How can we assist the development of complex syntax?

Contributing author: Athina Ntalli

This blog post was written for teachers and parents interested in learning more about how we can encourage children’s production of complex sentence structures. This is not meant to be an exhaustive literature review on the topic, but it attempts to raise awareness on what we can potentially do based on research findings. 

Research has shown that children with strong oral (=spoken) language skills at a young age are more prepared for school and literacy. Oral language skills have been shown to predict later academic achievement and even life outcomes [1, 2]. Syntactic complexity is one component of oral language skills, and its development may help children be more ready for the academic language they will encounter in school. 

How we as parents, caregivers and teachers interact with children can influence the mastery of complex sentence structures. For instance, one study [3] showed that mothers who use repetition and expand children’s utterances when children are yet to begin producing multiword speech, promote growth of the child’s mean length of utterance (MLU). The mean length of utterance is a commonly used measure of language production which counts the length of a child’s oral sentence as the sum of the instances of the morphemes used. Morphemes are the smallest unit of language that has meaning (e.g., ‘The dog eat-s sausage-s.’ has 6 morphemes). The mean length of utterance has been used as a proxy for grammar development. In another study, children whose parents increased their use of complex sentences gradually over time in their talk with the child, performed better in a task where they had to repeat sentences increasing in length and complexity [4]. 

Apart from the quality and complexity of the language use of parents, caregivers, and teachers, exposing children to books and other print resources can have benefits that go well beyond syntactic complexity. Exposing children to a variety of books is important because printed language is more complex than everyday conversations. For example, studies have found that relative clauses (e.g., ‘This new laptop which I was talking to you about is amazing.’) are more common in books than they are in speech [5]. On the one hand, children who are exposed to more complex language may be at an advantage and more prepared for literacy. On the other hand, literacy is also a factor that can affect the production of complex sentences and hence children with more advanced literacy skills may produce more complex sentences. 

In a study on complex sentence learning carried out in a school setting, the researchers exposed children to either stories with a high proportion of coordinate sentences or stories with a high proportion of subordinate sentences. The researchers found that the children who listened to the stories with subordinate clauses, which are syntactically more complex, had a significantly higher likelihood of using subordinate clauses in their own story retellings compared to children exposed to coordinate clauses when tested 10 weeks after the end of the intervention [6]. This study shows the close link between the quality of story language and children’s own language development.

In conclusion, the language we use, the interactions we have with children, the books we read with them as parents, caregivers and educators could all assist the development of syntactic complexity and its mastery. In other words, if we can affect the rate of development of complex syntactic knowledge to a certain extent, why not do that especially if this helps children to be more prepared for the school language and literacy?! 

About the Author

Athina Ntalli is a post-doctoral researcher working at the Department of Education, University of Oxford, for the TalkTogether project. She completed her PhD in Second Language Acquisition at the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, University of Cambridge. Her research interests include child language acquisition and the factors that shape it.

References/Reading list

[1] Adlof, S. M., & Hogan, T. P. (2019). If we don’t look, we won’t see: Measuring language development to inform literacy instruction. Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 6(2), 210–217. https://doi.org/10.1177/2372732219839075 

[2] Nag, S., Chiat. S., Torgerson, C., Snowling, M.J., (2014). Literacy, Foundation Learning and Assessment in Developing Countries: Final Report. Education Rigorous Literature Review. Department for International Development. https://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/cms/Portals/0/PDF%20reviews%20and%20summaries/Literacy%202014%20Nag%20report.pdf?ver=2014-04-24-134404-340 

[3] Che, E.S. & Brooks, P.J. (2021). Maternal Repetition and Expansion of Child Utterances at the Outset of Combinatorial Speech Promote Growth in MLU. In D. Dionne and L.-A. Vidal Covas (Eds.), Proceedings of the 45th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, 120-133. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. http://www.cascadilla.com/bucld45toc.html 

[4] Silvey, C., Demir-Lira, O.E., Goldin-Meadow, S. & Raudenbush, S.W. (2021). Effects of Time-Varying Parent Input on Children’s Language Outcomes Differ for Vocabulary and Syntax. Psychological Science, 32(4), 536–548. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620970559 

[5] Nation, K., Dawson, N. J., & Hsiao, Y. (2022). Book Language and Its Implications for Children’s Language, Literacy, and Development. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 31(4), 375-380. https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214221103264

[6] Hesketh, A., Serratrice, L., & Ashworth, R. (2016). Encouraging use of subordination in children’s narratives: A classroom-based priming study. Language Learning and Development, 12(4), 413-428. https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2016.1162721 

Credits: Photo by Gaelle Marcel on Unsplash, Image by Freepik