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The Importance of Oral Language for Children's Learning


Oral storytelling provides young learners with a foundation for two sets of critical emergent reading skills: constrained (i.e., print related and decoding skills) and unconstrained (i.e., story comprehension) skills.


Constrained skills are foundational, teachable skills. These include the print and sound-related (i.e., decoding) skills that are the focus of instruction in Pre-K through 2nd grade classrooms. Printed related skills include letter recognition, writing one’s own name, book handling, and reading print, while sound skills include invented spellings, rhyming, reciting the alphabet, and segmenting initial phonemes.


Unconstrained skills are skills using the ability to process a story in order to create meaning, such as story comprehension (i.e., semantics). Unconstrained skills are acquired gradually through varied experiences, rather than focused instruction. They are divided into language based skills, such as vocabulary, grammar, story structure, narrative tellings, utilizing descriptions and engagement in pretend play, and knowledge based skills, such as topic-specific knowledge (e.g., science, geography, social studies), information seeking and requesting explanations.


Both constrained and unconstrained skills are foundational for higher-level reading skills, particularly for a successful transition from the ‘learning to read’ stage to the ‘reading to learn‘ stage. Constrained skills assist with learning print-related and sound-related skills, and unconstrained help with understanding the words that are being written or told. Oral storytelling helps to support unconstrained skills through building vocabulary and new knowledge, thereby exposing children to complex grammar and different story structures.


Strong oral language skills are crucial for children’s learning, as well as for their social interaction (Hulme et al., 2020; Rigg, 2019). These skills provide the foundation for later literacy development by building upon children’s vocabulary, as well as their knowledge of complex grammar and different story structures. Oral language skills are also important for social interactions, such as relationships with others and self-awareness.


Developing Strong Oral Language Skills


The development of oral language skills is supported via a rich learning environment, where children are exposed to rich and sophisticated language in a variety of ways (i.e., through books, listening to stories, and conversations with caregivers, siblings, and peers). Children learn best when they are engaged in interactions that expose them to a wide range of examples of words and languages. As such, an ideal rich language environment is one in which there are regular opportunities for children to listen to a range of quality stories, that provides them with opportunities to ask and answer questions, and talk about their lived experiences (Rigg, 2019).


Conclusion:

Oral language skills help form the foundation for literacy and academic success, as well for social interaction (Hulme et al., 2020; Rigg, 2019). Oral language skills provide a foundation for two sets of critical emergent reading skills: constrained (e.g., print related and decoding skills) and unconstrained skills (e.g., comprehension). In order to develop strong oral language skills, a rich learning environment which includes multiple opportunities to listen to and/or read a range of quality picture books, share stories, and talk about experiences, is ideal (Rigg, 2019).


Helen Dang is a junior in the psychology program at Brooklyn College


References

Honig, A. (2007). Oral language development. Early Childhood Development and Care, 177, 581-613. https://doi.org/10.1080/03004430701377482.


Hulme, C., Snowling, M. J., West, G., Lervåg, A., & Melby-Lervåg, M. (2020). Children’s language skills can be improved: Lessons from psychological science for educational policy. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 29(4), 372–377. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721420923684


Law, J. (2015, May). The importance of oral language and its implications for early years practice: A report to Goodstart Early Learning. Newcastle University. https://www.goodstart.org.au/getmedia/8cd15601-203c-441a-a54f-61caccb4eb22/The-importance-of-oral-language-and-its-implications-for-early-years-practice.pdf.aspx


Melzi, G., Schick, A. R., & Wuest, C. (2022). Stories beyond books: Teacher storytelling supports children’s literacy skills. Early Education and Development. https://doi.org/10.1080/10409289.2021.2024749.


Rigg, D. (2019, October 16). The importance of strong language and vocabulary skills. PLD. https://pld-literacy.org/the-importance-of-strong-oral-language-vocabulary-skills-for-later-literacy-success/


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