rates on some kind of constructions. This is due to children’s growing literacy and experience of language. Children become aware of the difference between spoken and written language, the situational, functional, formal and grammatical differences, as well as discourse patterns, all of which, in turn impact on their developing control over language. According to Pereira (1986:76), reading and writing help children to gain grammatical patterns which are not used in oral speech. Children who cannot read are denied this valuable stimulus to their linguistic development. This could be of relevance for bilingual learners who do not use their home language for learning and whose LOLT is not well established, as it can be predicted that they will have difficulty reading in it. Similarly, if they are not expected to read in their own language, they are denied the opportunity to develop the skills necessary to process language not found in speech.

Children can only develop meaningful meta-linguistic knowledge when they can distinguish between language and experience. Sealey (1996:40) claims that this faculty begins to develop at the age of six years. This links closely to Vygotsky’s belief in the crucial role played by school learning.

Lager’s (1986:17) research provides an insight into children’s developing discourse knowledge. While it is generally accepted that children have some knowledge of story or narrative structure by the time they reach school (Goodman 1990:87), Lager proposes that they also have some knowledge of exposition, based on their ability to share information. She claims that by the age of eight years old children can distinguish between stories and reports. They are able to distinguish the different uses of the two

types of texts, select different topics for the two and organise them differently. They also demonstrate differences through using markers such as sequence, sentence length and tense. This awareness and the ability to control these features develops with age, with children of thirteen years demonstrating the ability to orchestrate linguistic and communicative forms to suit their own ends.

Vygotsky (1986:89) ascribes a special role to the development of writing. According to Vygotsky, while children learn to speak through everyday experience, this is not true for writing. He maintains that when writing instruction begins, children have not yet developed the necessary psychological systems. This indicates that the psychological development necessary for writing depends on instruction and does not precede it. While both speech and writing require symbolisation, in oral speech this occurs spontaneously but in written speech it is mastered consciously. Writing is more difficult than speech and it is more abstract, being removed from the listener and the context in which it will be perceived. Unlike speech it also requires a conscious knowledge of the relationship between sound and symbol, between speech and its representations.

Vygotsky (1986:90) links the ability to write to the development of inner speech. He proposes that inner speech be established in order to translate thought into words. But this is only a first step, as inner thought is abbreviated and condensed and needs to be encoded further so as to produce coherent sentences on paper. Writing in turn enhances the child’s intellectual development, as it is further removed from thought and requires greater consciousness, not only of the ideas one wants to impart but also conscious knowledge of how to connect these ideas in language.

This is further supported by Konopak and Drum (1987:67) who found that writing tasks result in richer understanding of knowledge and thus can be used to develop children’s understanding of content. Kroll (1987:20) divided the process of the acquisition of writing skills into four stages:

1) Preparation learning.

2) Consolidation which begins round about six or seven years.

3) Differentiation starts at nine or ten years as children begin to use grammatical structures in their fourth year of schooling.

4) Integration.

These are estimations which should still be tested in the South African context taking children’s bilingual learning environment into account.

After nine years Pereira (1984:68), claims that children start using a higher proportion of complex sentences and structures which do not occur at all in speech, indicating that their linguistic development is influenced as much by reading as by speech. This supports her notion that gaining literacy is a powerful stimulus to language development.

2.4.1.2 Conclusion

When looking at the framework of language development suggested by Lager (1986:10), Sealey (1996:80) and Pereira (1984:48), one needs to take into account further research which investigates the issue of bilingualism in terms of language and cognitive development, given that the majority of children in South Africa do not use their home language as their LOLT and need to learn a language of wider communication. The gains made from school learning and growing literacy for children learning through their home language cannot be expected because their research supposes the availability of rich and varied reading resources which are not yet available for African home language speakers.

2.4.2 Krashen’s contributions

Krashen (1976, 1982) was the first researcher to give an account of the differences between deliberate learning of a language at school and the acquisition of a language in a social environment where language is used for communication purposes. His theoretical models are discussed below.