April 9, 2026 • 46 mins
During this episode of EDVIEW360, we welcome Dr. Ann P. Kaiser, renowned professor at Vanderbilt University and one of the nation’s leading experts on early language development. With decades of groundbreaking research, Dr. Kaiser has illuminated how the earliest years of language learning—long before children enter school—lay the foundation for reading and academic success. Her work bridges developmental psychology, linguistics, and education, offering educators and administrators a holistic framework for understanding how language, cognition, and environment interact to shape learning outcomes.
Listeners will gain practical insights into how responsive adult-child interactions, linguistically rich environments, and intentional teaching strategies can transform early language development and, ultimately, reading proficiency. Dr. Kaiser’s contributions have not only advanced the science of reading but also provided educators with actionable tools to support diverse learners from the start.
Listeners will learn:
- Why language development in the first three years is a powerful predictor of later reading success
- How biology and environment interact to influence children’s language growth
- The role of responsive, linguistically rich adult-child interactions in accelerating development
- Practical strategies for supporting oral language skills in preschool and early elementary classrooms
- How early language differences can signal later reading challenges such as dyslexia or developmental language disorders
- Ways educators can strengthen oral vocabulary, syntax, and phonological awareness to support struggling readers
- How social-emotional and cognitive development are intertwined with language learning
- Why intentional teaching of language foundations is essential for equity and long-term student achievement
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Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_02 (00:00):
Welcome to Edview 360.
(00:05):
Every time I see a kid, it givesme hope.
Let me be really clear.
Every time we train a teacher,every time I have these
beautiful master students whoare want to be teachers and want
to be speech pathologists,they're so excited about this.
Always.
But I also just feel like theawareness of reading and
(00:26):
language is changingexponentially.
I was part of this group thatfocused on bridging the word gap
for all young children andtalking about language as
nutrition.
And they were able to do somecommunity-level things about
raising awareness, makinglibraries more accessible,
putting books in laundromats,all kinds of things that just
(00:50):
say, oh, we can do this.
When we care for each other as acommunity, we can do this.
We can do this one kid at atime, or we can do this.
In our town, we can do this.
In our classroom, we can dothis.
You know, that's probably thething that gives me the most
hope.
Narrator (01:09):
You just heard from renowned literacy expert Dr.
Ann Kaiser of VanderbiltUniversity.
Dr.
Kaiser is our podcast guesttoday on FU360.
Pam Austin (01:23):
Today on FU360, we are honored to welcome Dr.
Ann P.
Kaiser, the Susan W.
Gray Professor of Education andHuman Development at Vanderbilt
University, and one of thenation's most influential
researchers in early languagedevelopment.
Dr.
Kaiser is a developmentalpsychologist and early childhood
educator whose work hastransformed our understanding of
(01:46):
how young children learn tocommunicate and how those
earliest language experiencesshape lifelong reading success.
Across decades of groundbreakingfederal-funded research, Dr.
Kaiser has focused on youngchildren with language
disabilities, especially thoseat high risk for later reading
difficulties.
She is deeply committed to theearly identification of
(02:09):
developmental language disorder,knowing that children with DLD
face significantly higher riskfor reading academic and social
challenges.
Her work asks a criticalquestion.
Can early language interventionprevent later reading problems?
While definitive research isstill emerging, Dr.
(02:29):
Kaiser's theoretical andcorrelational findings strongly
suggests that beginningintervention as early as age 2.5
or 2.5 may mean meaningfullychange a child's reading
trajectory.
Dr.
Kaiser's work bridgesdevelopmental psychology,
linguistics, and education,offering educators a holistic,
(02:55):
deeply human framework forunderstanding how language,
cognition, and environmentinteract.
Today, he will help us toexplore early language
development that connects toliteracy, how responsive adult
child interactions acceleratethat growth, and what educators
can do starting right now tosupport our young learners and
(03:19):
to identify those who may be atrisk.
Dr.
Kaiser, welcome.
SPEAKER_02 (03:24):
Thank you.
It's good to be here.
Thank you, Pam.
Pam Austin (03:28):
We're going to get right into it.
We're going to go ahead andstart.
You know, we want to know yourliteracy why.
Was there a moment or child thatyou encountered or parent that
you support that helped to pullyou into studying early language
in DLD?
