Language Development in Middle Childhood

By Group Member #5

The typical development of language in middle childhood.

During middle and late childhood, children become increasingly more developed in their language skills. As children begin to enter school, vocabulary becomes crucial to the child, gaining new skills that will eventually develop into reading and writing. In a school setting, children start to learn the meanings of words and begin to recognize and use different

sounds in order to talk about a variety of things, things that may not even be physically present. As children begin to develop cognitively and physically, they’re grammar and vocabulary also begin to dramatically change. At this age, children’s “vocabulary grows from an average of about 14,000 words at 6 years of age to an average of about 40,000 words by 11 years of age” (Santrock, 353).

What is beneficial to support optimal development in this domain?

Children’s progress in vocabulary and grammar during elementary school years definitely have to do with metalinguistic awareness. Metalinguistic awareness prompts the child to understand the meanings of the words they are using and what words are in general. Metalinguistic ability can be divided into four categories: phonological, word, syntactic, and pragmatic awareness (Lightsey & Frye, 2004). “Phonological and word awareness refer to the ability to think about and use phonemes and words. Syntactic awareness is the ability to think about the structure of language. The final category, pragmatic awareness, involves the purposes for which we use language” (Lightsey & Frye, 2004).

Two other key components of language development at this age are reading and writing. As children learn to recognize and use sounds and learn what a word is, reading can be taught with two different approaches: phonics and the whole-language approach. The phonics approach teaches children basic rules for translating written symbols into sounds by giving children simplified material while the whole-language approach allows the child to understand whole words or even an entire sentence, using the context of what they are reading to understand the meaning of the words put together. With this approach, children are given reading materials in a complete form such as a book or poem. Neither approach is better than the other, it simply has to do with a developmental sequence in which one approach becomes more important than the other at different times of development (Santrock, 353). With writing, a child becomes better with practice over time after they’ve learned a more sophisticated understanding of syntax and grammar.

How well does S.P.A.R.K.S. support the identified developmental domain?

The S.P.A.R.K.S. program provides children of all socioeconomic status an opportunity to learn science with hands-on activities. These activities expose children to a variety of scientific theories and explanations for the natural world surrounding them. It is through these activities and lessons that children are exposed to scientific language. Children are exposed to several words that are given context with hands-on training and lessons to follow and help support the vocabulary being obtained. Not only does the S.P.A.R.K. program provide a new set of vocabulary but also a set of skills that will be useful to them in their future careers.

According to an article written by the Institute for Inquiry, both science and language are looked at very differently from one another, so disparate that the idea of the two working hand in hand with each other seems a bit odd. It further explained this idea that “direct and engaging experiences of inquiry-based science can provide a rich context for the development of language as students communicate about their observations and discoveries, (“Developing Language in the Context”, 2015). Likewise, the use of language to communicate their ideas is crucial to the development of scientific understanding.

What would I change about the program to better help child development?

The one thing I would change about the program is having it become a curriculum in all grade schools so that students from all over the world are not only learning science in the best possible way but also developing language. In order for it to become a curriculum in all grade schools, more teachers need to be given proper training so that they may succeed in teaching it to their students on a regular basis. For this reason, I think that as children are being given the science curriculum, teachers should also have a set of curriculums that expose and familiarize the teacher to the subject as it can seem a bit intimidating at first. As science and language go hand in hand with one another, training teachers on how to teach a science curriculum is the most effective and beneficial way to teach so students begin to construct ideas and communicate their discoveries and/or questions among peers which ultimately allows for the development of scientific understanding.

Citations

“Developing Language in the Context of ... - Exploratorium.” Exploratorium.edu, Exploratorium, 2015, https://www.exploratorium.edu/sites/default/files/pdfs/ifi/DevelopingLanguageintheContextofScience.pdf.

Lightsey, G. E., & Frye, B. J. (2004). Teaching metalinguistic skills to enhance early reading instruction. Reading Horizons, 45 (1), 27-37.

Santrock, John W. Children. Available from: Yuzu, (15th Edition). McGraw-Hill Higher Education (US), 2021.