English Language - Child Written Language Development

- print of everyday life

- appears in signs, labels, logos etc

-  process of writing begins when children are exposed to printed language

- children exposed to lots of reading from an early age become more successful in school and writing

- enables young children to see connection between phonemes and graphemes

- increased exposure to letters and early words

- if children have enjoyed their reading experience they are more likely to appeciate and understand the importance of writen word

- share features of CDS

- images

- onomatopoeia

- imperatives

- rhyming schemes

- repetition

Phonology

• Separate phrases more distinctly, leaving longer pauses between them.
• Speak more s-l-o-w-l-y.
• Use exaggerated  ‘singsong’ intonation, which helps to emphasise key words.  Also to exaggerate the difference between questions, statements and commands.
• Use a higher and wider pitch range.

Lexis and semantics

• Use of concrete nouns (cat, train) and dynamic verbs (give, put).
• Adopt child’s own words for things (doggie, wickle babbit).
• Frequent use of child’s name and an absence of pronouns.

Grammar

• Simpler constructions
• Frequent use of imperatives
• High degree of repetition
• Use of personal names instead of pronouns (e.g. ‘Mummy’ not ‘I’)
• Fewer verbs, modifiers and adjectives

Large number of one-word utterances

• Repeated sentence frames eg. “that’s a ……”
• Use more simple sentences and fewer complex and passives.
• Omission of past tenses, inflections (plurals and possessives).
• Use more commands, questions and tag questions.
• Use of EXPANSIONS – where the adult fills out the child’s utterance.
• Use of RE-CASTINGS – where the child’s vocabulary is put into a new utterance.

Pragmatics

• Lots of gesture and warm body language.
• Fewer utterances per turn – stopping frequently for child to respond.
• Supportive language (expansions and re-castings)

• - Focus on initial sound (onset) 

• - Rhyming patterns (cat,mat,fat,sat) 

• - Not focusing on phonemes 

• - Self-teach 

• - Recognise patterns and figure out new words 

• - All sounds in words are equally important 

• - Phonetic (s a t ) 

• - Handwriting 

expressive writing = first type of writing kids develop, first person and wholly concerned with self as child explores identity

poetic writing = literary writing (stories and poems) encouraged in early years

transactional writing = writing for a purpose (instructions) adopting an impersonal tone

- different length ascenders and descenders

- different sized letters

- cursive handwriting vs detached handwriting

- spaces between words

- how we hold a pen

- right-handed vs left-handed

- writing needs fine motor skills

- takes longer to learn the rules of writing than rules of speaking

- drawing

- letter-like forms

- copied letters

- child's name and string of letters

- words

- sentences

- text

• - Fine motor skills (holding and controlling pen) 
  - recognising individual phonemes in words 

• - Recognising separate words 

• - Forming shapes of upper and lower case graphemes and numbers 

• - Directionality and spacing 

• - Selecting appropriate lexis 

• - Applying principles of syntax 

• - Applying conventions of punctuation 

• - Paragraphing coherently 

• - Applying appropriate genre conventions 

• - Proof reading and editing 

a unit of sound

a letter/number of letters that represent a sound in a word

chidlren's early attempts at communicating in a written form (scribbles)

handwriting in which the characters are joind in round and flowing strokes

the typograhical feature where a part of the letter goes above the usual height for letters in any font (b, d, h)

where part of the letter goes below the baseline of a font (g, p)

whether words go from left to right or right to left

deelopment of speaking and listening skills

development of reading and writing skills

the way in which a pen or pencil should be held (thumb, forefinger, middle finger)

the skills associated with larger movements (walking, jumping)

associated with more precise movement, normally with the fingers (writing, sewing, using scissors)