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Sydney speech pathologists helping adults and children speak for themselves.

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Oral language: what is it and why does it matter so much for school, work, and life success?

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Oral language is a wonder. Across time and cultures, most people develop oral language skills without much conscious effort. As a species, oral language has helped us to survive, reproduce, and to cooperate with each other, even in very hostile conditions. As individuals, oral language is crucial for social development, reading comprehension, learning, academic participation, and for work and life success.  

But what is oral language?

As a speech pathologist who works with people with Developmental and other Language Disorders, one of the most frustrating things about oral language is just how hard it is to explain to others in Plain English. I’ve tried a few times, without much success.

I’m going to have another go now!

A. Not just complicated.

Some things are made up of many interconnected parts. We describe these things as “complicated”. Cars and coffee machines are good examples. Often, the parts of complicated things work together in defined and limited ways to produce a result, like letting me drive down my street, or producing a hot cup of coffee. 

Language is made up of many connecting parts. But it is not like a car or a coffee machine. Oral language is not just complicated: it’s a complex system. 

B. What do we mean by a complex system?

Not only is language made up of lots of parts, but the parts interact with each other in lots of different – and often unpredictable – ways. This makes language complex, like weather or the health system.

Oral language involves listening (receptive) skills; and speaking (expressive) skills. It also includes different forms, content, and uses, as shown in this famous model:

C. Everything is connected! 

This sounds like something from James Cameron’s Avatar or something to be discovered on a life-changing meditation retreat. But, with oral language, it happens to be true.

Some children have language problems that affect primarily one sub-system or part of language. For example, many children with language disorders have difficulties with word forms (e.g. past tense verbs, like “jumped” or “flew”) or syntax (e.g. understanding and using complex sentences like “The boy ordered a pizza because he was hungry”, “Before you have breakfast, make your bed”, and “The dog was walked by the man with the grey hair”). But everything is connected, and language problems do not segregate into neat subtypes. 

As a practical example, consider the word “because”. If a 6-year-old child does not understand the word “because” and how it’s used, he or she will:

  • be unlikely to understand or use the word correctly as part of his or her vocabulary (a language content deficit);
  • have difficulties understanding or using the word as a subordinating conjunction in complex sentences (a language form deficit); 
  • have difficulties understanding or explaining cause and effect relationships in words, meaning they may not be able to answer questions or follow instructions from a teacher that include the term (both examples of language use deficits);
  • perhaps be perceived by the teacher and the child’s peers as unintelligent, impolite or disobedient (an example of the social stigma and low expectations that often accompany language difficulties); and
  • perhaps become reluctant to engage in future interactions and situations requiring knowledge of “because” (an example of how language deficits can reduce participation and inclusion over time).

Focusing on one aspect of language difficulty – e.g. receptive syntax or expressive vocabulary – in isolation doesn’t make a lot of sense when all aspects of language interact and feed into each other. Language difficulties in one area can have serious, systemic knock-on effects. 

Rather than trying to sort language problems into arbitrary categories or leaky buckets, it’s better to just use the term “language disorder” and think about treating the system. (You can read more about language therapy here.)

D. Typical language development

Given its complexity, it’s incredible that so many of us learn to understand and to use oral language without much direct instruction. But some people aren’t as lucky. It’s useful to know about typical patterns of language development so that people with, or at risk of, language disorders are picked up and helped as early as possible.

Note that this section summarises typical language development for monolingual children. For information about bilingual language development, please check out our separate article here.

Language development typically follows this pattern:

  • Understanding of language usually comes before speaking.
  • From the first months, most children develop native speech perception and production skills based on the language or languages the child is surrounded by.
  • Speech production starts with single words, followed by word combinations, to simple sentences and then more complex sentences.
  • Between 18 months and 6 years of age, children learn lots of new words: around 50 words at 18 months to around 10,000 words by 6 years. Word and sentence syntax skills also develop rapidly.
  • In infant, toddler and preschool years, most of the language a child hears is oral language. 
  • When literacy begins in late preschool or early school years, an increasing amount of language input comes from printed words, e.g. in books. 
  • Early oral language skills are a good predictor of early reading development. But, later, reading and spoken language development piggyback off each other. For example, quality books often contain more sophisticated vocabularies and sentence structures than conversational speech. 
  • During the school years, language skills continue to develop and be refined into adolescence, alongside various forms of “meta-linguistic awareness” (the conscious awareness of oral and written language and how it is used). 

