ABSTRACT

Research Findings: Early childhood teachers’ talk is a key ingredient in children’s early language and literacy development, but there has been little systematic synthesis of observational studies that examine relationships between teacher talk and child oral language. In this systematic review of 54 studies, we investigate and synthesize the kinds of teacher language practices and children’s oral language outcomes that have been studied to date. We identify four key strands of teacher language practice types: 1) conceptual talk, 2) interactive talk, 3) linguistic features, and 4) management and literal talk, and find that the majority of studies use vocabulary assessments as a proxy for assessing children’s oral language development. Next, we apply the idea of language registers, drawn from systemic functional linguistics, to identify the patterns of teacher language practices used for particular purposes, in particular places, and with different participants that were associated with growth in children’s oral language development. Practice or Policy: Findings indicate that early childhood teachers can support children’s oral language development using strategies tailored to specific settings, including the use of conceptual talk during shared book-reading and the use of elicitations during play and small group settings.

摘要

研究成果：幼儿教师的谈话是儿童早期语言和读写能力发展的关键因素，但很少有系统综合的观察性研究来检验教师谈话与儿童口语之间的关系。在这项对 54 项研究的系统回顾中，我们调查并综合了迄今为止所研究的教师语言实践的种类和儿童的口语结果。我们确定了教师语言实践类型的四个关键部分：1) 概念性谈话，2) 互动谈话，3) 语言特征，以及 4) 管理和字面谈话，并且发现大多数研究使用词汇评估作为评估儿童口语发展。接下来，我们应用来自系统功能语言学的语言语域的概念，实践或政策：研究结果表明，幼儿教师可以使用针对特定环境量身定制的策略来支持儿童的口语发展，包括在共享书籍阅读期间使用概念性谈话以及在游戏和小组环境中使用启发。