Development of Native Language Skills Beyond the Early Years

Abstract

This chapter, prepared for a volume on Language Learning to be published by the National Council of Teachers of English, is a review of the development of language competence and performance skills beyond the years of primary language acqu~sition, i.e., from about the first grade on. First, development of specific skills relating to phonology, syntax, and vocabulary is reviewed, and then attention shifts to the development of "integrated skills ll :listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Emphasis is put on identifying dimens~ons of individual d~fferences in rates of growth and development. Although a substantial degree of basic competence in the rules of the native language is attained by the normal child at school entry age, development is by no means complete at that time. In many aspects of language skill, development continues throughout the years of schooling and to a lesser extent throughout adult life In adult populations, there are enormous individual differences in nearly all aspects of language skill. Gaps in our knowledge of factors in development are pointed out DEVELOPMENT OF NATIVE LANGUAGE SKILIS BEYOND THE EARLY YEARS I

Reading and Language Learning: Crosslinguistic Constraints on Second Language Reading Development

“…Successful comprehension is strongly related to knowledge of individual word meanings. Consistently high correlations between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension have been reported in a number of studies (e.g., Alderson & Urquhart, 1985; Anderson & Freebody, 1983; Carroll, 1971; Davis, 1968; Koda, 1988; Qian, 1998). The dominant interpretation of this relationship is that vocabulary knowledge enables reading comprehension.…”

A cloze-up on the C-Test: a study in the construct validation of authentic tests

“…Carroll, 1971: Figure 3.1) and for writing by Hunt (1965), O'Donnell et al (1967) and Loban (1966) (cf. Carroll, 1971: Figure 3.3).…”

“…Similar results were obtained for speaking by various different authors (cf. Carroll, 1971: Table 3.3); for reading scores obtained from the S T EP Test (E T S, I975 ;cf. Carroll, 1971: Figure 3.1) and for writing by Hunt (1965), O'Donnell et al (1967) and Loban (1966) (cf.…”

Intelligence Testing, Cognition, and Instruction*

“…In the section that follows, we begin such an analysis by discussing how the influences of vocabulary knowledge come into play in the relation between aptitude test performance and classroom instruction. We have chosen to focus on vocabulary testing and instruction because, in addition to being one of the single best predictors of verbal intelligence (Carroll 1971;Terman 1918), vocabulary is one of the major factors in reading comprehension.…”