Michael Halliday's Functions of Speech - CLA

Michael Halliday's Functions of Speech - CLA

Instrumental:

The child begins to use language to express their needs. Directly concerned with obtaining food, drink and comfort, e.g. 'want juice'.

Regulatory:

Child begins to use language to influence the behaviour of others. Persuading/commanding/requesting others to do things. E.g. 'go away'.

Interactional:

Child uses language to develop social relationships and ease the process of interaction.
Concerned with the phatic dimension of talk e.g. 'I love you.'

Personal:

Child uses language to express personal preferences and individual identity e.g. 'I am good'. Sometimes referred to as the 'Here I am!' function - announcing oneself to the world.

Representational:

Child uses language to exchange information. Concerned with relaying or requesting facts and information.

Heuristic:

Child uses language to learn of and explore the environment to learn. This may be questions and answers, or the kind of running commentary that frequently accompanies children play e.g. 'What is the tractor doing?'

Imaginative:

Child uses language to tell stories and jokes, and to create an imaginary environment. May also accompany play as children create an imaginary environment.
May also accompany play as children create imaginary words, or may arise from storytelling.

Evie 'All the Things' Mini Investigation

Evie 'All The Things' Mini Investigation 

Introduction

• Title: What characteristics of language are the two participants, Evie and her grandmother, displaying in the "All the Things' transcript? 
• Hypothesis: According to theory, I would assume that Evie should display several linguistic features of the telegraphic stage of language development and her Grandmother should display several features of Child Directed Speech.
• I would assume that Evie's grandmother is likely to use several interrogatives; imperatives and cloaked imperatives as these are features of Child Directed Speech. Because Evie is 2 years and 7 months at the time of this video, I would suggest she would display some non-standard pronunciations and using beginning to use negatives in a more standard way placing 'not' or 'no' in the standard place in the sentence. I chose these features as theory suggests that these are features of the telegraphic stage which is the stage Evie will be in according to her age.

Methodology

• I picked one transcript called 'All the Things' and quantified features that would display Evie in the telegraphic stage and to show her grandmother using Child Directed speech. Every feature tested above was applied to the transcript. 
• Picked random participants so I did not know the participants personally and so would not make biased judgements on the data. 
• It is ethical because Evie's parents had given full consent for this recording to be used for teaching purposes.
• As this is only a mini investigation, I only have one sample of data therefore it is not fully representative of Evie and her grandmother's language. Only a small sample might not show how Evie and her grandmother tailor their language to other audiences. 

Analysis

• In the transcript, Evie's grandmother asked 45 questions while Evie only asked 3, this shows that Evie's grandmother is leading the conversation and is using features of Child Directed Speech to communicate with Evie.
• Evie's grandmother also uses 3 imperatives while Evie uses 1. This shows more of a similarity between their language but still shows grandma uses a higher frequency of imperatives as she is displaying Child Directed Speech. Evie may have used an imperative as she is beginning to transition into the telegraphic stage and so is beginning to be able to ask and order adults in order to get what she wants.
• Grandma uses 4 cloaked imperatives while Evie uses one. Similar to previously, this could be because Grandma is using Child Directed Speech to Evie to lead the conversation.
• Evie makes 10 non-standard pronunciations, which shows she is still in the telegraphic stage. She says a couple of things that are inaudible so I didn't count them as non-standard pronunciations as they could have been pronounced correctly just not clearly.
• Evie also pronounces things with an 'f' sound at one point in the transcript. This is a typical pronunciation mistake during child language acquisition. This is interesting because when a child wants to make a 'th' sound like in the word 'things' or 'three', the 'th' sound gets substituted for the 'f' sound. This is an example of substitution which is classed as a mistake in sounding words, as it is assumed that the 'f' sound is easier to pronounce than the 'th' combined consonant sound.
• Evie also is beginning to recognise where the negative i.e. 'no' or 'not' should be placed in the sentence and is using it standardly. She only did this once but as I only have one sample of data it is not really representative of her ability to use it properly. This would suggest she is transitioned into the telegraphic stage as she is using these standardly.

