Margery B. Franklin, Ph.D.

Child Development Institute

Sarah Lawrence College

Entering a classroom of young children engaged in spontaneous activity such as play, or seated at a table for snack or lunch, one hears a symphony of sounds - the children’s voices. I will talk first about the ways in which children use spoken language - speech - to express themselves, interact with others, gain and communicate information, organize and reflect upon their experience, and (perhaps as by-products) to reduce anxiety and create pleasure. Second, I will indicate the generic forms through which functions of language are realized. Finally, I will speak about three paths to literacy: pretend play, graphic representation, and the child’s spoken language.

______________________________

The Functions of Language [1]

We tend to underestimate both the total extent and the functional diversity of the part played by language in the life of the child. (Halliday, l988, p. 189)

Too often, discussions of children’s language focus on the growth of vocabulary and mastery of grammar rather than on the ways children actually use spoken language in their everyday lives. Vocabulary and syntax are important -- they are the “stuff” of which living language is constructed and should be amplified as resources. But we must think in a focused way about the child’s uses of language in context and how these might be encouraged.

First, let me point to the social-interactive functions served by speech. Speech originates in an interpersonal context and, from the beginning, is an essential part of our life as social beings. Under the general category of social-interactive functions, we may distinguish several distinct uses. (It must be kept in mind that any utterance or series of utterances is likely to serve more than one function, and often serves social-interactive and self-directed functions simultaneosuly). Children, like adults, use speaking for social contact (“Hey there!”), to enter into immediate social interactions (“What did you have for lunch?”) and to establish, negotiate and maintain relationships (“What’s wrong? You said you were my friend”).� The communication of� ideas is another important social-interactive use of speech, in no way secondary to the more obviously social functions (“Listen, see, planets go around the sun, and the moon goes around the earth. Get it?”).� Speech is also used in social-interactive situation in the attempt to regulate actions of other� (“Don’t go near my block building!”). Discourse theorists would point to the role of speech in framing an event or an exchange as one kind of situation rather than another (“Let’s pretend we’re going to the moon”).

Second, let us consider instances of speech that may be said aloud and addressed to a listener but serve primarily self-oriented functions --� that is, functions that have to do with the development and modulation of one’s ideas and actions. Vygotsky (1986) pointed to the role of speech - initially overt and later internalized - in guiding and planning one’s own action (“I’m putting the wheel on the truck”; “First, I need to get a pencil - where is it? and then I’m going to make a picture of my birthday party”). In addition to helping us organize our actions, speech contributes significantly to organizing the flow of our experience. Children’s use of naming exemplifies the use of language to single out and identify aspects of the flow. The role of speech at a higher level of organizing experience is evident in story-telling and other narratives that include a sequencing of events and articulation of relationships such as causal connections. One example:

I remember when I was very little. I was scared of the dark and saw monsters. My mommy said ‘Turn on the light and those monsters will disappear.’ So I did and there weren’t any monsters because the light was on. But when she turned off the light, I was scared again.

Speech also contributes significantly to stabilizing memories and imagining the non-present, including the creation of imaginary situations in play (Franklin, 1983). By formulating ideas and feelings in words, we give them a certain substance and render them less ephemeral and transitory. This is the objectifying function of speech.

It should be noted significant portions of the young child’s talk serve emotional functions, including reducing anxiety (“Mommy is coming back very soon”). Some functions cross over the hypothetical border between social-interactive and self-oriented functions - for example, expressing the self �(“That story makes me sad” and “I am bigger than she is!” seem both self-directed and socially oriented).

_______________________________________

Generic forms of spoken language

In the discussion and examples thus far, we can see that the functions of speaking are realized in various forms of language. We do not find a one:one relationship between form and function but, rather, that some forms are particularly well suited for the realization of particular functions. Let me identify seven generic forms of spoken language and indicate some relationships between forms and functions.

Statements. Simple declarative statements have the form “This is a book” or “The snow is all gone.” More elaborate statements may indicate relationships or the speaker’s point of view: “The cat is mewing because she wants to go outside;” “I like chocolate pudding.” Even relatively simple statements can be used to realize the important functions of identifying (“This is a book”), self-expression (“I like chocolate pudding”), and articulating relationships (“The cat is mewing because….”), among others.

