Expressive Language

Primary and Secondary Schools - Expressive Language

• Talking

  ...encouraging children to speak
  
  

  In the early stages of language acquisition, most children talk aloud as they play.  By doing this they extend their thinking, vocabulary and grammar.

  
  

  An obvious desire when working with children with poor expressive language - unintelligible speech, or immature utterances - is to get them to talk.  The children, however, may be reluctant speakers, so adults can easily find themselves asking questions that may seem more and more insistent and threatening.  A low-key approach may achieve more:
  

  • adult and child share an activity such as playing or looking at a book.
  • adult talks about what is happening or what the child can see, in a natural manner.
  • adult continues to comment, leaving some pauses to provide opportunities for the child to join in.

  Comments can help the child to feel at ease and can be more productive than questions: 'My dog is jumping over the fence; I wonder what's going to happen now..' or 'Oh I really like that picture of that swimming pool - I went swimming yesterday'.

  
  

  Barrier games:  these allow adults to discuss the process of communication.  In this case, comments can be made about the child's message-giving: 'Well done; you told me it was a red book, so I knew which book to choose', or 'I'm not sure which book you mean because you said "the book's on the table" and I've got two books.  Do you mean the red book or the green book?'

  
  

  Some children find it difficult to decide how much information is necessary - they may give you too much or too little.  Comments on barrier games can give clear messages about this.

  
  

  Dialogue books: this is a form of conversational letter-writing.  The books are kept private and allow adults and children to 'talk' about a wide range of subjects or pictures.  Comments can be as simple as necessary.  An example would be for the adult to put in a picture postcard and the caption: 'This is where we went on holiday. It was great!  Did you go away?' (Only ask this if you know the child did go away).  Accept any answers and respond as you might when talking, for instance, if the child answers: 'Yes', or 'Yes, Disneyland', you could respond with: 'Did you go to Disneyland?' or 'You went to Disneyland. Lucky you!'

  
  

  Role Play offers another opportunity for developing the use of language.  Children can practise social interactions and the appropriate use of language with minimal risk.  It also affords the opportunity to rehearse and repeat language on a frequent basis.

  
  

  Some children are hampered in their ability to take part by:
  

  • not knowing what happens in a given situation in real life;
  • not having the appropriate repertoire of vocabulary;
  • not knowing how to use the skills they have.
    

  The adult can support the child by:
  

  • preparing for the role play by:
    • identifying the roles
    • identifying the language required, including appropriate phrases
    • identifying the appropriate actions
    • identifying the likely questions and responses
  • teaching the child about the role:
    • looking at books showing the situation
    • exploring any relevant equipment
  • teaching the role:
    • using play people or puppets to act out a situation; the child takes an increasing part in rehearsing this story
    • adult and child playing the roles with the adult taking the major role to begin with and supporting the chld's contributions with guiding prompts
    • adult and child playing with one other peer, with adult prompting play as required
    • supervision of play with peers, with a gradual reduction in involvement/supervision as the child becomes more confident
  • monitoring transference of skills to other role play and real life situations.
    

  Group/individual focus

  
  

  Playground games, role play areas and drama lessons may allow for rehearsal, repetition and practise.  Children may be more willing to have a go in small supportive groups.  Children with some ability to write - however limited - might use a private 'dialogue book' with the teacher.

  
  

  Home/school diaries set a shared agenda: useful when speech is unclear.  Children with poor or limited speech may respond better to adult 'chatter', rater than to questions.

  
  

  Classroom management

  
  

  Teachers ensure that all children have something to talk about, whether through early play, through shared experiences or picture material.  Children are encouraged to play and work - and therefore talk - in pairs, groups, to adults and to peers.  Puppets (playwriting) or use of microphones (interviewing) encourage some children to talk more.

  
  

  There will be opportunities to talk at appropriate length, and to join in large group choruses, for instance, in assembly.

  
  

  Thinking time: it is helpful for whole class groups to be given thinking time (ten seconds) before answering questions or offering opinions.

  
  

  Teachers can vary their questioning techniques: answering closed questions may be the current best for some children.

• Use of Grammar

  Developing the use of grammar
  
  

  Providing a model, rather than asking for corrections

  
  

  Child: 'He come house'.

  
  

  Adult: 'He came to your house, did he?'

  
  

  Child: 'Yes'.

  
  

  Child: 'He ran in the marathon and he was very ill, yeah' [vigorous nod]

  
  

  Adult: 'He ran although he was ill? Or did it make him ill?'

  
  

  These adult responses give a strong reinforcement of more mature grammar, but at the same time, maintain the conversation: the adult is also checking his/her understanding of the child's meaning.  The message is that speech is intended to convey meaning to someone else and that grammar is an important part of this process, but not the only one. 

  
  

  Making grammatical knowledge explicit

  
  

  As adults, we may think we know little about grammar, but we all know that 'the little red train' is 'correct', and 'the red little train' is not - or at the least, sounds wrong.  Eventually, children's use of grammar needs to become fluent and automatic, but it may be helpful to raise their awareness of grammatical structure.

  
  

  Group writing allows for discussion about grammar, for example, deciding whether to say 'the man runs' or 'the man ran'.  Some children may recognise the past tense form, even if they do not yet use it consistently.  For others, peer models and group decisions may help raise their grammatical awareness. 

  
  

  Group/individual focus

  
  

  In order to improve their own use of grammar, children need to know and hear 'the next step on'.  Where there is a discrepancy between the language levels of the class and those of an individual child, it will be helpful for adults to sometimes simplify the language of the classroom and provide opportunities for differentiated story times.

  
  

  Sentence structures can most easily be taught directly by the use of written forms as this allows for discussion.

  
  

  ICT programmes, such as Clicker, support this.  Children should be encouraged to decide whether grammar is 'correct', but may need guidance in making this decision.