Lee Galda

The Effects of Thematic-Fantasy Play Training on the Development of Children’s Story Comprehension

This study examined the effects of three modes of story reconstruction training on the development of children’s story comprehension. One hundred and eight children in grades K-2 were assigned randomly to one of three training conditions: thematic-fantasy play, adult-lead discussion, or drawing. Children were read three books on separate occasions and exposed to the appropriate conditions in relation to each book. Story comprehension data, as measured by a two-factor, criterion-referenced test and a retell task, collected after the third session, were analyzed. Second graders’ performance on all comprehension measures was superior to the younger children’s comprehension. Thematic-fantasy play was the most effective facilitator of all measures of comprehension, particularly for kindergarteners. Enacting specific play roles seemed to have a direct effect on the ability to retell stories.

Context in Text: The Development of Oral and Written Language in Two Genres.

PELLEGRINI, A. D.; GALDA, LEE; and RUBIN, DONALD L. Context in Text: The Development of Oral and Written Language in Two Genres. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1984, 55, 1549-1555. The intent of the study was to test Hallidays model of context/text relations and how these relations varied across the elementary school years. Children in grades 1, 3, and 5 were asked to produce messages in narrative and persuasive genres, in both the oral and written channels. Their texts were analyzed in terms of elements of linguistic cohesion and length of clausal themes. Significant multivariate effects on these measures were obtained for grade, channel, genre, channel x genre, and grade x channel. These results generally support the predicted effects for this model of discourse production: Text varied as a function of discourse context. Predicted age effects were partially supported. These results are significant in that they document age-related features of text production: organization of text with causal conjunctions improves across the elementary school years; the production of grammatically cohesive text improves through third grade. Furthermore, the data support previous research suggesting that oral text is less explicit than written text.

Joint reading between mothers and their head start children: Vocabulary development in two text formats

The intent of this study was to examine the ways in which Head Start childrens vocabulary was developed when they and their mothers engaged in joint reading contexts. Nineteen dyads were observed while interacting around expository texts presented in two formats: familiar (newspaper toy advertisements) and traditional (trade books). Dyads in this study were observed in their homes across four observations while reading a series of presented texts. Childrens ability to identify words from the texts read was measured as was their comprehension of a standardized receptive vocabulary list. Mothers talked more than children in all contexts; furthermore, different forms of talk were observed around the different text formats. Correlational and sequential analyses indicated that childrens word recall was best predicted by responsive maternal strategies, such as encouraging children to talk about the text, and childrens modelling maternal strategies. Word recall and vocabulary, however, was significantly corr...

The development of school-based literacy : a social ecological perspective

The authors take one aspect of cognitive development, early literacy, and study the effect of social influences on metalinguistic awareness. Based on a longitudinal study in homes and schools, they present the results of how diverse and close social relationships influence childrens literacy learning as they progress through the first three years of formal schooling, and discuss implications for teaching practice.

Bridges between Home and School Literacy: Social Bases for Early School Literacy.

In this chapter early literacy is defined in terms of literate language, a register of language typified by verbally explicated meaning and talk about talk. We explore various social arrangements which support childrens use of literate language. Concentrating on the peer system, we examine the roles of diverse and close social contacts, as well as the ways in which individual differences mediate these factors, on childrens use of literate language. We call for more research on the ways in which specific aspects of the social context are related to specific dimensions of literate language ∗Work on this paper was partially supported by a grant from the National Reading Research Center at UGA and UMD. Correspondence concerning this paper should be addressed to either author at College of Education, Aderhold Hall, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602.

Development of informational adequacy in speech and writing

Theory and research pertaining to relationships between oral and written communication offer support to seemingly contrary hypotheses regarding the development of informational adequacy in speech and in writing. Because the social cognitive demands of face-to-face interaction are less complex than those of prototypical written communication, younger children might be expected to display greater audience adaptation in speech. On the other hand, the process of encoding in writing facilitates certain cognitive operations, and, therefore, children might be expected to communicate more effectively in writing. Empirical studies warranting conflicting conclusions, however, have administered tasks that tap different communication functions, either explanatory or referential. The present study replicates and extends this previous research by administering referential and explanatory communication tasks in both speech and writing to children at three grade levels. In addition, an independent measure of social cognitive ability was administered. Results confirmed increasing differentiation with age between speech and writing, with fifth graders displaying greater informational adequacy in writing. Childrens performance in written communication, rather than speech, revealed a dependency on social cognitive ability. Differences between referential and explanatory communication suggested by previous research were confirmed.