Directives. Children, as well as adults, often use language in the attempt to direct or control others. Directives may be in the form of simple form of imperatives (“Give me that truck!”)� or encoded in more extended utterances that are less direct (“If you do that, I am going

to take the cars and you’ll have to play alone.”). Such utterances serve the function of regulating the action of others (or attempting to do so). Internalizing directives addressed to them, children sometimes use directives for guiding their own action (“Don’t put that there!” said to the self).

Questions. The question form is particularly well suited for two general purposes: to clarify or gain information about the physical/geographic world (“Why does the water make waves when I throw a stone in?”), and to gain understanding of interpersonal events and relationships (“Why did Johnny hit Sarah?”). Questions also occur in other contexts, for example, establishing and maintaining interpersonal relationships (“Will you play with me now?”).

As discourse theorists have pointed out, many analyses of language and speech focus on the single utterance while most talk and written language comes in longer form (Potter and Wetherall, 1987).� I now indicate four generic forms that are comprised of series of utterances. Such series may be quite short, particularly in the case of young children.

Monologue. I am now delivering what might be called a pedagogic monologue, addressing an audience. Sometimes I speak to myself, occasionally out loud but more often silently - an ‘interior monologue.’ Because interior monologues are silent and addressed primarily to the self, they are referred to as ‘private speech.’ Observing children in school or at home, we sometimes overhear monologues directed to the self as well as some intended for others, or non-specific with regard to addressee. Children’s monologues often accompany ongoing action, as in the following observation of a four-year-old boy at home. He seemed to be talking primarily to himself but aware of his mother’s presence in the room.

I am going to stack these blocks way up high…one up and up…and they won’t fall (building block tower). And then the cars, one by one, here…(arranges four cars in a row). I made a big big big garage! I need more cars (brings over two more cars and places them in row). That’s good (sits back and looks at structure). That’s all for now…maybe later…more later (gets up and walks from room).

From a Vygotskyian perspective, one would say that the child’s speech here guides the planning and organization of action. Piaget might claim that it is simply an accompaniment. In either case, I (as the observer) must note a byproduct or side effect: The child’s apparent pleasure in describing what he was doing as he carried out the action. Among the functions served by monologic speech, we may point to communicating ideas, organizing experience, planning activity. [2]

Conversation/dialogue. As adults we are often engaged in verbal exchange with others. Children’s first conversations typically occur with their mothers or other caretakers, soon with siblings, and shortly thereafter with other children and adults. An important aspect of conversation is turn-taking - when one person speaks, the other listens and then responds. The extent to which the response follows logically from the preceding statement varies widely. While observing the turn-taking form, young children often disregard the requirements for coherence that are observed by older children and adults.

The following example is an exchange between two four-year-old girls in a lab playroom. At the beginning of the session, both are examining miniature dolls and furniture available among array of small toys.

B: Let’s set it up like a house.

P: (Takes the chairs and sets them around the table, picks up baby doll): He needs a seat.

B: We need a high chair for him. Look at the baby (holding doll up for other child to inspect). What is this? A bed?

P: Yes, and this (holding up other bed) is another bed.

B: Wait, wait..This could be the bedroom (moving blocks around furniture).

P:� This is the bed where the baby sleeps.

B: And look, here’s the bathtub.

P: Wanna pretend it’s nighttime and everyone is having supper?

B: O.K. Let’s sit down. (Sits down and so does C). I’m making hamburgers for supper.

C: I don’t like hamburgers and neither does baby. Pew…

B: How about chicken? Do you like chicken?

C: Yes, that’s o.k. but I’m too hungry to wait (gets up, holding baby, leaves table). Let’s do something else.

B: But we didn’t have dinner…. Well, o.k. (gets up and joins other girl in another part of room).

