1. Oral Language:
Role in Literacy Development
• Learning language is an important part of
learning to read. (Ruddell & Ruddell)
• Oral language is the “bedrock” of all the
language arts. (Snow, Burns, & Griffin)
• “Reading is dependent upon growth of
language competence in the early years.”
(Morrow)

2. Oral Language: Connection to Reading
• Vocabulary knowledge
• Syntax knowledge
• Use of prior knowledge in comprehension
(Bakhtin theorizes that the brain stores
knowledge as language.)

3. Stages of Language Development
• Infants crying
• 2-4 months cooing
• 6 months intonation
• 8-10 months babbling
• 1 year sing words
• 18 months telegraphic speech

4. Stages of Language Development
• 1-2 holophrastic (single word) to
telegraphic (two words)
• 2-3 telegraphic to descriptive (language
play, more syntactic complexity)
• 3-4 simple to complex (dramatic growth
in syntax & vocabulary,
overgeneralization of rules)
• 4-6 toward refinement (generative
language—supply own words, use
language creatively)

5. Oral Language Development
• Not random
• Not imitation
• Chomsky (1965)
proposed a “language
acquisition device”
• Complex problem-
solving
• Learned in process of
using it
• Unique to the individual

6. Functions of Language Use
(Halliday, 1975)
• Instrumental
• Regulatory
• Interactional
• Personal
• Heuristic
• Imaginative
• Informative/Representational

7. Conditions of Learning
(Cambourne, 1988)
• Immersion
• Demonstration
• Engagement
• Expectation
• Responsibility
• Use/Practice
• Approximation
• Response

8. Language-Learning Conditions at
Home vs. School
• Home: adult response twice as often,
negotiation of meaning, many child initiations
• School: teacher-dominated talk, less language
complexity (Wells, 1999)
• IRE: Initiation of topic by teacher, Response
by student, Evaluation by teacher (Cazden,
1988)

9. Rules for School by Karin, 1st
grade
• Don’t tawk!!
• Unles you rase your
hand.
• And onle if the
techer ses you can!

10. Fostering Oral Language in
Classrooms
• Physical Environment
• Psychological Environment
• Opportunities for Talk
• Group Task: Create an observational checklist
to assess the conditions for oral language
development in an early childhood, primary, or
elementary classroom.

11. Implications for English Language
Learners
• BICS vs. CALPS
– BICS: basic interpersonal language proficiency
skills (2-3 years)
– CALPS: cognitive academic language proficiency
skills (5-7 years)
• “comprehensible input”
• “total physical response”
• “funds of knowledge”

12. Phonological Awareness
• Definition: the ability to manipulate larger
units of sound, such as words and syllables,
onsets and rimes
• Hearing/recognizing rhyming patterns
• Producing rhymes
• Segmenting separate words in sentences
• Segmenting syllables in words
• Blending syllables in words

13. Phonemic Awareness
• Definition: understanding that speech is composed of
a series of individual sounds; the ability to manipulate
the individual sounds (phonemes) within words
• Matching sounds
• Isolating sounds (initial, final, medial)
• Deleting sounds (initial, final)
• Substituting sounds
• Blending onset and rime to form words
• Stretching/segmenting words to hear individual
sounds
• Blending individual sounds to form words

14. Research Base for Phonemic
Awareness
• Children who cannot hear individual sounds within words
have difficulty learning to read.
• Phonemic awareness is a predictor of later reading
achievement.
• Phonemic awareness positively affects spelling achievement.
• Research supports direct/explicit instruction in phonemic
awareness.
• Literacy activities contribute to the development of phonemic
awareness.
• Phonemic awareness instruction is particularly effective when
accompanied by use of letters of the alphabet.

15. Methods for Helping Students Develop
Phonemic Awareness
• Language play
• Literature
• Direct instruction
• Interactive writing
• Role Play with a Partner: Parent and Teacher
“What is phonemic awareness?”

16. Alphabetic Principle
• Words are composed of sounds (phonemic
awareness)
• Sounds can be represented by letters (phonics)
• Phonemic awareness is the means by which
we make use of the alphabetic principle to
decode letters and encode sounds (read and
write).

17. Phonics Terms to Know
• Phoneme
• Grapheme
• Consonant Digraph
• Consonant Blends or Clusters
• Diphthongs
• Schwa
• Onset
• Rime
• Morpheme
• Structural Analysis

18. The Importance of Recognizing
Sight Words
• Effortless way for early readers to read words
before phonics instruction
• Recognition of some words in isolation assists
young readers in learning other word
identification strategies.
• Automatic recall of words leads to more word
recognition.
• Some high-frequency words in English are not
decodable.

19. The Importance of Recognizing
Sight Words
• Automatic word recognition contributes to
improved comprehension.
• A reader needs instant recognition of about
95% of words in any given text to read the text
independently.
• Reading in which a student cannot
automatically recognize many words is
laborious; in such cases, the student may never
develop a desire to read.
• Automatic visual recognition of whole words
is critical to fluency.

20. Balanced Literacy Approach
Phonics:
• Explicit, direct
instruction
• Systematic instruction
in the code
Whole Language:
• Authentic reading and
writing
• Daily opportunities to
read and write

21. Three Cueing Systems (Marie Clay)
• Graphophonic (visual): Does it look right?
• Syntactic (structure): Does it sound right?
• Semantic (meaning): Does it make sense?
He bocked the piffle with a tig daft.
• What did he bock?
• What did he use to bock?
• What kind of daft was it?

22. Six Cueing Systems (Rumelhart, 1976)
Surface Structures:
• Graphophonic
• Lexical
• Syntactic
Deep Structures:
• Semantic
• Schematic
• Pragmatic

23. Fluency and Comprehension
• Strong correlation between the two
• Fluency is the bridge between word identification and
comprehension
• One theory: comprehension is the outcome of fluency
• Another theory: making meaning while reading
results in fluency
• Chicken and egg situation: fluency promotes
comprehension; comprehension promotes fluency

24. Fluency is a multi-dimensional
construct (Rasinski, 2003)
• Rate
• Accuracy
• Phrasing
• Prosody (pitch, pauses, stress, intonation)
“Fluency is the ability to read accurately and
effortlessly with appropriate expression and
meaning.” ~Timothy Rasinski

25. • “Woman without her man is nothing.”
• “The teacher said the principal is the best in
the distinct.”
• “Tom borrowed my lawnmower.”