Lea Nieminen

The development of narrative productivity, syntactic complexity, referential cohesion and event content in four- to eight-year-old Finnish children

This study focuses on the development of narrative structure and the relationship between narrative productivity and event content. A total of 172 Finnish children aged between four and eight participated. Their picture-elicited narrations were analysed for productivity, syntactic complexity, referential cohesion and event content. Each measure showed a developmental trend. Concerning consecutive age groups, significant differences were observed between four- and five-year-olds in productivity and event content and between five- and six-year-olds in referential cohesion. Multiple regression analysis showed that the relationship between productivity and event content was important, and especially the number of different word tokens proved to be useful in explaining the event content, whereas the number of communication units did not. This suggests that some productivity measures should be interpreted with caution.

Early signs of dyslexia from the speech and language processing of children

The Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia project (JLD) has followed the development of 200 children from birth until 10 years of age. Half the children are from families in which at least one of the parents has dyslexia, thus the child has a high risk of becoming dyslexic, and half have no such risk. Here the main findings of four studies in linguistics from the JLD project are reviewed. The speech processing skills were studied in 6, 18, 24 and 30-month-old children. The findings show that early signs of dyslexia can be detected in speech processing both phonologically and morphosyntactically. These precursors can be seen in perception or production of duration, in the prosody and phonotactics of word production attempts and word structures, as well as in the complexity of morphosyntactic features of expressions. This information can be useful in practice to provide early and appropriate assistance for those children who most likely will face difficulties in learning to read and write at school.

Ensuring sufficient literacy practice with tablet technology in Zambian schools

Tablets are a promising mobile device for disseminating e-Learning materials at schools in Africa. E-learning materials can be especially useful for the practice of early literacy skills. Introducing mobile devices to schools can be challenging as teachers are required to make changes to their daily routines and the use of technology can be problematic in overcrowded classrooms. This study aimed to find out the most optimal way of providing GraphoGame literacy intervention via tablets for grade one learners in an urban school environment. The study tested whether GraphoGame mounted on tablets increases initial literacy skills among grade one learners. Three different conditions for providing literacy intervention with tablets in the primary school environment were compared. The study found that sufficient practice with GraphoGame on installed tablets has the potential not only to increase initial literacy skills but could also be used as a remediating intervention for early grade learners for whom low literacy is a limiting factor for their academic performance.