E. Things that are known to affect language development

Oral language development is influenced by many factors, including:

  • genes. In children aged 2-4 years, the heritability of language is about 30% but this rises to around 60% by the age of 12 years. The genetic correlation between oral language and reading comprehension is above 0.80;
  • socioeconomic status (e.g. factors like parental education, income, and housing). On average, children aged 30 months-3 years from professional families are exposed to 11 million words in a year, compared to an average of 3 million words for children from the poorest families. Parent-child interactions for children from high socioeconomic backgrounds are, on average, more conversational than for children from low socioeconomic backgrounds. On average, parents with lower socioeconomic backgrounds tend to be more directive with their children, though, of course, there are many examples where this is not the case. Poverty has a big impact on reading outcomes too: you can read more about why poor kids are more likely to be poor readers here;
  • home learning environment. This includes the language and literacy skills of parents (which are of course also affected by genes), as well as the number of books in the home and the parents’ reading habits. You can read more about the importance of the home learning environment here;   
  • the interaction between your genes and your environment. For example, if you are good at using language, you will probably seek out more language-based activities. If you have poor social language skills, you will probably have less satisfying social interactions and socialise less; and
  • other known risk factors for language disorders: we’ve summarised some of the main known risk factors here.

F. This is interesting. Tell me more!

My favourite response, and why we write this blog! 

Here are my recommendations for further reading about different aspects of oral language. For each article, we include references to peer-reviewed research:

(1) Language Form

For information about phonological (speech) development, check out:

For information about early morphological development, check out:

For information about syntax, check out:

(2) Language Content

For information about vocabulary, check out:

For information about categories, semantic development, sequences, and inferences, check out:

(3) Social Use of Language (also called pragmatics)

We use oral language to communicate in different places with different people and for different purposes (pragmatics). For more information, check out these resources:

(4) Language Disorders and the importance of focusing on strengths, participation and inclusion

People with language and other communication difficulties are not broken and don’t need to be “fixed”. People are not their disorders. 

Lots of researchers, speech pathologists, psychologists, teachers, families and people with language disorders are focused on learning more about language and how to mitigate the effects of language difficulties. 

It is never too late to seek help! Find out more:

Key source for the information in Parts D and E: Hulme, C., Snowling, M., West, G., Lervåg, A, and Melby-Lervåg, M. (2020). Children’s Language Skills Can Be Improved: Lessons from Psychological Science for Educational Policy. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 29(4), 372-377.

David

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

Locked down with preschoolers? Free language and reading information and resources to help make things better for everyone in the family – including you!

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Times are stressful for many of us in lockdown. Lots of things feel out of control, mainly because they are! And things are even tougher for many working parents with preschoolers at home.

But, while you can’t do much about the virus, the genes (and personalities) of family members, or the constant juggle of work and parenting tasks, you can take some simple, concrete steps to improve your home literacy environment to help your preschoolers’ language development, reading skills, and readiness to learn.   

What on earth is a “home literacy environment”? 

It means the reading and writing activities you engage in with your children, the reading resources you have at home, and your own attitudes towards reading and writing. It includes:

  • informal literacy interactions: reading storybooks with your children and bringing their attention to written words, e.g. from TV shows and ads, Netflix and Nintendo menus, on food packaging, fridge magnets, bedroom wall posters, and car bumper stickers;
  • formal literacy interactions: directly teaching reading or print-related skills to your children, e.g., by teaching them how to write their names, the letters of the alphabet, or the links between letters and speech sounds; and 
  • your indirect reading influence: being a role model for your children by reading and writing in front of them (including when typing those work emails and text), having lots of books and magazines in the house, and helping children to see good reading and writing skills as part of your family’s “identity” and value system.

Why does your home literacy environment matter?

It’s an important predictor of preschoolers’ language and literacy development. It has a significant effect on school readiness. Along with family stress levels and child health factors, the home literacy environment is a predictor of children’s attention and behaviour at the end of the preschool period.

Free information, resources and tips to improve your preschooler’s home literacy environment

1. Read quality picture books with (not just to) your children

  • Here’s why to do it.
  • Here’s a summary of how to do it.
  • We’ve made some specific book recommendations here and here and here and here, although any book your child is interested in is better than none. 
  • It might be hard to access free physical books at the moment with many government libraries closed. Free videos of many books recommended can be accessed on YouTube and other places. 
  • If you are reading books off a screen, e.g. on a Kindle or iPad, try to keep the experience interactive – e.g., by pausing at the end of each page to discuss what’s happening, to describe the pictures, to point out the printed words, to explain and demonstrate interesting words, and to predict what might happen and why. 

