Insload, it is important for teachers to recognize that children will need a wide range of communication competencies lo ensure their effectiveness in a varielfol settings throughoutfueirlivos.

Children who ore in environments where oral language and written languug are used in monningful ways will gradually acquire competencies in using language t communicate and to solve problems.

he concluded tl1at children use language differently in oral narrative than the , d i written narr.aihte,

In Dyson's study, childrcm used oral language (talk) lo guide and facilitate the creation of their written stories. They used oral language as a tool in conjunction with written language to create stories. In addition to using oral language in the pro-cess of producing written language, young children are also developing their ability to use language differently in different sellings.

Another aspect of school success related to oral language competencies is a chilcl's social-interaction skills (Windsor, 1995). Children who have oral language competencies wHI be more successful in communicating with both teachers and peers. Their success in carrying on conversations and in responding in learning activities will contribute to further success at school. Children who have difficulty communicating may be ignorod by peers or excluded from informal social or col-laborative interactions. The inability to participate successfully inn conversation or the inability to clearly articulate the sounds in words may decrease the likelihood that other children will attempt to speak or play with them. In the section that follows, several research studies will

For 2·year-olds, the use of a range of functions for speech was identified as n predictor of later achievement. For 31/2-year-olds, the effective predictor of later achievement wns the children's compe· tent use of a range of different sentence types. Another aspect of school success related to oral language com

At school, children spend much of t11eir Lime listening to t11eir teacliersoi· to their classmates. Their ability lo listen and understand their teacher's directions a,id instruction and the contributions by their classmates influences what and how much is learned; however, explicit attention to developing listening comP.etencies may be absent in many cla

FIGURE 1.1 semantic Network or Schema for Ball materials rubber plastic leather felt colors I white ---.._ I red ............... black patterned BALL shape/ oblong spherical Lnngungo in Our Lives ~~ 7 /actions bounce throw kick hit ~ purpose/function baseball soccer football oval texture tennis smooth rough dimpled fuzzy schema. A young child's schema for baJJ will initially be much more limited in com-plexity and may include only "roundness," "throwing," and "bouncing." Vocabulary development is closely__rolated to general linguistic competence and to road ins comprehension.f Children with larger and more developed vocobularie! have more optiorrsfor expressing what they wa[!l to say a~1d1 thus, hav_e grnat.er hn-\ guistic nexibility. One nctivily that contributes to vocabulary development is story-book sharing, where an adull rends to a child. The vocabulary used in storybooks is often more descriptive and precise thnn is the vocabulary used in daily conversa-tions. Storybook experiences expand a child's listening vocabulary. A larger vocab• ulary also increases a child's ability to comprehend written text because reading comprehension is directly rolated to listening comprehension and oral vocabulary. When a specific word (and concept) is part of a child's oral vocabulary or listening vocabulary, the child can more easily comprehend and decode it when he encoun-ters the word in written text. Children's developmen

Storybook sharing is a very effective way to encourage children to begin to perceive pros~TIMsiTiunderstancling language because the range of language used in slor_ybooks-,ma the range of dramatic expression in story sharing are much greater than in day-to-day conversations.

Children who are unable lo consciously focus on or segment the sounds in a word may experience difficulty in learning to read and write (Lieberman, 1973, in Scarborough, 2002). Prosodic features. In addition to the percepti