Hannah ClemmonsLanguage AnalysisMay, 2009

Observation of a toddler in the one- to two-word stage

During my observation in a toddler classroom, one small girl walked over to where I was

sitting against the wall taking notes. She watched very intently as I wrote down observations. As

I wrote, I told her I was writing things down about her, her classmates, and their classroom. She

watched again for awhile, and then, she looked at the paper, then back at me, and proceeded to

try and take the pen from me.

“Oh, would you like to write?” I asked her. She looked up at me with big eyes and

nodded. “Okay,” I said, “let me get you a new piece of paper.” I turned to a fresh piece of paper,

and she began to scribble all over it. At first, I had to help her press down on the pen tip so that it

was under enough pressure to make legible lines, but she quickly got the hang of it.

After a few minutes of coloring, the little girl handed the pen back to me but did not walk

away. “Are you done coloring?” I asked. She nodded and gently pushed my hand holding the pen

back down onto the paper. “Do you want me to draw now?” She nodded again and I began to

draw wavy lines on the paper, eventually turning them into cartoon clouds.

When I had finished one of the clouds, she looked up at me with an excited smile and

said something I did not quite recognize that sounded like ‘aay-bee-sees’. I asked her what she

was trying to say and if she could say it again and she repeated, “Aay-bee-sees!” This time I

realized what she was trying to say. “Do you want me to write the ABCs? I asked. A broad smile

broke across her face and she nodded delighted, pointing to my notebook. She watched

transfixed as I started to write out the alphabet in clear capital letters. Before I even got to G, she

had lost interest in the alphabet and started requesting “ehhlmno”. Again after asking, I

recognized that she was trying to ask me to draw the Sesame Street character Elmo, and began a

very, very rough sketch of the bright red puppet. After I finished, she watched me doodle for a

while longer before losing interest and walking away to play with the other children.

In this example of a child’s use nonverbal gesturing communication, the young girl is

very efficient at communicating what she wants with just a few words. First, she established joint

reference with me by looking at the paper and pen and then back up at my face. Next, she used

her facial expressions and actions to develop our turn taking communication loop, with her

physically gestured communication and my verbal communication. By establishing joint

reference focusing on the notebook, she communicated that she was interested in the writing that

I was doing, and by reaching for the pen, she indicated that she was interested in participating in

writing as well. When she handed back the pen, she told me that she was done writing, and

guiding my hand back to the paper showed that she wanted me to write again. Then, using

telegraphic, minimal speech, she told me, quite simply, what she wanted me to draw. Using

effective gesturing and only a few words, the toddler was able to communicate her play

intentions and how she wanted me to interact with her.

In this interaction, the girl also demonstrated her level of receptive language knowledge,

responding appropriately to my questions and prompts. She also showed a growing

understanding of and interest in written language, both as something fun and desirable and as

communication. Looking back on it as something to keep in mind for the next time I am in a

similar situation, I wonder if the girl was overextending her idea of ‘ABCs’ to mean all writing in

general, where as I took her literally and only drew A, B, C, etc in bold, capital letters, possibly

discouraging her play.

Observation involving a child’s narrative

Observation of a child between the ages of 3-5 years

While observing in a private nursery during a religious service on a Sunday morning, I

observed two sisters interacting with their mother. The older sister was preschool age, and the

younger was an early toddler. The mother was watching about six young children with the help

of a few preteen girls. The older daughter had picked up a baby doll and was carrying it around

the small nursery room.

“Did you bring the bebe?” the preschooler asked.

“She borrowed your bebe because she forgot hers,” her mother said, nodding toward the

younger daughter and a pale green blanket lying next to her. The older daughter knelt down and

placed the baby doll in a small rocker on the floor. “Is your baby sleeping?” she asked. The

preschooler nodded. “Oh, what a cute baby! You’re going to be such a good mom!” After

finishing settling the baby in, the preschooler walked over and picked up the blanket from where

it was sitting next to her younger sister. Just as the older daughter got back to her baby dolls, the

younger realized what was happening and very deliberately screwed up her face, put her hands

on her hips, and began to scream at the top of her lungs.

As the two girls began to fight over the blanket, the mother came over to straighten things

out and told the older daughter to give the blanket back.

