Using Language Games to Study and Support

Language Development

Sonja Eisenbeiss (University of Essex)

seisen@essex.ac.uk

http://languagegamesforall.wordpress.com/

Studying Language Development

• What is the typical course of language development?

• Which milestones do children reach at which age?

• How do children deviate from their target language? Which “errors” do they make?

• Are there differences between monolingual and bilingual children and second language learners?

• What are (early) signs of language disorders?

• Which properties of children’s input support language development?

• Can they be used in therapy or education?

Language Games for Children• Assessing children’s linguistic abilities:

• research on language development • speech therapy• school

• Supporting language development:• typically developing children • multilingual children who need more

language input for one of their languages• children with speech and language

impairments or general learning problems

Assessing Linguistic Abilities• What is the generalisation in the adult

language?• Do children already confirm to this

generalisation?Jane’s hat vs. the hat of Janemy mother’s hat vs. the hat of my mothermy car’s wheels vs. the wheels of my car

Jane’s mother’s

father’sdog’s tail

• What are their limits for building linguistic structure?

Co-Player

All Participants are involved in a game and provide each other with information to co-ordinate their actions.

For instance, players can be involved in a construction or puzzle game.

The Co-Player Bag TaskThe game involves a

bag with pockets of different styles, colours and sizes for toys of different sizes and colours.

Children refer to colours, sizes and locations when they ask others to help them hide or find toys in the pockets.

Using ContrastsRequires participants to be specific in picture

descriptions:

• different actors and objects: • action reversals: dog chases cat vs. cat chases

dog• object properties:

the big red balloonthe small red balloon the big blue balloonthe small blue balloon

• different possessors: the lion’s balloon vs. the elephant’s balloon

….

The Co-Player Puzzle Task• The child describes

contrasting pictures on a puzzle board, adult finds the matching pieces, child puts them into the correct cut-out

• We use exchangeable pictures and puzzle pieces

• This can be used to encourage the use of particular forms or the encoding of particular meanings

Some Puzzle Materials

Getting them to Talk, not Point• Whoever starts pointing looses a point

(sticker, etc.)• Give them something to hold:

• a two-handled very deep drawstring bag with the rewards for the puppets: explain that you need help handing out rewards as the bag is so deep that you cannot pull out rewards easily; and explain that pouring them out will get the puppets fighting over them

• a magnetic fishing rod that they can use to place items in the game

Al-Houti (PhD-Project)

Director/Matcher

A “director” describes a scene/object etc. and a “matcher” who is not able to see this scene/object, has to recreate it.

E.g. Bevan (2010): Whose Ballon is red? Two sets of pictures, both with animals that have balloons, one with coloured and one with blank balloons. The child “director” tells the matcher where to put the colour.

Wendy Bevan (Undergraduate 2010)

Whose balloon is red? (Wendy Bevan)

Nikola Koch (MA-Project)

Nikola Koch (MA-Project)

Language Support Games Feedback:

positive re-inforcement explicit corrections, but this can be

demotivating and does not involve presentation of correct forms

expansions, rephrasing:daddy car -> Yes, that is daddy‘s car

Modeling: frequent repetion of words/phrases in

isolation repetition and variation: variation sets

Models: Variation Sets

Variation sets are series of adult utterances with a common theme and a constant intention, but variation in form:

adding or deleting a word or phrase,

replacing one word with another,

changing the word order, etc.

English Variation Set

VERB OBJECT GOAL1 let’s put J’s bottles in the refrigerator2 want to put them in the refrigerator with me3 let’s put J’s bottles in the refrigerator4 we’ll put it in the refrigerator5 let’s put it in the refrigerator6 we’ll put it in the refrigerator7 you can put it in8 I’ll let you put it in yourself9 you put it right in10 you put it in there11 put it right in the refrigerator

Variation Sets Support Learning

Variation sets provide clues about the target language:

adding or deleting a word or phrase => which elements can be omitted?

replacing one word with another => which types of elements fulfill similar

functions?

changing the word order, etc.=> which word order variations are possible?

Current Joint Research with Students

new types of games

cross-cultural uses of games

(effects of) variation sets in

children’s natural input

effects of variation sets in language games

What Do Students Learn? Academic knowledge:

grammatical properties of their language

children’s language development

principles of communication

Transferable skills:

data analysis (including numerical skills)

IT- and multi-media skills

report writing and literature summaries

Practical skills in material creation