Literacy starts with talking: The Art of Conversation Part II

The Foundations of Literacy

Alyssa McCabe is a Psychology Professor at the University of Massachusetts, and she has a 40-year background in research into children's narratives: that is, how children tell stories and how it reflects or affects their literacy skills later in childhood. Her list of published research is phenomenal; check it out!

McCabe and David Dickinson have developed the Comprehensive Language Approach (PDF) which describes the interweaving of oral and written language skills in developing literacy.

It looks a little like this:

That little yellow diamond in the centre is the juxtaposition of four key foundations:

1. Conventions of print: understand how books work, the direction we read in, which is the front and the back, what a letter, a word, a sentence looks like;
2. Vocabulary: having a big word bank that works across many settings and situations;
3. Phonemic/phonic awareness: what we mostly think about when we are thinking of learning to read and write: the spelling and decoding of words, how letters and letter combinations sound, and which ones work;
4. Oral language: this is why you're reading!

What is oral language and why is it important?

From Alyssa McCabe:

The more talk children engage in with adults, the bigger their vocabularies will become. The bigger their vocabularies when they enter kindergarten, the better they do with reading comprehension tasks – even 11 years later.

I think that's pretty clear. Oral language is spoken; not necessarily the little things we say to our kids each day (instructions, commands, requests), but the deeper conversations we have with them, taking turns to speak, asking questions, actively listening, making eye contact. See my first post for more details. Children are talking about themselves and what interests them, things that have happened to or around them, and describing actions, scenes, or people.

Not only that, but children go through developmental stages when they are learning to talk and tell stories. In the process of development, they learn the fundamentals of storytelling, which they will encounter again in text: 

• Stories have a clear beginning, middle and end;
• Children learn how to use grammar and syntax and learn when something doesn't make sense;
• They learn to notice small differences in words spoken aloud and different sounds in general;
• It helps them read later in a conversational tone and pay attention to how to use their voice in storytelling from texts.

The sooner we start talking to our children, and the more we engage them in genuine conversation, the better equipped they are for reading and writing later on.

McCabe and Dickinson's research is invaluable in learning how we can best support our young children in becoming avid and proficient readers and writers later on.

Here's the takeaway:

Talk with your children for a sustained amount of time every day, with no distractions. Engage with them, ask them questions, push for more details, and show them you are listening and interested.

That's how we grow literate, critically thinking children.