Embracing the Zone: Learning How to Blog with our Students

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Lextutor for Kids Profiling the Vocabulary of
K-2 Learners Hetty Roessingh, PhD hroessin_at_ucalga
ry.ca Tom Cobb, PhD cobb.tom_at_uqam.ca  www.lextut
or.ca/vp/kids
Funded in part by (File Number 410-2006-2530)
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What is the Lextutor?

• A tool for profiling the linguistic output of
  children whether narrative or written discourse.
• Childrens linguistic output does not follow the
  same pattern as adults.
• There is a need for a tool to profile the
  language of pre-literate youngsters aged 5 7
  given the rapid increase of generation 1.5.

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Questions

• What are the high frequency words that children
  aged 4 7 typically use that serve as the
  building blocks, or the core, for their emergent
  literacy development?
• Beyond this core of spoken vocabulary, what kinds
  of vocabulary do children have and need that
  reflects their growing communicative abilities
  and their cognitive development as they begin to
  engage with the curriculum demands of school?
• What sampling strategies are most efficacious for
  assessing the vocabulary levels of preliterate
  children?

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What We Know

• Children use the first 250 words to communicate
  around 75 80 in their every day talk.
• Children of aged 7 should know about 2500 head
  words.

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What We Want to Know

• We want to know how to sample and profile a
  childs output to tell us whether they are over
  dependent on the first 250 words and whether the
  remaining words reflect a good distribution of
  the words in the increasingly higher vocabulary
  bands (10 bands of 250 words each).
• In other words, linguistic diversity includes
• The number of total words
• The number of different words
• The distribution of words across the word bands
• We want to develop profiles of good ESL
  acquisition compared to native speakers.

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Developing the Tool

• We assembled various word lists of childrens
  linguistic output.
• Criteria for selection of the lists included
• List is based on primary, longitudinal research.
• List consists of words identified at ages 4, 5,
  6, and 7, providing a developmental perspective
  on language acquisition.
• List includes words that children might recognize
  and use in their initial literacy development
  (beginning reading and writing efforts).
• List of words was generated in various contexts
  of language use at play, at home and at school.
• The method for generating the language was varied
  and included open ended, spontaneous childrens
  talk, as well as directed / scaffolded activity
  that would promote the childs best effort at
  marshaling vocabulary available in the service of
  naming, describing, explaining, hypothesizing
  about his/her unfolding understanding of the
  world.
• List included a large sample size.
• Time spent in the field gathering the language
  samples was sufficient for the purposes of
  generating the list.
• The words were collated and leveled into 10
  groups of 250 words each.
• Each word represented a word family.

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The Lists
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The Tool
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Sampling Strategy

• The task design used to elicit the language
  sample took into account the following
  considerations
• 1) developmentally appropriate and cognitively
  challenging
• 2) authentic
• 3) constructivist and engaging
• 4) language focus factors such as memory
  capacity of youngsters reduced or eliminated
• 5) culturally accessible to a diverse group of
  children
• 6) high interest and motivational value.

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A boy, a dog, and a frog (Mercer Mayer, 1967)

• The wordless story book A boy, a dog and a frog
  (Mayer, 1967) was chosen as a prompt and a
  scaffold for eliciting spontaneous talk. The
  book consists of 29 black and white sketches of a
  young boy with his dog seeking to capture a frog.
  A series of humorous incidents leaves the boy
  and his dog returning home empty handed. The
  frog eventually follows their footprints home and
  joins his new found friends in the bath tub.

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Pages from the book
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Sample of Output (Native Speaker)

• He tries to catch a frog. He sees a pond. Then,
  he sees a frog and he wants to catch it. And
  then the boy wants to catch the frog but he trips
  and he ends up in the water. Plop! So does his
  doggie. And the little boy says, rrrrrrr!!!!!
  and the frog says, ribbit. And then the boy
  tries to catch the frog. Ribbit, ribbit. And
  then he sees the frog and the frog goes, ribbit,
  ribbit, ribbit. Then the boy is going to catch
  him again. And the dog is swimming away. Woof,
  woof, woof. He doesnt see the frog. Hes going
  to catch him in his net. And he ends up catching
  the dog, and the frog goes over board. And the
  frog quietly creeps away. Hes angry. And the
  boy wants to get that frog. But he cant. He
  thinks hes going to hop on the lily pad. So he
  gives up. He is leaving the frog. He follows the
  trail. The trail goes to the house. He finds
  the boy in the bath tub with the dog at the end
  of the hallway, and hes so happy to see the
  frog. The end. And from now on hell take care
  of him.

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Profile (Native Speaker)
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Sample of Output (ESL)

• Taking a walk. Hes going down. Hes running and
  hes going to fall. He fell in. His dog fell in.
  A bucket. The frog jumped. Hes going with the
  dog. The frog is in the tree. I think he wants
  to scare him. The frog is watching the boy. The
  boy is watching to the tree. He wants to catch
  the frog. Hes going to catch him. He got his
  dog! Hes under. He got the dog. He feels like
  hes angry. I think hes going to punch him. He
  looks sad. Hes really sad. I think hes going to
  his house. Well, hes angry. Hes sad.
  Footprints! I think hes going to follow the
  footprints. Hes going to his house. Up to the
  bathroom. Theres the boy. Hes happy. I dont
  know. Hes going to jump into the tub. Hes
  happy. Hes going to sit on the dog.

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Profile (ESL)
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Expressive One Word Picture Vocabulary Test

• This test efficiently measures a childs
  vocabulary level by age and percentile rank.
• Each childs score will be correlated to the
  vocabulary profile.
• For example, for the previous ESL profile (child
  was 5 years, 6 months old) the EOWPVT scores are
  as follows
• Raw 44(ceiling item) 7 (errors) 37
• Percentile rank 5
• Age Equiv. 3-6
• Placing her two years behind her native speaking
  counterparts.
• We will revisit this child a year from now to
  note patterns of (accelerated) vocabulary
  development.
• We want to know if we can establish a trajectory
  for ESL learners that is distinguishable from a
  native speaker profile, a learning disabled
  profile, and a developmentally delayed profile
  and target interventions that will bring her to
  the linguistic thresholds that will permit
  academic success over time.
• That is, will this child be at the 30th
  percentile a year from now.

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References

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