Communication-Facilitation Strategies and Children's Language Development: The Mediating Effect of Structural Features

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Seventeen
  In Roundtable Session: Understanding and Promoting Oral Language and Vocabulary Development in Early Childhood (Table 13)

Abstract

Thirty-five teachers’, in under-resourced communities, structural language features (SF) and communication-facilitating strategies were analyzed during conversations with prekindergarten children (N= 519) to explore whether the complexity of teachers’ language structures (e.g., lexical diversity, complex syntax) mediated the effect of teachers’ communication-facilitation strategies (CFS) on children’s receptive and expressive vocabulary. Preliminary results suggest that teachers’ complex language structures, specifically complex syntax, mediated CFS on children’s receptive language. Additionally, while no CFS measures predicted children’s expressive language, teachers’ mean length of utterances in words (MLU-w) did predict expressive language, accounting for teachers’ CFS. Results suggest that, while CFS may be the vehicle to drive children’s language learning, equally important is the complexity of teachers’ language input to advance children’s language skills.

Authors

• JeanMarie Farrow, Fairleigh Dickinson University
  Presenting Author

• Annemarie H. Hindman, Temple University
  Presenting Author

• Barbara Wasik, Temple University
  Presenting Author

• Michael Farrow, Rowan University
  Presenting Author