NOURISHING LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IN EARLY CHILDHOOD

With Alice Honig, Ph.D.

1996 (31 min) $250.   ISBN: 1-891340-55-7         [Available with Spanish Subtitles]

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Current research continues to verify the strong connection between the oral language abilities of children entering school and their eventual academic success.  “Talk is cheap” goes the old saw but for young children it is invaluable.  This charming film both is didactic in that it presents the specialized vocabulary of linguistic studies and the developmental pathway of language development but it is also polemic in that it makes a rousing case for the importance of adults conversing with children. Even in infancy, these conversations take place as babies respond with their experiments with intonation and sound production.  The film captures adult-child conversations and child-child conversations in a wide variety of situations in a children’s center, modeling how language development can be fostered during the first five years of life.

Film content:

            Connection of the growth of intelligence and language according to Piaget and Vygotsky

            Aspects of language

                        Phonology

                                    Second language issues

                                    Articulation

                        Morphology

                                    Unbound and bound morphemes- “Wugs” assessment

                        Syntax

                        Semantics

                        Pragmatics

            Developmental pathway to language

                        Early months

                        First words- holophrasic

                        Telegraphic speech

                        Explosive growth in toddlerhood

                        Refinement in the preschool years

            Strategies for nourishing language development

                        Turn-taking talk

                        “Motherese”

                        Self-talk and parallel talk

                        Singing and chanting

                        Book reading

                        Issues of electronic media

Visuals (and in this film the excellent sound quality is equally important!):

            Aspects of language analysis (morphology, semantics, etc.) are documented with actual examples from child conversations

            Parents and infants communicating orally at several stages of language development

            Children’s center staff members encouraging and engaging in conversations with children from 3 months through 5 years

            An especially powerful episode with a caregiver discussing a Kleenex with a young toddler

            Toddlers communicating to each other with words

            A child being spoken to in one language by her mother and another by a staff member

            Four year olds with articulation problems versus those with productive language problems

            Four year olds chatting with each other in a several different center situations inside and outside

            Chanting and singing with children from infancy onwards

Story-time activities with children from early toddler hood through five years of age

Consultant: 

Alice Sterling Honig, Ph.D. taught for many years at Syracuse University and continues to lead a yearly workshop there “Quality Infant-Toddler Caregiving.” Alice Honig was honored as a “Hero of Early Childhood Education” by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. She is the author of several books including Talking to Your Baby: Family as the First School and  Secure Relationships: Nurturing Infants/Toddlers Early Care Settings and is an early childhood advisor for Scholastic publications and website.

Related film:

            Part of the EARLY CHILDHOOD SERIES

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