TY - JOUR
T1 - Purposes, Places, and Participants
T2 - A Systematic Review of Teacher Language Practices and Child Oral Language Outcomes in Early Childhood Classrooms
AU - Hadley, Elizabeth Burke
AU - Barnes, Erica M.
AU - Hwang, Hye Jin
N1 - Funding Information:
They would like to thank Jessica Lawson-Adams for her assistance with the systematic review.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - Research Findings: Early childhood teachers’ talk is a key ingredient in children’s early language and literacy development, but there has been little systematic synthesis of observational studies that examine relationships between teacher talk and child oral language. In this systematic review of 54 studies, we investigate and synthesize the kinds of teacher language practices and children’s oral language outcomes that have been studied to date. We identify four key strands of teacher language practice types: 1) conceptual talk, 2) interactive talk, 3) linguistic features, and 4) management and literal talk, and find that the majority of studies use vocabulary assessments as a proxy for assessing children’s oral language development. Next, we apply the idea of language registers, drawn from systemic functional linguistics, to identify the patterns of teacher language practices used for particular purposes, in particular places, and with different participants that were associated with growth in children’s oral language development. Practice or Policy: Findings indicate that early childhood teachers can support children’s oral language development using strategies tailored to specific settings, including the use of conceptual talk during shared book-reading and the use of elicitations during play and small group settings.
AB - Research Findings: Early childhood teachers’ talk is a key ingredient in children’s early language and literacy development, but there has been little systematic synthesis of observational studies that examine relationships between teacher talk and child oral language. In this systematic review of 54 studies, we investigate and synthesize the kinds of teacher language practices and children’s oral language outcomes that have been studied to date. We identify four key strands of teacher language practice types: 1) conceptual talk, 2) interactive talk, 3) linguistic features, and 4) management and literal talk, and find that the majority of studies use vocabulary assessments as a proxy for assessing children’s oral language development. Next, we apply the idea of language registers, drawn from systemic functional linguistics, to identify the patterns of teacher language practices used for particular purposes, in particular places, and with different participants that were associated with growth in children’s oral language development. Practice or Policy: Findings indicate that early childhood teachers can support children’s oral language development using strategies tailored to specific settings, including the use of conceptual talk during shared book-reading and the use of elicitations during play and small group settings.
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U2 - 10.1080/10409289.2022.2074203
DO - 10.1080/10409289.2022.2074203
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85130758648
SN - 1040-9289
VL - 34
SP - 862
EP - 884
JO - Early Education and Development
JF - Early Education and Development
IS - 4
ER -