“But I don’t know where the other bebes are!” the older sister whined.

“Well, why don’t you use your sweater?” the mother replied. The girl contemplated for a

few seconds, nodded, and began to tuck the baby into the rocker using her sweater.

“But it’s not big enough,” the older sister complained after attempting to cover the baby

with her sweater several times. By this time, the younger child had lost interest in the blanket.

“[The younger sister] doesn’t want her bebe,” the preschooler said, taking the blanket and

tucking her baby doll in. Next, she pushed her sleeping baby across the floor to where a real

sleeping baby was laying in his car seat. “See my baby?” she asked no one in particular as she

uncovered the baby doll’s head. “I have a baby too!”

The preschooler pushed the baby doll around in the rocker for a few more minutes before

picking it up and walking over to a preschooler sized plastic slide.

“Are you going to take your baby down the slide?” one of the helpers asked.

“She’s going to stay in my lap,” the she replied very matter-of-factly. After going down

the slide holding the baby in her lap, she got up and announced, “Now the baby’s going to go all

by herself! My baby,” she said trailing off as she gently set the baby on the slide and guided it

down. Next, she sat down in a rocking chair and rocked her baby doll for a few minutes. After

looking around, she put the baby doll down, walked over to a plastic xylophone, and brought it

back to the chair. “Come on, baby. I’m going to play you some music. Go to sleep, go to sleep...”

she said as she played with the xylophone. Occasionally, she would look down at the baby and

babble incoherently at it.

Eventually, the preschooler lost interest in the baby doll and moved on to other toys, but

later in the morning, after watching her mother change a few other children’s diapers, she

decided again to play with the baby, this time proclaiming she was changing its diaper. First, she

removed the baby’s clothes, but then realized she didn’t have any baby wipes. She asked her

mother and then wandered around the room until she found a few baby wipes. After wiping off

the baby doll, she put its clothes back on and wrapped it back up in her blanket.

This scene is chalked full of linguistic material that could be looked at, but I am going to

focus on the analysis of the older sibling’s play narrative. In this play episode, the preschooler is

exhibiting deferred imitative play of her mother’s caregiving. Her play is also solitary and

dramatic. The most interesting thing about her play, in my opinion, is her use of what Vygotsky

would call “private speech” to guide her play. She verbally walks through her play script,

regulating her thoughts and actions through her speech. According to Vygotsky’s cognitive

development theory, eventually this speech will be internalized and become better organized

thought. Not only is she practicing the physical, emotional, and cognitive steps of taking care of

a baby like her mother, she is also practicing and developing her speech as she narrates her play.

As she dictates her actions and communicates with others, her mother, sister, and the

other caregivers, it is very evident that this preschooler has a developed sense of syntax of the

English language. She is starting to communicate more with the words she uses rather than the

emotions she portrays. This is not the case with her younger sister, whose communication is

almost entirely realized in the way she scrunches her face and non-verbally communicates that

she is upset. In both interactions, the mother and the caregiver take active roles in aiding

language development using verbal mapping to help guide the children’s play and a motherese

speech style to aid in their understanding. When I first heard the preschooler use the word

“bebe”, I thought she was referring to the baby doll, but after hearing the context, I realized that

“bebe” seemed to be the family’s word for baby blanket. I also found it very interesting that she

uses play with another toy, the xylophone, in her dramatic mother play.

The preschooler’s cognitive development level is interestingly evident when her mother

suggests she imagines that her sweater is a blanket for the baby doll. The girl attempts to

imagine that her sweater is a blanket instead of having a concrete, actual blanket, but gives up

quickly. She also fails to imagine rather than having the concrete object when she needs baby

wipes to change the baby dolls diaper. I think that this may show her transition between concrete

and imaginative centered thinking as her cognitive skills develops.

Observation of a toddler in the one- to two- world stage

This dialogue took place between a young girl and her father. It had just rained and the

girl was outside playing in her raincoat and boots. She had picked up a worm and walked over to

show it to her father.

“What you got there?” the father asked.

“Oh, fwake!” Callah answered excitedly.

“What is that?” Her father asked again

“Um, yeah, yeaaah..” Callah trailed off as he continued to ask questions.

