Storybook-Based Language Observation: Evaluation of Child’s Language Development

Phonetic Knowledge

From the transcriptions, Richard showed that he did not have major problems with producing any sound. Most of the pronunciation errors Richard made were mainly due to excitement. He seemed so carried away with excitement that he mispronounced some words. For instance, he repeatedly left the letter “d” off “and” like on line 4 (1^st story) “…he will go on a long journey an he will…” The same was repeated on line 37 “…he will fly high an he will lead them…”, line 50 “…he will ride high an will win a lot of things…”, line 9 (2^nd story) “…mother got angry an didn’t give him food…”, line 15 and line 22.

Another notable mistake was with line 37 (1^st story) where he mispronounced “lead” for “leat” “…he will fly high an he will leat them but if he…” Nevertheless, the problem did not appear anywhere else. Similarly in the 1^st storyline 58, he missed out on “story” and said “stoly”, “Then the stoly I mean the story is finished”. However, as you can see he was keen to correct the mistake. One thing that I noticed about Richard was that he was a fast speaker and some of his words could easily pass you.

We can conclude that Richard knew about the two books at their fingertips. Even though he seemed not fluent with the second one, the fact that he could quote or remember things happening on other pages was evident enough. For example, in the first story he remembered the voice’s instruction, line 15, “told him to look down the street an choose where to go.” Similarly, in the 2^nd storyline 32, he remembered about Max and the wild things, “The wild things did not want him to go an they.” As such, despite forgetting some bits of the stories, the narration was fluent as he could relate to most pictures (Seuss, 1990).

Semantic Knowledge

Richard did not show major difficulties in naming things. His vocabulary was relatively ok as he called most things by their words. However, in the 2^nd storyline 13, I noticed he missed out on the word “forest” and defined it as “so many trees”. Nevertheless, in lines 15 and 58, he had made himself familiar with the word. In the first story in line 10, he referred to the journey as “the road”. He did not seem to notice the mistake throughout the story (Sendak, 1988).

Syntactic Knowledge

Throughout the recitation, Richard mostly used complete sentences. The only times he seemed to fumble with the sentences were those instances where he had forgotten the story such as in lines 45 and 46 (1^st story) and lines 12 and 31 (2^nd story). The boy also showed knowledge of the language as most of his recitations marred the text. He could easily put the pictures in context explaining what he saw.

Morphemic Knowledge

Richard correctly used progressive ending “ing” severally times such as in the 1^st storyline 8 “telling”, line 21 “thinking” and in 2^nd storyline 27 “singing” and line 33 “crying”. However, he missed out on tenses twice, once in the 1^st storyline 59 where he said “the story is finished” and in the 2^nd storyline 59 where he said “and the story ended.” Despite the two incidences, he seemed to keep most of his recitation in the correct past tense.

Pragmatic Knowledge

In this section, Richard again showed that he was familiar with pragmatic knowledge. This was evident with the way he correctly held the book. Turning of pages also followed the correct sequence. However, during the narration and when he forgot some things, he could peruse through the next two pages to help him bring the memories back (like in lines 45 and 46 in the 1^st story). He could also refer to the previous pages with the same intention. Nevertheless, he showed a good understanding of concepts of front to the back of the book, top to bottom as well as reading from left to right.

Transcription of Storybook -Based Language Observation

Analysis

Richard’s articulation of consonants such as p, m, n, h, t, w and z was perfect. His ability to differentiate sounds such as ng like in king, th as in this, and gh as in high showed that his enunciation was good enough.

His general utterance was way above the level of a five-year-old. The evidence of the use of rhetorical questions like line 54 (2^nd story) explained his knowledge of the language. His mean length of utterance was 8 words which are slightly above his age. There was also the aspect of creative thinking with the way he connected ideas especially in instances where he forgot the pages.

Even though the above sample may not be used to comprehensively gauge his morphological development, the use of pronouns instead of repeating the nouns appeared typical for his age. It also showed that he had great command of the language in spite of the fact that he only recited some portions of the story. This made the fact that he was not verbally relating to the story almost invincible.

The main limitation of this audiotape is that Richard’s understanding of words and ideas may not be comprehensively determined. This is probably because he used relatively simple sentence constructions to explain the pictures. Nevertheless, he was able to get the flow of the stories and made comments on every page.

I think this format of evaluation is effective in its way. Even though it may not screen all difficulties the child has, it can give guidelines on whether the child needs more remedial work. For instance, Richard’s memorization and use of simple sentences show that his language is well developed for his age.

References

Sendak, M. (1988). Where the wild things are. New York: Harper Collins.

Seuss, D. (1990). Oh, the Places You’ll Go! New York: Random House.