Conclusion

• In conclusion, I would say that there was massive limitations due to the very limited data pull, only one transcript can not really conclude anything about language patterns. 
• My data supports my hypothesis as Grandma used much more interrogatives, imperatives and cloaked imperatives to display features of Child Directed Speech.
• My data also supports my hypothesis as Evie used many more non-standard pronunciations and  showed a limited ability to use negatives in the right place in a sentence grammatically. 

Theory to test in Investigation for Coursework

Kroll’s 4 stages of development   

February 7, 2012

Barry Kroll (1981) identified 4 phases of children’s development and further work by other researchers such as Katherine Perera added the suggested age ranges.

Preparation – up to 6 yrs – basic motor skills are acquired alongside some principles of spelling.

Consolidation – 7/8 yrs – writing is similar to spoken language including more colloquial and informal register.  Also a string of clauses joined together by the conjunction “and”.

Differentiation – 9/10 yrs – awareness of writing as separate from speech emerges.  In addition a stronger understanding of writing for different audiences and purposes is evident and becomes more automatic.

Integration – mid-teens – this stages sees the use of the “personal voice” in writing.  It is characterised by evidence of controlled writing, with appropriate linguistic choices being made consistently.

The Five Spelling Stages

Pre-phonemic: Imitate writing, mainly scribbling and using pretend writing; some letter shapes are decipherable.

Semi-phonetic: Link letter shapes and sounds, using this to write words.

Phonetic: Understand that all phonemes can be represented by graphemes; words become more complete.

Transitional: Combine phonic knowledge with visual memory; an awareness of combinations of letters and letter patterns, including the 'magic e' rule.

Conventional: Spell most words correctly

Bibliography: AQA English Language Specification B Textbook

CLA Coursework Preparation

CLA Coursework Preparation

I intent to test  the development of child writing and how the vocabulary and grammatical structures develop over the long period of language acquisition. I also plan to investigate how the child's ability of displaying idiolect and dialect begins to shape as they get older. The children I am going to study are two boys ages six and seven so it will be interesting to look at their books from younger years and see how their writing abilities have developed including writing for an audiences and manipulating register. I predict that as the child gets older, they are more likely to develop the ability to manipulate register, display idiolect and dialect, the complexity of vocabulary and the complexity and range of grammatical structures used will all be displayed more and I also predict they will make less grammatical and spelling mistakes.



I am planning to collect several workbooks from both of the boys over the years at similar ages, and look at the factors stated above. It would be good to acknowledge Noam Chomsky's theory of children being born with the ability to acquire language and to test the presence of their Language Acquisition Device (LAD). This means I can test the way in which the grammatical structures are used i.e. if  'runned' is used instead of 'ran' during the development stage then this shows understanding of adding the 'ed' to past tense verbs and therefore proves Chomsky's theory of children already having these grammatical 'rules' imprinted on the brain. I can also look at how easy it is for the children to acquire more vocabulary and test how this is linked to Chomsky's theory.


It will be difficult to compare the development of the language of the two boys as their development will differ and this is not fair to assume that one may be more linguistically developed than the other at a certain age. However I can use their own data to compare with their own data in previous years. This means I have  two children so I can perhaps analyse certain pieces of data that I might not have seen with just testing one child's writing ability and I can learn more about the difference of their development, errors and improvements. This will be a difficulty as it will be hard not to compare the two however comparing their data might help me to discover some things about their individual development. I cannot assume that one child at the same age as the other is less developed as there are other factors that could influence that which I have not controlled.

Phonics Research

Phonics Research

There are a range of phonetic techniques to teach children, however the dispute is which one to teach them. The more traditional method of teaching phonics is called 'synthetic' phonic teaching, which involves the introduction of 44 different phonemes without putting them in context. However the new, updated version of phonics teaching is 'analytic' phonic system, which involves teaching phonics in context, so the sounds from children's books are recognised and focusing heavily on rhyming groups.


According to the Independent, research shows that using the 'analytic' phonic system, children's reading age as improved by 9 months and the brightest by 14 months, as apposed to the more traditional 'synthetic' phonic method improving children's reading age by a year. Furthermore the two methods are still being disputed as to which is more beneficial for children and more research needs to be carried out to confirm this.

