Innovation in Language Learning

Shared picturebook reading based on dialogic approaches (Whitehurst 1994) has long been acknowledged to provide valuable linguistic input (Masoni 2019) which can yield long-lasting effects on children’s expansion of vocabulary and future literacy skills. However, the correlation between input deriving from book-based performances and children’s natural cognitive and social strategies for language acquisition (i.e. bootstrapping and mutual exclusivity) has not been explored in detail. Children’s ability to understand language through a statistical approach (Kuhl 2003) relies on meaningful input that needs to be clear and explicit, for example by providing sufficient repetition paired with contextual diversity (Cogate et al. 2013), as well as unambiguous visual representations. Such clarity of input can only be found in a limited amount of speech children hear in their L1, but disambiguation and finetuning of meaning occur all the same, thanks to the massive amount of language they are exposed to on a daily basis in diverse situations. However, in the context of FL, where exposure is often limited to a few hours per week, input should be carefully crafted in order to clarify meaning on the spot. Book-based performances offer highly contextualized environments that help direct children’s focus on meaning, through emotionally and cognitively meaningful interactions established between carer and child. Drawing on examples from an ongoing project, this paper describes how adults’ expansions beyond the printed text can offer increasingly scaffolded verbal and non-verbal input to create “contextual frames”, provide “high contextual diversity” and frequent “cross-situational” repetition (Cogate et al. 2013), and facilitate some of the most widely described language learning mechanisms in young children. Finally, the last part of the paper will put forward a set of “rules of performance” derived from studies on how children learn language (O’ Grady 2005) and discuss its implications for future teacher training.

Keywords: Early language exposure, shared book reading, dialogic reading, scaffolded input.

References:     [1] Gogate et al. (2013). Maternal naming of object wholes versus parts to preverbal infants: A fine-grained analysis of scaffolding at 6–8 months. Infant Behavior and Development, 36(3), 470-479.

[2] Kuhl, P. K. (2003). Early language acquisition: Statistical learning and social learning. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 114(4), 2445-2445.

[3] Masoni, L. (2019). Tale, performance, and culture in EFL storytelling with young learners. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

[4] O'Grady, W. (2005). How children learn language. Cambridge University Press.

[5] Whitehurst, G. J., Arnold, D. S., Epstein, J. N., Angell, A. L., Smith, M., & Fischel, J. E. (1994). A picture book reading intervention in day care and home for children from low-income families. Developmental psychology, 30(5), 679.