TRANSITION TO SCHOOL LANGUAGE: THE DEVELOPMENT OF ELABORATION AND COHERENCE SKILLS IN KINDERGARTEN CHILDREN

Problem. A major task for children entering school is comprehension and use of language that is characteristic of the school speech community, here characterized as "formal language," and contrasted with the more informal language of the home. This study investigated three aspects of the transition to school language in a class of kindergarten children: characterization of kindergarten oral language produced in a variety of school-specific situations; indexing development over time by means of two indices, elaboration and coherence; development of methods for research in classroom language that take into account the importance of language context.;A descriptive analysis of the language productions, by means of propositional analysis, categorized and quantified three main types of propositions: modification, connective, and predicate propositions (predicate propositions were subcategorized into action, attribute, and purpose predicates). This analysis provided information about changes in frequencies of propositions over time; relative proportions of propositions in the various language activities, including differences by time and by task; aspects of elaboration such as use of elaborative elements within predicates. A coherence analysis of the dictated stories provided information about the development of more complex forms of story organization over time.;Analysis of the observational data provided detailed profiles of communication competence for the six case study children. . . . (Author's abstract exceeds stipulated maximum length. Discontinued here with permission of school.) UMI.;Method. Two complementary approaches were used, field observations by the investigator as participant-observer, and sampling of children's language productions in controlled school-like situations. Six children at three fluency levels were observed intensively. Their language behaviors and productions were recorded in every school communication context to provide information about individual differences in communication competence and the effects of diverse school situations on language productions. Additionally, language samples were taken from the whole class to provide a reference framework for the case study children. Three "tasks" were used: interviews with the investigator, dictated stories, and a sharing game situation.