“Is that a worm?” he asked. “That’s a beauty. What’s his name? Callah was no longer looking at

her father but was visually examining the worm, turning her hand around as it crawled on it.

“Um, Cawwah!” she exclaimed, looking up and returning her attention to her father.

“Callah?” he repeated.

“Yeah!”

“You named your worm Callah?” he asked. Callah looked confused for a second.

“No, fwake.” she said very intentionally.

“Snake?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“That’s a good name for a worm,” the father said then paused as he watched Callah silently

observe the worm. “Snake the worm, just like Callah the girl!”

“Ayy ayh,” Callah acknowledged.

“That’s a good name for a worm, Callah. How old is snake?”

“Ahhm, two!” Callah answered after thinking for a moment.

“Two?”

“Yeah!” she answered quickly this time.

“Just like you!” he father exclaimed.

“Just like you, Callah repeated, trailing off.

“What a coincidence,” the father said. “What a coincidence.” He paused again. “What are you

doing with Snake?”

“Ah, eating himt,” Callah replied. She trailed off at the end of the word and I couldn’t tell if she

used the word him or it. It sounded like a combination of the two.

“You’re gonna eat snake?” the father asked, playfully sounding shocked.

“No,” Callah replied.

“No,” her father repeated.

“Nh nhh,” Callah sounded as she bent over where she had found the worm. Her father chuckled

at her.

“In a puddle,” Callah mumbled.

“You’re gonna put him in a puddle?” her father asked, but Callah was too busy reaching down to

return the worm to the puddle. “Mhkay.”

I absolutely love this dialogue. Overall, the father does a good job of encouraging his

daughter to talk. He successfully uses motherese to help her identify context clues. He also

repeats and elaborates on what she says. He labels objects (the worm) for her and asks questions

to keep her explaining what’s she’s doing and thinking, reinforcing the turn-taking style of oral

language.

First, Callah establishes joint reference with her father by showing him the worm that she

has found. Next, she labels it “fwake” or snake. Then, her father re-labels it as a worm, but

Callah insists on snake. I would guess that in this example, Callah is not trying to name the worm

Snake, but is overextending idea of a snake and assimilating the worm into her snake schema.

The way she pronounces snake and other words throughout the interaction suggests that she may

still be having trouble pronouncing the ‘s’ phoneme.

I think Callah’s seemingly naming of the worm suggests that she did not fully understand

what her father was asking her. When he asked her what she was going to her snake, she may

have heard “name” and “your” and connected these with a question like “What’s your name?” to

which she would probably already know was Callah. But this could also just represent young

children’s tendencies to be self-centered and their inability to see things from the perspective of

others. Because her name is Callah, the worm’s name must be Callah, and because she is two, the

worm must be also.

Callah seemed to only use her two and occasionally three word telegraphic speech to

respond to her father when she was prompted, but she was able to successfully communicate

with her father with her limited grammatical knowledge and vocabulary.

Observation of a child who comes from and/or speaks a different dialect or language from your

own

Observation of a dialogue between 2-3 children 3-8 years of age

I tutor in the Cabrini-Green site of a Christian after school program called By The Hand.

Students are bused directly from school to By The Hand, where they stay until around 6 pm. I

work with second and third graders. The team leader I work with, Ms. Ashley is white along with

the other volunteers and me. All the students in our group are black and most live in low-income

housing.

As the students were working on their homework, it became very obvious that one boy,

Dion, was not happy with another girl in the group, Kat. The argument continued to rise in

volume until anyone sitting nearby could hear what happened next:

“Oh shut up, Kat. Your daddy’s on crack.” Dion spat at Kat, slouching back in his chair a

table away from her.

“My daddy ain’t on crack!” Kat defended, turning around in her chair to see Dion who

was behind her.

“Yes he is. Your daddy be on crack,” Dion quipped almost so quickly I couldn’t keep up.

“You don’t know anything. Your daddy’s in jail and you stay with your grandma.” Kat

retorted raising her voice to reach the level of his.

“That don’t matter. Your daddy is still on crack. Even if it did matter, my daddy don’t

stay in jail.” Dion retorted.