2. Make storybook and other reading a daily habit 

Use these tips from the science of habit-formation to help make reading together a daily routine that forms part of your identity as a “reading family”:

(A) Make reading obvious: 

  • When opportunity strikes, draw attention to printed words around you, e.g. when watching TV together, preparing dinner, or if you are putting together presentation slides for work. Point to the words as you read them. Read more about increasing your child’s print awareness here. 
  • Scatter storybooks around the house, in multiple rooms – not just in a dusty corner or in the “good room”. 
  • Use “habit stacking”. Tie your daily reading habit to an existing everyday event, e.g. “AFTER [bathtime], I will immediately read a storybook with my kids for 15 minutes.”
  • Let children see you reading and writing through the day – one of the benefits of working from home.

(B) Make reading attractive: 

  • Bundle reading with another activity your children love. For example: “After we read a storybook together, my children can:
    • play [Minecraft or other game] for 20 minutes; or 
    • will make [a Lego creation]; or 
    • have a [favourite snack].” 
  • Bundle reading with an activity you love. For example: “After we finish reading a storybook together, I will leave them to their reward and:
    • watch [my favourite TV show]; or
    • enjoy [my favourite dinner or drink] [with my partner]; or
    • scroll through [Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, etc] for 20 minutes. 

(C) Make it easy:

Decrease the number of steps to get started, e.g.:

  • by having your children pre-select the books they want to read and having them ready; and 
  • putting the book on your child’s pillow or bed, e.g., if your habit you have established is bedtime reading.  

(D) Make it satisfying: 

  • Reward yourselves for finishing each book. 
  • Track how many books you’ve read together on a reward chart. 
  • Use a habit tracker (app or paper and pen) to track “hot streaks” (consecutive days of reading together). 
  • Never miss twice: if you miss a day, don’t feel guilty, but get back on track immediately.
  • Team it up with some of the real world language stimulating activities we suggest here. 

3. At home, or in the car, listen to quality audio books or make your own as a project 

  • Read specific audiobook recommendations with free links to audiobooks: here and here and here.

4. Teach your children to write their names 

  • All you need is paper, pencils or crayons and lots of practice! 
  • Need some help with pencil grip? We’ve got you covered here.

5. Teach your children the alphabet, as well as their letter-sound links

  • Read more about teaching the alphabet to your child (including suggested sequences) here.
  • Make, download (e.g. from Pinterest), and/or buy, then stick up an alphabet chart or runner in your children’s room(s), and refer to it daily, e.g. during story time. 
  • Teach your child basic letter-sound links using our free videos, here. 

6. Don’t let things get too regimented or routinised!

Encourage your children to play with abandon!

7. Look after yourself!

It’s hard to look after preschoolers if you are struggling with your own mental or other health issues. Be kind to yourself. Don’t try to be perfect – we all have bad days. Sleep. Exercise. Eat well. Stay connected with friends and family, even if you can only do so electronically or on the phone. 

Don’t hesitate to seek help from health or other professionals if and as you need it.

We’re all in this together!

Key sources: 

  • Dilnot, J., Hamilton, L., Maughan, B., Snowling, M.J. (2017). Child and environmental risk factors predicting readiness for learning in children at high risk of dyslexia. Development and Psychopathology, 29, 235-244.  
  • Puglisi, M.L., Hulme, C., Hamilton, L.G., Snowling, M.J. (2017). The Home Literacy Environment is a Correlate, but Perhaps Not a Cause, of Variations in Children’s Language and Literacy Development, Scientific Studies of Reading, 21:6, 498-514. 
  • Clear, J. (2018). Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones. Random House Business Books, London, Great Britain.

Related articles:

David

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

What are the priorities for early reading instruction: should we work on executive functions or focus on word decoding and oral language skills?

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The Simple View of Reading, originally proposed in 1986 by Gough and Tunmer, suggests that reading comprehension in early school years is best predicted by two factors:

  • the child’s fluent word decoding; and 
  • the child’s oral language skills. 

For example, studies have shown that fluent decoding and language skills, together with the effects of their interactions, explain more than 96% of the variance in students’ early reading comprehension development (e.g. Hjetland et al., 2018). You can read more about the Simple View of Reading here and here.

Some researchers think that a third factor has an important, additional, part to play in reading development: executive functions.

What does “executive functions” mean?

Executive functions are hard to define and even harder to measure. They are a set of top-down cognitive abilities that control thoughts and behaviours that include:

  • verbal working memory, e.g. the ability to recall chunks of word-related information, like lists of numbers or words in sequence;
  • visuospatial memory, e.g. the ability to mimic a sequence of movements, as in the famous “Simon” game of the 1980s; 
  • inhibition, e.g. the the ability to rapidly name opposite shapes (e.g. “say square when you see a circle”) or the opposite direction (e.g. “say down when the arrow is pointing up”); 
  • shifting or cognitive flexibility, e.g. tasks like saying the correct shape or arrow direction only if the object is coloured white, and the opposite shape or arrow direction if the item is black; 
  • planning, e.g. using strategies before, during, and after tasks to achieve a desired objective; and
  • selective and sustained attention, e.g. the ability to identify targets among distractors.

