Language Development in School-Aged Years

Study Notes

Language input shifts from spoken to text-based.
Literate language development is crucial.
Metalinguistic development is important, including understanding how words work.

Fast mapping: Quickly associating new words with meanings.
Slow mapping: Gradually refining word meanings over time.
Semantic features: Identifying key attributes of words (e.g., color, shape).
Semantic network: Organizing words into interconnected categories.
Hierarchical categorization: Structuring words based on broader and narrower categories (superordinate, subordinate).
Semantic flexibility: Understanding words with multiple meanings.
Inferencing: Drawing conclusions based on context.
Contextual cues: Using clues from surrounding information to understand words.
Background/text/personal knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to understand complex meanings.
Metalinguistic awareness: Understanding of words and language.

Difficulty accurately and quickly retrieving words.
Errors include fillers, substitutions, and circumlocutions (talking around a word).
Common errors include false starts, name errors and tip-of-tongue phenomena (slip of tongue, twist of the tongue).

Limited vocabulary.
Poorly organized semantic networks.
Limited semantic flexibility (difficulty with multiple meanings).
Difficulty with multiple meanings.
Homographs, homonyms, homophones: Words with similar sounds or spellings, but different meanings.

Words with confusing meanings.
Examples: phonological, lexical, surface-structure and deep-structure.
Importance of understanding figurative language including verbal humor, relational terms, similes, metaphors, idioms and hyperbole, irony.

Vocabulary should be thoroughly introduced using multiple contexts..
Strategies to teach vocabulary include asking for definitions, or using contextual cues.
Develop organized semantic networks.
Understand word retrieval strategies.
Use vocabulary development techniques such as key word or syllable segmentation methods.

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