In this exchange, we see the role of speech in establishing a frame (we’re going to play house), identifying objects and roles, and, more generally, creating an imaginary situation. [3] Although there is relatively little negotiation here, the conversation embodies social interaction, in this case of a collaborative nature.�

Story telling/narrative. A great deal of work has been done on children’s narrative (Dyson and Genishi, 1994; Engel, 1995; McCabe and Peterson, 1991). I use the term ‘narrative’ to refer to both fictional and non-fictional accounts that portray a series of events or episodes in story-like form. Young children’s narratives are often short and, by adult standards, disjointed. The earliest fictional narratives typically take shape in the context of pretend play, as descriptions of ongoing action (Doyle, 2001). Gradually, the narrative becomes disembedded from the play process and stands on its own as a “story.” Nonfictional accounts are not necessarily disembedded from the ongoing flow, and are rarely bounded by our culture’s conventional markers - “Once upon a time” and “The End.” The following example, an account that blends fiction and non-fiction, comes from the kindergarten class at the Sarah Lawrence College Early Childhood Center (Doyle, 2002).

Once upon a time, when I was little, I threw up. My mommy said it wasn’t all right. My mommy sent me to my room. But I went to the kitchen to get a cup with some orange juice. I carried it carefully to my room. It spilled. My Mommy said it wasn’t all right. She said, “I’ll give you one more chance and if you don’t behave, I’ll throw you in the trash masher.” Then suddenly I got bigger because I drank so much milk. And then I learned to behave. And my Mommy loved me so much she wouldn’t throw me away. The end.

This story appears to serve as a means for emotional expression and problem solving, including the resolution of a tension between taking autonomous action and “learning to behave.” We see the child’s attempt to show how an unhappy series of events can come to a happy ending. At the same time, in the careful sequencing and construction of cause-effect relations the narrative reflects the use of language to organize experience.

As Engel (1995) and others have pointed, children’s narratives serve multiple functions. In addition to emotional expression, and emotional and cognitive problem solving, narratives are a prime means for organizing and objectifying experience, constructing non-present and imaginary realities, and communicating with others. Although stories are typically in monologic form, they generally assume an audience. Story-telling is a social activity through which we enter into the social fabric of our culture (Heath, 1994).

Poetry. I use the term ‘poetry’ here in a general sense to refer to sequences that are distinguished from other types by their aesthetic form. The clearest examples in the spoken language of young children are poems that are made up spontaneously or with guidance, and various forms of play with language among which rhyming and repetition are prevalent. Garvey (1977, p. 36) provides an example of a rhythmic exchange between two girls about 4 years of age.

M�������������������������������������������������������������������� ��������� N���������������������������������������������������������� (handles small ladder and pipe)���������� ����������������������������������� (watches other girl)

����������� 1. I need this.���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������

����������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 2. You need that.

�3. You go way up high.

����������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 4. You go way up high.

5. You go high in the sky.���������������������������������������������� ����������������� Nobody can see. ��������������������������� ������������Nobody can see.����������������������

6. Nobody can see?�����������������������������������������������������������
������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ �������7. Nobody can see?���������������������������������� ����
8. Yeah

What functions are served through the child’s use of poetic forms? Play with language, whether interactive or solo, seems to be a very pleasurable activity for children. Both informal and more formal poetic forms provide an important path for emotional expression. It has been suggested that playing with the sounds and forms of language contributes to children’s metalinguistic awareness, their ability to reflect upon the sounds and forms of language, which may facilitate the process of learning to read (Bialystock, 1987; Garvey, 1977). If this is the case, we could say that poetic language serves the objectifying function mentioned earlier.

We see that the various functions of language are realized through several forms. For example, organizing experience is well served by statements as well as monologue and narrating. We see also that some forms are particularly well suited to the realization of certain functions. Thus, conversation is a prime form for the social functions of speech (establishing, negotiating, maintaining, and extending interpersonal relationships).

___________________________________________

Paths to Literacy

Accounts of preschool children’s activities and early school activities have clearly demonstrated that the beginnings of school literacy are falsely represented as merely learning letters, or sounds, or words, and letter-sound relationships. (Clay, 1998, p. 41).

