Grande, Maria Theresa R.

2010 00933

27 February 2013 / Journal Article Critique EDL 105 / Prof. Romylyn Metila

A Critique on Sally Marinellies study on the content of childrens definitions in oral and written language Abstract The paper aims to investigate the content definitions provided by children that are present in their lexical production through speech and writing. The researcher hypothesizes that there is a richer lexical knowledge present in written language because written concepts are defined with greater deliberation and thought including the pace of involvement controlled by the children compared to the oral task. Thirty native English speakers in Grade 3 are studied. Common nouns such as apple, bus, chair, coat, hammer, horse, house, leg, mother, and park are used as stimuli in the definition task of the children. These are the words used because these are words that represent basic level terms from a variety of noun categories that are also familiar to children in Grade 3. In the oral task, the investigator shows a 3 x 5-inch index card where the word is written and asks the child to tell what the word means. On the other hand, the written task is conducted by asking the child to write what the word means. All definitions were audiotaped and transcribed. Results indicate that children displayed different types of word knowledge in oral and written modes, the latter being inclined to the production of categorical terms than attribute terms.

The important thing to consider in the study is the level of difficulty of words and several explanations that address them. Marinellie was able to isolate words that are appropriate for the children in the present study. The author considers the type of stimuli used in the study which is the use of concrete and not abstract nouns. In the analysis of the content definitions in general, it might be because of the reason that these children who are native speakers of English who might also be monolingual speakers that is why the nature of their definitions provided more paradigmatic and decontextualized meanings. The inclusion of related literature about the distinction of oral and written language is an important portion of the study as it has a big contribution in explaining the definitional skill of children. However, the author did not address other factors like the ones discussed by Jennifer R. Shelton and Michael Weinrich in a case study they conducted to provide further evidence in the distinction between oral and written word production wherein they described a patient who is significantly better at written picture naming than at spoken picture naming. The difficulty in oral production is argued to be a result from damage to lexical-phonological output processing which also suggests that activation of lexicalphonological output is not necessary to support writing; thus the patient finds more ease in written picture naming that spoken picture naming. In addition, differences in language performance between socio-economically disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged children may be reason that could further explain the findings of the present study since such differences encompass vocabulary size, grammatical development, and communicative style as it was proven to be a factor presented in the study of Gerry Shiel, ine Cregan, Anne McGough and Peter Archer. For example, disadvantaged children as a group tend to experience difficulty with discourse related tasks such as giving explanations, re-telling stories, and giving oral narratives and formal definitions. Some of these differences may be associated with the language input in general that children receive at home or in early care settings, where higher socio-economic status mothers talk more to their children, provide more opportunities to use language and use a wider range of vocabulary when talking to their children (Shiel et. al., 2012). In the present study, it is not quite clear as to which displays a higher level of semantic knowledge between categorical and critical elements or attributes although it assumes that written language displays a higher level of semantic knowledge because the definitional skill in the written mode contains more categorical terms than attributes.

Because the participants of the present study are children from Grade 3, future research, as included by Marinellie in the present study, could also consider adolescents or children from the intermediate level in the assessment of lexical knowledge. Because children of higher levels would elicit a different set of responses, an added social component in the definitional skill of different set of participants would be an interesting point to look at. It would also be interesting to know the differences the study would make if the participants were bilingual children. Implications to language teaching The author also was able to address the relevance of the study in language teaching. Since definitional skill is important in language learning, vocabulary learning is an important area of language teaching. Thus, the language teacher should involve his or her students in activities that involve vocabulary learning. I believe to assess the vocabulary size and lexical knowledge of children, other measures could also be used apart from the definitional skill (e.g. Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Vocabulary Levels Test, Yes/No recognition, etc.) Because the assessment with the use of one mode either oral or written may be limited in the assessment of lexical knowledge, it is of great importance that both modes are to be included in providing activities inside the classroom to test the lexical knowledge of children. References: Marinellie, S.A, (2009) The content of childrens definitions: The oral-written distinction. Child Language Teaching and Therapy 25,1 89-102 Shiel, G., McGough, A. and Archer, P., (2012) Oral Language in Early Childhood and Primary Education (3-8 years) Research Report No. 14, 20-21 Shelton, J.R and Weinrich M., (1997) Further Evidence of a Dissociation between Output Phonological and Orthographic Lexocons: A Case Study. Cognitive Neuropsychology 14, 105129.