There are plausible reasons why each of these functions may play a role in improving reading comprehension.   

But do they?

Recent research, conducted with Romanian-speaking second graders, suggests that:

  • executive functions, as with decoding and language skills, have a strong association with reading comprehension; but
  • executive functions do not have a significant direct effect on the development of reading comprehension in early years beyond fluent decoding and oral language skills (at least in languages like Romanian, which have relatively transparent orthography); and
  • fluent decoding and oral language skills explained 92% of the variance in the students’ reading comprehension, providing further support for the Simple View of Reading.

In other words, executive functions did not predict reading comprehension skills beyond the effects of fluent decoding and language skills.

These results were consistent with those from an earlier US study conducted with children aged 9-14 years in the US (Spencer et al., 2019). Together, the results suggest that the Simple View of Reading does not need to be updated to include executive functions as a third factor.

Clinical bottom line: What does this research mean for early reading instruction?

If we want to improve students’ reading comprehension skills, we should prioritise teaching students word decoding skills – especially in the early stages of reading development – and oral language skills, rather than spending our scarce time and money working on discrete executive functions like working memory and cognitive flexibility. 

You can read a lot more about the science of reading, and what it means for early reading instruction here.

Principal Source:

Dolean, D.D., Lervåg, A., Visu-Petra, L., and Melby-Lervåg, M. (2021). Language skills, and not executive functions, predict the development of reading comprehension of early readers: evidence from an orthographically transparent language. Reading and Writing, 34, 1491–1512. Available here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11145-020-10107-4

Related articles:

David

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

Another lockdown freebie: Letter-Sound Video Models for Beginning Readers

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As we settle into another week of lockdown in Sydney, we thought it would be useful to share another free resource to support early reading development. ⁠

In this free video modelling resource (available as a PDF or in Google Slides), we introduce high frequency grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) following a sequence aligned with the popular Sounds Write synthetics phonics program. We introduce the GPCs in small groups, starting with <a, i, m, s, t>. 

Each video includes a model, followed by a grapheme review to check for knowledge and recall. Each subsequent video builds on the last by introducing a new group of sounds, and then reviewing all sounds previously introduced. 

click to access free video modelling resource

For more on how early letter-sound relationships, check out our articles:

David

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

Friends are the key: Parents play an important role in helping children with Developmental Language Disorder to fit in

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I don’t say much in public about my experience as a parent of a teenager with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), but this research really hit home. Parents need our support as they do the hard work of helping their children to make friends and to be included in everyday activities. Thanks, as always, to the researchers.

DLD is used to describe significant problems understanding or using language that are not caused by any known biomedical condition. On average, it affects two children in each class at school, but is not as well known as ADHD, ASD, or Dyslexia. For more information about DLD, check out our free family guide here.

Having friendships and positive social relationships is good for the well-being of children, including children with DLD. But many children with DLD experience emotional and social difficulties because of the effects of DLD. 

Parents of children with DLD experience feelings of stigma and are worried about others’ attitudes, what others think about their children, and that their children will not fit in.

Parents of children with DLD find themselves playing lots of roles, including:

  • normal parent jobs, e.g., to:
    • protect their child’s physical safety; 
    • provide a supportive environment; and
    • provide stimulation at home and other places to help their child to develop; and
  • additional jobs in response to the effects of DLD, e.g., to:
    • advocate for their child by explaining DLD to others; 
    • ‘translate’ what their child is trying to communicate;
    • be a therapist/educator for their child; and 
    • find potential friends for their children.

Many parents of children with DLD advocate constantly to ensure their children are not misunderstood, left out, or ignored. This work is exhausting! 

Educators and health professionals should collaborate with parents of children with DLD. Social inclusion in peer groups should be a joint goal because friendships are key.

Main source:

Jensen de Lópes, K.M., Feilberg, J., Baena, S., Lyons, R., Harding, S., Kelić, M., Klatte, I.S., Mantel, T.C., Novogrodsky, R., Ulfsdottir, T.S., Zajdó, K. and Rodriguez-Ortiz, I.R., (2021). “So I told him to look for friends!” Barriers and protecting factors that may facilitate social inclusion for children with Language Disorder in everyday social settings: Cross-cultural qualitative interviews with parents. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 115, 103963. Available here.

Related articles:

David

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

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