“Ms. Ashley, Ms. Ashley!” Kat called. When she knew she had Ms. Ashley’s attention

she continued, “Dion said my daddy’s on crack. My daddy ain’t on crack. Dion’s on crack.”

“Kat, remember where you are; we don’t use ain’t in my classroom. And let’s not talk

about anyone being on crack. You two need to quiet down so everyone can do their homework.”

Ms Ashley said before returning to another group of students. Kat ‘hhrumphed’, turned around,

and crossed her arms over her chest angrily. Dion returned to his work muttering under his

breath.

Thankfully, public opinion is starting to recognize Black English as a distinct dialect. I

often have to ask children to repeat themselves once or even twice when volunteering with By

The Hand. What gives me the most trouble while decoding Black English is the different

prosody, particularly the speed with which some children talk and the way that they slur their

words together. I am embarrassed, and I would expect that the children would be too, when I

have to ask them to repeat what they’ve said two and three times.

But rhythm and syllable emphasis are not the only things which distinguish Black

English as a unique dialect. It also has a varied vocabulary as well as subject/verb agreement. For

example, in this dialogue, we see Kat use the very “stay” where we would use live. This is

something I have heard numerous times in Black English. Other examples include the use of the

conjugation “be” with the subject “you” and the use of the word “ain’t”. I like how Ms. Ashley

reminds the children to separate their home dialect from the language used in school. It is

difficult to have to patience for it, but I think that Black children benefit greatly from learning

how to differentiate between their home dialect and the Standard Written English they will have

to master in order to be successful in school.

Lastly, this example illustrates some of the extent of which gesture and tone are used in

Black English (Holistically, I have seen it much more clearly across many examples working

with the children at By The Hand). Black children use their body movements and positions to

say almost as much as they do with words. They also use a much wider range of their voices to

communicate different emotions. Dion slouches to show that he is upset and Kat crosses her

arms across her chest. This body language tells us much more about their internal states than they

ever would verbally.

Observation of a child between the ages of 6 - 8 years

While I was observing in a first grade classroom, the teacher used paper squares to

demonstrate the idea of fractions. In order to engage the children, she had told them to imagine

that they were dividing their favorite type of food. Then, she told the class that cookies were her

favorite type of cookies. As she instructed the class on how to fold the paper into fourths, one

girl‘s hand shot up. She waited patiently until she was called on and then said this:

“Ms. Brandie, I have a question and a comment. Can you fold a cookie? You said “Fold

the cookie.”

The teacher looked taken back for a second and then regained her composure. “Well, no

Leah, you probably can’t fold a cookie like we’re folding out pieces of paper. I was pretending

that my piece of paper was a cookie because it’s my favorite kind of food. I’m sorry for the

confusion.”

I liked this interaction because it shows just how confusing language can be for children.

Leah obviously understands that fold is a verb which can be performed on an object and that a

cookie is a noun on which verbs can be performed, but she understands enough physics to realize

that a cookie cannot be folded like a piece of paper can be folder. While learning a language, it is

often difficult to understand idioms from their literal definition. Imagine how children first

consider phrases like “kick the bucket” or “it’s a piece of cake”. This also shows some of the

problems children have distinguishing between their pretend and their reality; when they should

think abstractly and when they should not.

I also think that it’s interesting that the little girl says she has a “question and a

comment”. The best that I can determine is that her question was about whether or not you could

fold a cookie and her comment was that the teacher had said fold a cookie. It is also possibly that

she could have had another unrelated comment that she was not able to make because the teacher

went back to teaching math after she addressed the girl’s question. Lastly, it is an interesting

thought to consider that by raising her hand and waiting to be called on, the girl is waiting to

establish joint attention with her teacher and the rest of her class.

For fun because I couldn’t decide between two short dialogues, so you told me I could just use

both

During an observation in a pre-Kindergarten classroom, the teachers asked me to

supervise a small group of children playing a war-like card game (It was basically war, only

without the Jack, Queen, King, and Ace. The player with the highest card (2-10) won the trick.).

Since there were an odd number of children, I ended up playing the game with a child that I

suspect had a few learning problems. While he was gave quality answers, they were often very

delayed.

