Fact File on Speaking

Below is a comprehensive list of facts relating to oral language development, including statistics on foreign languages, vocabulary acquisition, non-English speaking populations, and how children with ADHD can be delayed word acquisitions.

• Oral language refers to the corpus of words in a child's vocabulary as well as his or her ability to use those words to understand and convey meaning (i.e., syntactic and narrative skills) (Lonigan, 2005, p. 11).
• Approximately 3,000 different languages are spoken in the world, but only 153 have written forms. In Africa alone, there are 1,000 different tribal languages (Gollnick & Chin, 1994).
• On any given day in the United States, about 80 different languages are spoken in the public schools (Wiles, 1999).
• Even though the United States is primarily an English-speaking country, in its comparatively short history, it has probably been host to more bilingual people than any other country in the world.
• The English language consists of approximately 40 phonemes (units of sound), categorized as vowels and consonants (McCormick, Loeb, & Schiefelbusch, 1997).
• English is largely a Germanic language in its grammar or structure and more of a Romance (Latin-influenced) language in its vocabulary (Hilliard, 1997).
• After English, Spanish is spoken more than any other language in all regions of the United States. The number of Spanish speakers has grown by about 60 percent (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2003, p. 4).
• Of the 20 non-English languages most frequently spoken in U.S. homes, the largest proportional increase was for Russian; in fact, the number of Russian speakers nearly tripled, from 242,000 to 706,000 (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2003, p. 3).
• Early childhood is the most rapid period of language development. By age 2, most children have a vocabulary of about 50 words. By age 3, most children have begun to rely on word order to interpret sentences (Thal & Flores, 2001).
• Talking to young children is an important way to support vocabulary growth and families differ in how much they talk to their infants. By the time a child is 18 months old, he or she may have been exposed to thousands of new words by his or her parents, and millions of words may have been spoken in the child's presence (Cruger, 2005).
• When caregivers are interacting with young children, they make adjustments in their nonverbal and verbal communication. They use more dramatic facial expressions and gestures (e.g., eyes open wide with eyebrows raised in surprise), speak more slowly and simply, and emphasize key words through their tone of voice (Kratcoski & Katz, 1998).
• In a study of Japanese mothers and children, researchers concluded that when children attempted to produce words, their mothers usually responded immediately, repeating only those utterances from the child that were wordlike and well formed. If the child's attempt was less well formed, the mother pronounced the word correctly so that the child could hear the difference (Otomo, 2001).
• By age 5, a child's vocabulary has grown tremendously to nearly 8,000 words. Preschoolers learn an estimated six to ten new words a day (Tabors & Snow, 2001).
• In a review of observational research on children's talk, McNeill and Fowler (1996) reported the following: (1) When young children with language delays are engaged in conversation, they learn to use language in a more efficient, effective, and concise manner; (2) mothers of toddlers and preschoolers tend to monopolize conversations with children, often focusing on the adult's agenda; (3) parents of children with delayed language may need special coaching on how to encourage their children's talk; and (4) so-called wait time, or giving the child a few seconds to think, leads to longer conversations.
• Neuroscientists believe that the critical period for learning a spoken language is lost by about age 10 (Sorgen, 1999). If oral language is not in place by that time, it is unlikely that the child will become a fluent speaker.
• Experts estimate that we can think approximately four times as fast as we can talk (Nichols, 1995).
• Children's overall oral language proficiency, as well as their phonological skills, influences the course of their reading development (Nation & Snowling, 2004). Children with average or above-average oral language and above-average phonological short-term memory are far more likely to become good readers (Heath & Hogben, 2004).
• Oral language deficits often are connected with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which is characterized by developmentally inappropriate levels of hyperactivity/impulsivity and/or inattention symptoms that are pervasive across time and settings and impair daily functioning. Children with ADHD may comprehend surface details adequately but show deficits on tasks that require relatively higher degrees of vigilance, effort, and controlled processing (McInnes, Humphries, Hogg-Johnson, & Tannock, 2003).