How do children navigate the transition into literacy? Moving into a new world - a world of writing and print -- the young child brings a range of resources that can be called upon in approaching the new tasks before her. In this model, the entry to literacy is gentle and gradual, grounded in earlier experience, rather than abrupt and consequently forbidding. It is the teacher’s role to facilitate the development of the resources that the child already possesses (the symbolic activities of pretending, drawing, and speaking) and to guide the child toward seeing their relevance to the new tasks at hand. Such guidance can take place spontaneously in relation to the child’s activity, or can be more “instructional” - for example, having the child make or select logographs and then pointing out (or asking about) the relationship between these depictions and the objects for which they stand.

I will speak briefly about three paths to literacy that have recently become areas of interest and research but have been neglected and even denied in traditional perspectives. These are: pretend play, graphic representation, and spoken language. In the everyday lives of children, the three paths are often intertwined. The guiding idea is that meaningful understanding and use of written language takes shape gradually as young children interact with others in natural situations involving reading and writing. This is not to deny the value of formal instruction, including work in phonics, but to bring to the fore other streams that contribute significantly to the child’s emerging literacy. [4] It should be noted that all three streams involve symbolizing activity.

Pretend play.� When we speak of pretend play, we are speaking of situations in which children play out dramatic scenarios, with themselves as actors or using small figures, vehicles, perhaps blocks or Legos. Such play can be carried out alone or with other children. In pretending, an imaginary situation is created.

How can pretend play contribute to early literacy?� In several ways: (a) by providing opportunities for the child to explore new uses of spoken language,� (b) by creating settings in which literacy (or pre-literacy) activities are naturally embedded and (c) by providing meaningful contexts for explicit literacy teaching. Recent work explores a range of relationships between play and early literacy (Morrow & Rand, Roskos & Christie, 2000; Zigler, Singer & Bishop-Josef, 2004;). In this context, it is worth recalling Vygotsky’s suggestion that play creates a zone of proximal development, a situation in which the child “behaves beyond his average age, above his daily behavior” (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 102).

Graphic representation. Is there a path from children’s early mark-making, scribbling and drawing to actual writing? Long ago, Vygotsky (1978) proposed that this is the case, and further suggested a progression from the child’s use of ‘first order symbols’ that denote objects and actions to ‘second order symbols’ that represent the sounds of spoken language. (In cultures with non-alphabetic writing systems, the progression would be somewhat different). Following Vygotsky’s line of argument, Dyson (1990) and others have sought to demonstrate a sequence from mark-making to designs to pictures to symbols for speech sounds. An important feature unites these very different kinds of graphic representations and differentiates them from spoken language: The picture or written word is “out there” -- it has a stability, a permanence, that spoken language lacks. One can bring others to see (or read) it, one can go away and come back to it. Beginning with pictures or logographs, young children come to see the value of the written message or story as something that “stays put” across space and time, in ways that temporal forms such as pretending and talking do not.

Kirsch (2000) observed four-year-olds children ‘writing’ in the context of restaurant play. Interestingly, while many of the children could print their names, their ‘writing’ of restaurant orders took script-like form as if they were attempting to emulate the form of adult writing. In entering literacy, children’s motivation is enhanced if they take an active stance, seeing themselves as “mark makers,” not simply decoders� (Fields & Hillstead, 1986).� Children can be encouraged to create their own logographs (pictographic signs) for objects and activities -- such as the no smoking sign that is now prevalent. At the same time, it is helpful to create an environment that is not only rich in materials for drawing, making signs, and so forth but abounds in printed material presented in ways that enable children to decipher meaning (for example, a sign ‘blocks’ over the block shelf - or two signs over different sized trucks - ‘little trucks’ and ‘big trucks’).

Spoken language.

It is important not to lose sight of the roots of the written word in the spoken.

�(Barton, 1994, p. 81)

����������� It is now recognized that relationships between spoken and written language are complex, and can be variously conceptualized. The move into full literacy involves understanding that those marks on the page “stand for” sound patterns and can be “read” accordingly. The child must intuit or acquire a repertoire of moves (or rules) that makes such reading possible. Similarly, she has to learn how to represent her speech in marks. While this is one of the many debates in the field, I suggest that young children should not be asked to “write their ideas” but first to express themselves through speech and then take the step of representing their speech in graphic form. It can be argued that allowing “invented spelling” facilitates the child’s ability to use letter forms to represent speech, without worrying about correct spelling.