Child Speech Development

Child Speech Development

According to the American Speech, Language and Hearing Association, there are guidelines on what a child should be able to do with language at specific ages and if this is not happening with a child, then they are most likely going to suffer from a Speech or Language disorder. 

The most crucial age of a child acquiring their first language is from birth to three months. I am primarily focusing on speech development and so at this period of time in a child's life they will usually be making pleasure sounds i.e. cooing or gooing, will cry for its needs and will smile at a parent when recognising them. 

From four to six months, the child will start to make babbling sounds and the development of p, m and b sounds begins. At this age also, children tend to show their excitement and displeasure through different sounds and will make gurgling sounds when engaged with an activity or when concentrating but also in order to get attention when they are left alone.

The next stage is seven months to one year, and this is when the child will repeat babbling sounds in a sequence, starting to understand the structure of words, such as 'tata' and 'bibi'. Starts to actually use speech to get attention instead of making noises or crying. The child will also use gestures to communicate such as stretching out their arms if wanting to be picked up. They will begin to imitate speech sounds that they have heard before and this is the primary form of acquiring speech. Towards the age of one the child will be able to relevantly use a couple of words such as 'dada', 'hi', 'dog' and 'mama'. 

It is also important that the parent or carer looks at the child and speaks to them, tells them things and asks them questions, in order to reinforce communication and trigger the recognition of speech in the baby's mind. It is also good to repeat your son or daughters facial expressions so that they can understand how they are expressing themselves and what this means in context. A parent should also talk about what they are doing, where they are going, why they are doing it, and how they feel about it so the child can begin to understand why we communicate and how we do it.

Source: http://www.asha.org/public/speech/development/01.htm

Reading Log and Summaries for A2

Reading Log and Summaries for A2

Child Language Acquisition 

Noam Chomsky - Chomsky believed that children acquiring a language was innate and they had a natural ability to create sentences which he said must have 'already been imprinted on the mind'. He called this ability the 'language acquisition device' and this encodes grammatical structures in the brain so when a child learns new vocabulary, they simply apply it to the structure they already know. He believed this because he noticed in his research that children never get their subjects, verbs and objects in the wrong order; they would notice if an adult purposely said an grammatically incorrect sentence; and also that they say some things which are incorrect grammatically for example 'I drawed' instead of 'I drew' but they could not have repeated this from hearing it, therefore learning is not just through imitation.

David Crystal - Crystal's theory of child language acquisition is that a child will learn in five different stages. Stage one is where children learn to say things for three different reasons: to get something they want; to get someone's attention; or to draw attention to something. Stage two is when the child learns to use interrogatives and usually start with 'what', or 'where'. Stage three involves lots of questions being asked and the development of state of actions and simple verbs such as 'listen' and 'know'. Stage four is when the child develops the ability to use more complex grammatical structures and can explain things, ask 'why' questions or making lots of requests. Stage five is when the child has fully developed language and uses it for all its purposes: to give information and explain things, ask and answer questions, requesting, expressing etc.

Jean Aitchison - Aitchison believed that a childs development of language is biologically organised and every child follows a similar pattern. She identified three stages of child language acquisition. One stage is labeling: this involves linking sounds to objects and associating a name to something. The second stage is packaging: this involved understanding the meaning of a word and the range of the meaning. The last stage is called network building: which is the understanding of the connection between words, and understanding that words have synonyms and antonyms. 

B.F. Skinner - Skinner believed that language acquisition are learned through associating events known as classical conditioning. This is said to be done by children associating objects with sounds or words. They are then rewarded by their parents by smiling or praising by their parents, which is called operant conditioning, as a positive reinforcement is likely to encourage the behaviour to be repeated. 

Neural networks - Some cognitive neuro-scientists have created neural networks that can some aspects acquire language. They are not programmed just exposed to lots of expamples of language. They are able to learn grammatical structures and make past tense forms with verbs. This supports the study that language is learned and developed as we grow up, not that we are born with the ability.

Bibliography - https://aggslanguage.wordpress.com/chomsky/

http://www.sparknotes.com/psychology/psych101/languageandcognition/section2/page/2/

http://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-language-acquisition-theories-stages-quiz.html