TalkTogether Blog

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 utter...

Contributing author: Athina Ntalli This blog post was written for teachers and parents interested in children’s acquisition of complex syntax or complex sentence structures. The author considered multiple approaches to language acquisition research and tried to give an as comprehensive representation of the findings as is possible in a short blog post.  Introduction In this blog post, we will discuss children’s production of complex utterances. When we refer to syntactic complexity, we usually refer to the production of at least two events in the same utterance, or put differently, the combination of two or more clauses (clause: when there is a verb) together in one sentence, as in the example ‘ When I read this article, I should know more about syntactic complexity. ’ Here we have two clauses: an independent clause, such as ‘ I should know more about syntactic complexity. ’ which has full meaning and can stand on its own, and ‘ When I read this article ’ which is a dependent claus...

Contributing author: Athina Ntalli This blog post was written for teachers and parents interested in children’s acquisition of syntax. The author considered multiple approaches to language acquisition research and tried to give an as comprehensive representation of the findings as is possible in a short blog post.  Introduction Language is a unique human characteristic. Despite all of us speaking (or signing in) a language, we still get awed by how children learn a language - miraculously fast and effortlessly. We realise better what an accomplishment this is when we start learning an additional language at any point after childhood and we then normally need to spend a lot of time practising to get better.  In this blog post, we will focus on the development of one aspect of language, that is syntax, and discuss the first steps of syntactic development in children’s first language(s) focusing on production. When we talk about syntax, in simple terms, we refer to the rules of h...

Contributing Author: Donna Pamella Gonzales This article was written for the 2021 Corpus Roundtable event hosted by the TalkTogether team. I love to read books. I grew up with the likes of Dr. Seuss and the Little Golden Books, then transitioned to mystery and romance pocket books, until I found myself reading thicker romance and thriller novels as well as the huge volumes of encyclopedias. I recall finding myself totally immersed in a story that nothing, and I mean nothing, even the calls of my mom to eat, could distract me. I would read anywhere–even in a moving vehicle or in the dark–and any time I got the chance. The library became a safe haven for me. Reading for me became a source of comfort and relaxation, of trivia and general knowledge (Of course, reading for school was a totally different thing!). As I got involved in the field of education and research, especially in the development and management of instructional materials, books became more than just a source of enjoyment...

Contributing Author: Mehar Kahlon This article was written for the 2021 Corpus Roundtable event hosted by the TalkTogether team. Test validity typically refers to whether a test measures what it aims to measure. Phrases such as “a valid test” or “a validated test” imply that validity is a quality of the test itself and implicitly places the burden of achieving validity on test developers rather than users [ 1 ]. Because testing involves judgement on the underlying abilities of individuals based on their test performance, a consideration of their lived experiences is necessary to secure fairness in measurement. In this piece, I aim to highlight some of the important considerations in validating language tests in low-and middle-income countries, particularly multilingual India. A word definition test (also called an expressive vocabulary test) will be used to illustrate these considerations and linkages will be made to child-directed print corpora as a potential resource for guiding th...