Development of three to five Years old Children' Language Skills during spontaneous narrative Situations

This theoretical proposal examines the development of three- to five-year old children from multi-ethnic origins children’ language skills in spontaneous narrative situations within unilingual francophone childcare centres.... [ view full abstract ]

This theoretical proposal examines the development of three- to five-year old children from multi-ethnic origins children’ language skills in spontaneous narrative situations within unilingual francophone childcare centres. Current knowledge argues that the attendance of quality Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) allows these children to reach similar levels of language development as their peers (Schachter et al., 2016; Zimmerman et al., 2009), which can facilitate their transition to school.
Developing strong oral skills through participation in ECEC in a multi-ethnic context is seen as a predictor of a successful entry into the formal school learning (reading, writing (Schachter et al., 2016). Therefore, in this presentation, we will describe the theoretical components of spontaneous narrative necessary for the harmonious development of communication skills through pairing of children who speak French as a mother tongue with those who are learning French as an additional language.
We argue that the context of peer relationships and social interactions are ideal for young children’s additional language acquisition because they implicitly learn how to manage various levels of the communication (verbal, non-verbal, and paralinguistic components are all included in spontaneous narratives). The concept of spontaneous narratives is used in reference to the organization of children’s spontaneous utterances about a concrete situation (Clandinin & al., 2007; McCabe, Bliss, Barra & Bennett, 2007), in this case, in context of free play (Christie & Roskos, 2009; Marinova, 2014). This type of situation allows adults to understand children's knowledge organization and representations of the world. It also allows a better understanding of children’s cognitive and language development in a natural language acquisition context which this presentation will explore.