Fostering Language and Literacy in Classrooms and Homes David K. Dickinson and Patton O. Tabors
"Portions of this article were excerpted from D.K. Dickinson
and P.O. Tabors, eds. Beginning Literacy with Language: Young Children Learning
at Home and School (Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes, 2001)
Reprinted by
permission from Young Children, 57 (2). By David Dickinson & Patton O.
Tabors. Copyright © 2002 by the National Association for the Education of Young
Children. Material can only be used with permission from the National
Association for the Education of Young Children."
An excerpt:
……
“This article
discusses how early childhood programs can make a difference through
classroom-based experiences and by efforts of preschool staff to help parents
communicate with their children in ways that build the language skills critical
to early literacy. We do not discuss developing phonemic awareness or knowledge
of the alphabet and other print-based activities in the classroom, not because
they are of less importance, but because we wish to highlight the importance of
oral language. In the rush to embrace literacy in early childhood settings, we
fear that oral language may be overlooked.
We based our study on the theoretical assumption that rich language
experiences during the preschool years
play an important role in ensuring that children are able to read with comprehension when they
reach middle school.” …..
“Another cluster of
language skills is needed when people must make sense of words without all
these immediate supports. They need to understand language apart from the
face-to-face contexts where it is produced. For such occasions people need
skill in constructing extended discourse that conveys new information that is
not available from what one can see and hear. Later academic work, including
comprehension of most texts, requires these abilities. We expected that certain
experiences would build the specialized kinds of language skills that children
need to become literate. Indeed, our analyses of homes and classrooms revealed three
dimensions of children’s experiences during the preschool and kindergarten
years that are related to later literacy success:
• Exposure to varied
vocabulary. Knowing the “right word” is vital if one is to communicate
information clearly. Large vocabularies have long been known to be linked to
reading success (e.g., Anderson & Freebody 1981); they also are a signal
that children are building the content knowledge about the world that is so
critical to later reading (Neuman 2001).
• Opportunities to be
part of conversations that use extended discourse. Extended discourse is talk
that requires participants to develop understandings beyond the here and now
and that requires the use of several sentences to build a linguistic structure,
such as in explanations, narratives, or pretend talk.
• Home and classroom
environments that are cognitively and linguistically stimulating. Children are
most likely to experience conversations that include comprehensible and
interesting extended discourse and are rich with vocabulary when their parents
are able to obtain and read good books and when their teachers provide
classrooms with a curriculum that is varied and stimulating….”
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