I had just won a trick, and Reily and I both laid down another card. He had put down a

nine and I had put down a seven. I waited for him to reach out and take the cards, but to my

surprise when he put his hands over the cards, he pushed them toward my side of the small table.

“What are you doing, Reily?” I asked.

“You won,” he replied, slightly confused by my reaction.

“Are you sure?” I asked. He paused, still looking confused. “Look. How many does this

card have?” Reily counted.

“Seven?” he asked.

“Yes. And your card?” I said pointed to the second card.

“Nine...” he said, sounding unsure of himself. “Nine is the mostest?” he asked me.

“Yes!” I said. “So what does that mean?”

“That I win?” he said placing his hand back over the trick.

“Yes!” I told him as he picked up the cards and we moved onto the next trick.

I was drawn to this dialogue because Reily’s flaw so clearly represents that he is

succeeding in decoding the conventions of the English language. By using “mostest” to say that

his card is the highest, he is demonstrating that he knows to add -est to the end of an adjective to

make it represent the greatest extent of that adjective. Many might consider this a negative sign

in the development of oral language, but it is really an example of how the child is developing

his language schemata and that he is beginning to understand the underlying rules of the English

language.

This is also a clear example of using language and scaffolding to help a child develop a

mental set of instructions for how to solve a problem. The child is not just given the answer, but

verbally helped to think through the problem in a logical matter in which language is used to

guide sequential steps. Without help, the boy may have just been guessing to increase the speed

of the game (realizing that he had a 50/50 chance of being right each time) instead of truly

evaluating each trick.

In early childhood, children are not just learning how to make sound and then learning

new words, they are analyzing sound patterns, tones, and rhythms and linguistic grammar,

syntax, connotations, and appropriateness. From birth children are learning how to successfully

communicate with a wide variety of other people. This knowledge is fundamental to their

survival and success later in life.

By beginning to understand the way that children acquire language, we are able to better

understand what they say and why they say it. Understanding language development not only

gives us knowledge about how children are learning to communicate, it also gives us insight into

all levels of their development: cognitive, social-emotional, and (in my opinion less so than the

previous two) physical development.

If we understand the way children think about language, we may be able to identify that a

young girl is not just asking us to write the letters A, B, and C, but that she is referring to

everything she identifies as written language, or that Callah may not be trying to name her worm

“Snake”, but that she hasn’t differentiated between snake and worm. If we are able to identify

and understand things like this, we are better able to assist the child in accommodating their

existing schema in order to account for this new (and more advanced) understanding.

Another thing that is essential to fostering language development is the understanding of

children’s mistakes. Children’s linguistic mistakes are great evaluation tools to determine what

the child understands and is in the process of deducing about the language they are acquiring. It

is important to not see a word like “mostest” as a sign of a misunderstanding, but as a point of

what the child has learned. If the child is old enough to understand, these types of mistakes can

even serve as a starting point from which to teach the child the understanding behind the mistake

they have made.

It is also important to consider the linguistic contexts from which children come. Some

children may come from homes where they are always included in conversation and constantly

read to. Others may come from cultures where it is only polite to speak when spoken to and

children who vocalize their opinions are not looked upon kindly. Children come from all kinds of

languages and dialogues that may affect their success with traditional Standard Written English.

It is especially important to acknowledge the value of children’s primary culture and dialect

which teaching them to differentiate between times when one or the other should be used.

One thing that I wish I had more access to was writing samples from older children (older

in Early Childhood). By the time a child is seven or eight, they have a highly developed

understanding of oral language, but are still developing written and metalinguistic understands (I

have found it extremely hard to catch children vocalizing thoughts about their oral language.). I

think that writing samples from older children might serve as better tools for evaluating their

linguistic development. This gives us opportunity to see how the children are thinking through

their oral language as they translate it into a symbolic language.

In everything, it is important to understand the development behind what children are

saying through understanding the way that they learn and assimilate into a communication driven

culture. Children’s mistakes are incredibly important for understanding and fostering their

linguistic development. When we understand why children are making the mistakes they are

making we are better able to scaffold and teach them. Studying language development

throughout early childhood gives us a better means to identify and understand these mistakes.