����������� Of all the possibilities, I will mention only three examples that illustrate the child’s spoken language as a crucial resource in coming to literacy. The first is the least conventional. In fact, I have seen this technique in use only twice. [5] First, six-year-old children were presented with fragments of speech on tape, and asked to ‘draw’ the way the voice sounds, using magic markers of their choice. It had been explained that they were not to draw pictures of the person who might be speaking, but to represent the sound as such, with pauses. The children then compared their squiggly line drawings and argued about whose was better. In one case, the tape was re-played. Following this, a few children were asked to speak a sentence or two and the others made ‘drawings’ of what heard.� The teacher discussed correspondences (and lack thereof) between properties of the speech samples and the children’s drawings: Did the lines go up when the voice was higher? Were the pauses in speech represented? When the voice got louder, did the line get darker? After discussion, there was another round, with further discussion. The children were clearly enjoying themselves and appeared to experience the tasks as a form of discovery.

����������� The second example is the tried-and-true method of dictation. In this technique, now widely used in schools, the child has a book in which she makes pictures that illustrate (or are the starting point for) stories that she has told and the teacher has written down. As the child speaks, the teacher, who is sitting next to her, takes dictation word by word. On the one hand, this facilitates the child’s story telling. But most important for our purposes here, the child is able to see that her spoken words and phrases are being represented in written form. At the time, or when reading the story back to the child, the teacher may point to each word as it is read. Without being “instructional,” the teacher is helping the child understand the relationship between the word in speech and the printed form. As we all know, children take pride in their own productions. The teacher can now use this book (which is valued by the child) in literacy activities such as asking the child to point to particular words. As the child becomes used to this activity, she should be encouraged to do some of the writing herself - her name, a word here or there (perhaps in invented spelling).

����������� Paley (1981) encouraged story-telling in her classrooms, and then had the children work out a play based on a story. In a variant of this, the teacher takes notes on a spontaneous pretend play episode which she then writes up as a play script and shares with the children. They are encouraged to expand and “neaten” it, to add what might be called stage directions so that it can be performed for the other children as a play. While the actors cannot yet read the written script, they observe the teacher using it as she directs the play that originated in the children’s spoken words.

����������� Thirdly, we are all aware of the importance of having a good deal of printed material in the classroom. Here I strongly suggest that teachers not prepare all such material in advance but� make signs, schedules, lists, and messages on the spot, so that children can witness the ‘translation’ from spoken word to written form. An example is the teacher in front of the group, at an easel, marker in hand, going through the schedule for the day and writing down the events, or making a list of which child is going to do which job. The children should participate in making signs, writing messages, drawing up lists - whether this involves their suggestions, making logographs, or writings words. It is important for children to see the process of writing as well as the outcome, and to recognize the usefulness (as well as the aesthetics) of the written form. I do not want to be a Luddite but we must be very careful about substituting the computer for our hand when preparing materials for use in early education classrooms.

_________________________

To sum up - I began by providing an overview of some of the ways we use spoken language in our everyday lives. These functions of language are realized in adult speech as well children’s talk. I then indicated some of the forms in which spoken language occurs, and suggested some relationships between forms and functions. Finally, I proposed that we should attend to three paths to literacy that are too often neglected: pretend play, graphic representation, and spoken language. With others, I take the view that contributing to a child’s use of spoken language will contribute positively to the entrance to literacy. Many experienced teachers and theorists have provided important ideas about expanding the child’s natural language, developing specific literacy-based activities, and enriching the classroom environment with language activities to facilitate meaningful learning of reading and writing (see, for example: Almon, 2005; Clay, 1998; Miller, 2002; Wilford, 1998). In closing, I want to underscore a basic theme of my presentation: to build constructively and creatively on the language the child brings to school, we should begin by listening to the child’s spoken language, with focus on the range of forms and functions that comprise her repertoire.