Using Symbol Systems

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What an exciting moment when we hear a baby utter her first word! Parents document these moments, delighted that their children are beginning to share what they're thinking. This is a natural part of human development that occurs in every language around the world; still, we celebrate it as a miracle. While we recognize its importance as a milestone, most adults don't realize the complexity and difficulty of this task of learning words. Those of us who struggle to learn a second language get a glimpse of the difficult task that a baby goes through every day, when we try to recognize a word in a string of speech in our new language or wrestle to retrieve a word we thought we knew.

The ability to understand words exceeds the ability to produce them. In order to continue to grow vocabularies and complex word meaning, children experiment with their words in different contexts. They use labeling words to build categories such as "animals" or "food" and social words, such as "bye-bye" and "hi." And they rely on their parents and caregivers to respond to their attempts using language that builds from these tries, rather than directs them.

In this stage, babies show that they are able to apply a new label from a single exposure. This behavior is called fast-mapping, and is a key to continued language learning success. It is also a sign that children have entered a period sometimes called the "vocabulary growth spurt." Toddlers at this stage are learning unfamiliar words by the process of elimination.

For example, imagine a busy mother making supper while her nineteen-month-old son Mark plays with four kitchen "toys" his mom has dumped on the floor to entertain him. Mark knows the words for "pot," "spoon," and "cup." But there is a new utensil, one he's never played with before or heard its name: a garlic press.

"Oh, honey, I need the garlic press," Mom tells him and walks toward Mark to pick it up. Mark looks at his mom, looks at his "toys" and grabs the garlic press and passes it to her. Mark is fast-mapping: The new name I'm hearing must map to the one I don't already have a name for. Toddlers like Mark who assume (just as adults do) that new names go to a category without a name can learn new vocabulary items very quickly.

The key role of the adults is to provide abundant and context-rich language. Numerous studies show that a child's vocabulary can be predicted from the number of words a child hears (Hart & Risley, 1995).

In writing, children also experience an incredible parallel leap in their development. They show they have the ability to create symbols in the form of words on the page, making the developmental jump to writing using recognizable cultural symbols of literacy.

Picture five-year-old Molly, a writer in the midst of this transition. Under her drawing of flowers, she has written: FRVSH.

"Can you read me what you wrote today, Molly?" I ask.

"Flowers. Vase. And my hand."

"Wow! That's amazing writing! I can read that, too. Can I make a copy?"

"Sure, but I'm not done."

She quickly writes another sequence of letters: mihiN mm.

"What does that say?" I ask.

"Can you read it? I don't even know what it is I wrote."

Molly is in that phase where she is beginning to put the sounds she hears down on paper. It's more a label than a story, but it shows she knows she can write things that she can read back. But she also hangs on to the belief, like Song in the earlier example, that the letters themselves magically mean something that a reader will know and can tell her even if she is the writer!