Literacy news

Home and away

12 May 2005

It has long been recognised that while children are competent communicators in their own homes by the age of three, they talk far less when they join an early years setting. However, the reasons for their comparative silence are not fully understood. While the quality of early years provision has undoubtedly been raised in recent years, practitioners say they feel under increased pressure to provide evidence of delivering the curriculum, to help children achieve higher scores in early years assessment and to focus on children's ability to talk. For my research, I tracked the experiences of three-year-old children during their first year in a rural playgroup. By video recording each child at home and in preschool at four to six week intervals, my study revealed how and why three-year-olds use combinations of communicative 'modes', such as talk, body movement, facial expression, gaze direction and the manipulation of objects to explore and express meanings at home and preschool.

At home

At home, the children's interactions with their parents, siblings and friends were dominated by talk, with gaze, facial expression and body movements used mostly for emphasis when being assertive or to replace particularly complicated explanations or vocabulary. The children were confident of their knowledge of routines and uses of vocabulary within their own homes, and their families treated them as 'knowers' of facts, events and specialised vocabulary. The shared understandings between the children and their families provided fertile ground for the children to express their views through talk, and frequently led to lengthy verbal exchanges. All the mothers displayed a deep understanding of their children's experiences, interests and areas of specialist knowledge. This enabled them to provide finely-tuned assistance that prompted their children to develop their ideas through further talk.

In one conversation, Jake was looking at an illustrated children's book on farm machinery in the kitchen while his mother was baking. Although she was busy, the mother responded to her son's comments with interest, which prompted Jake to talk in more detail and look more carefully at the book illustrations. The mother had high expectations of Jake's specialised knowledge and vocabulary, and by sharing their knowledge through body movement and words, she brought the book closer to a reality she knew he would understand. The unhurried and familiar home context, where children were treated and behaved as masters rather than apprentices of the procedures and routines of their worlds, provided safe platforms upon which they practised their skills and took risks. The children were free of any major threat to their self-esteem and they were almost always assured of adult attention and support.

In an early years setting

By contrast, when they first joined the preschool, the children were comparatively quiet and watchful as they began to make sense of their new surroundings and to unravel the different kinds of opportunities for communicating offered by the setting. Although over time the children began to talk more, they still talked far less than at home, and they used gaze, facial expression and body movement for specific purposes that were shaped by the practices of the preschool. Close observation of activities within the setting revealed that children varied their methods of communicating according to the activity. For example, adult-led activities, such as completing pre-set craft tasks, were characterised by the adult giving instructions or explanations and the children responding with combinations of gaze, facial expression, movement and monosyllabic or short verbal responses, as in the following example. Jake is playing a board game with an adult, Janet.

Jake: (throws dice) 'Pink.'
Janet: (gaze to dice) 'It's yellow.'
Jake: (moves snail along track towards end)
Janet: (points to snail and square on board) 'Move that one just one space.'
Jake: (moves snail back to square indicated)
Janet: 'and then you need to throw the other dice' (passes dice) 'and see what colour that one lands on.'
Jake: (throws dice).

In general, the higher the degree of adult control of an activity, the less then children used talk to communicate. By contrast, the children tended to engage more deeply in activities, but not necessarily to talk more, when adults stopped 'teaching' and joined the flow of the child's play, by responding sensitively and imitatively to the child's words, gaze and body movements. In the following example, the adult, Sarah, had joined Jake at a puzzle activity. From the outset, she assumed an interested yet passive stance. Initially, Jake had been using trial and error to fit the pieces, sometimes using force, which Sarah skilfully led Jake to conclude might not work as a strategy. She rewarded his successes with nods, smiles and congratulatory remarks, and waited until he began comparing sizes before gradually introducing the notions of shape and colour that he needed to consider to complete the game.

Jake: (pushes hard to fit a piece)
Sarah: 'Won't it fit in there?' (arms folded, smiles, glance to Jake, then game)
Jake: 'Look!' (shakes head briefly)
Sarah: 'No, it doesn't, does it?' (shaking head, gaze at game)
Jake: 'It fit here.' (slotting piece in)
Sarah: 'It does!' (nods and smiles)
Jake: (moves piece to a bigger hole) 'Not in dis can't fit ere cos it not bigger' (shaking head and holding piece up to Sarah)
Sarah: 'That's right.' (gaze to Jake).

At imaginative play activities, such as the home corner, the younger children often negotiated entry to older children's play by watching and imitating their actions and how they used the resources. Their non-verbal techniques proved far more successful than talk. As children became involved in play, opportunities sometimes arose for talk with peers, but access to play was negotiated almost entirely without words. Tracking the children as they selected activities during free choice time revealed that many three-year-olds, particularly those whom staff considered 'quiet', often avoided activities where they had to talk to peers or adults. Instead, they opted for activities where established patterns of communication allowed them to participate while remaining relatively silent. For example, both boys and girls frequently spent long periods at construction or craft activities where they produced detailed models that gave deep insights into their understandings of their world. However, all too often these were dismantled or put to one side.

These non-verbal expressions of the children's understandings were not given the same recognition as their talk, yet they were key gateways to engaging the children's involvement. The newcomers' most frequent use of talk in the preschool involved relatively 'safe' options, such as joining in group chants ('I want more milk') and repeating phrases specific to the setting ('tidy-up time!')

Conclusions

Any 'absence' of talk at preschool does not necessarily imply that child lacks skilled communication or is not making meanings. On the contrary, for the newcomers to the preschool, learning to be included in peer play and learning the routines of the setting were negotiated primarily through observation and imitation. Talk was used for specific purposes, such as to be precise. Over time, the three-year-olds began to find new ways of expressing themselves, sometimes through talk and sometimes through gaze, facial expression and body movement. These were almost always linked in some way to the communicative practices of more established members of the group. To help children learn through play and all their senses, as proposed in the Foundation Stage curriculum guidance, adults must recognise and value the diversity of children's strategies for communicating. Early years practitioners must balance talk-biased, adult-led learning episodes with child-led activities, where children's individual and diverse ways of expressing meaning are respected, validated and reciprocated.

(Dr Rosie Flewitt for Nursery World)

Tags: Talk To Your Baby

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