SPEAKER_02 (03:44):
Well, really, I think I've been interested in
language since the day I wasborn.
And my mom would probably saythat's true because I was an
early talker.
But two things really influencedthat.
One is that I had a brother whowas 18 months younger than I am
who had autism and wasnon-speaking.
And what I knew about my brotherwas that he was smart and that
(04:07):
he knew things and that he couldread signs and that he could get
around really well.
And other people saw him as achild with a severe disability
that couldn't easily learn.
And I knew, because I knew him,that wasn't true.
So that probably shaped mycareer more than anything else,
which is how to help childrenwho we know are intelligent and
(04:32):
capable, but can't use languagewell.
How can we help them learnlanguage?
And how can we help theirpartners, their parents, their
siblings, their teachers see thechild that's there and scaffold
communication so that we canmake the most of their abilities
to learn and use language?
(04:53):
And that's guided my careerforever.
But my link to reading was I wasa really early reader.
At three, I basically taughtmyself to read, not out of any
great academic ability, but justbecause I knew people were
reading stuff and I wanted toknow what they knew and how they
(05:14):
knew it.
And I just pestered my mom aboutexplaining reading to me, which
is crazy, of course.
And I grew up in this reallysmall town, and there weren't a
lot of things to do, but one ofthem was to go to the city
library, which was in thebasement of the bank.
So you know this is not a biglibrary.
(05:34):
And every Saturday, my cousinBonnie and I would go on our
bikes, get as many books as theywould let us check out, which
was seven, and we would takebooks home and we would read.
And I read every book thatwasn't on the pay shelf or on
the adults only shelf in thelibrary as a kid.
And that was, I mean, it's likeI could fall into a book and
(06:00):
have a life that I didn't have.
I could know about forests.
I lived in Kansas.
There were four trees in mytown.
It I could learn abouteverything.
And that just triggered alifelong interest in reading and
writing, and eventually led to apath of being a developmental
psychologist who studies howkids develop language and how
(06:22):
language turns into reading.
Pam Austin (06:25):
Well, you know, I just think about your love of
language and your understandingof how smart your brother was at
the time and just could notcommunicate and the idea of
scaffolding down to ways for himto communicate.
And you wanted him to experiencethat love.
Is that what I'm hearing there,Anne?
SPEAKER_02 (06:44):
Well, that's what you heard.
I mean, I did understand him.
I did, you know, I did know whohe was.
And I didn't know that becausehe told me, but because I knew
him.
But I also knew that not havinglanguage was a real problem for
kids.
You know, when I was an adultand I didn't live in Kansas
(07:05):
anymore, I would call my brotherevery week, and we would have
these really crazy, limitedconversations on the phone.
And one of the most amazingthings that happened to him was
when he was around 40, he movedto living in an apartment with a
young man who was a really goodlanguage user, had other
developmental concerns.
(07:25):
But and my brother's languageexpanded in that time.
And he started to talk aboutthings like wearing jeans and
t-shirts and about things thathe liked and where he liked to
go.
And it made me realize that,first of all, even though we
think early intervention isimportant, and it is, the
capacity for language learningis lifelong.
(07:48):
And when you have things thatare important in your life to
communicate, you're motivated touse language.
So having a friend who talkedabout cool stuff, even when
you're 40, is was a real pathwayfor him learning how to use
language when he was older.
And so there's, you know, I havethis optimism about language
(08:10):
learning and about reading, thateven though we know there are
developmentally optimal timesfor everything, there's no time
which is impossible.
Pam Austin (08:21):
No time which is impossible.
I absolutely love it.
But let's take a step back here.
You focused on reflecting onexpanding language when you gave
this example for your brother.
Let's take that step back tozero to three, those first three
years of life and think aboutwhat stands out as most
(08:44):
important.
What's the most powerful waysthat we can get that early
language development in that'sgoing to shape reading in the
future?
SPEAKER_02 (08:53):
Parents.
And, you know, in a nutshell,you know, first of all, language
is communication.
Communication requires apartner.
And so, you know, everythingabout human biology prepares us
to be partners in relationshipin early development.
Those are the years ofattachment, those are the years
(09:15):
of real dependence, moving toreal independence.
Those are the years offace-to-face kinds of
interactions.
We hold our babies, we get downon the floor, we change the
register and the pacing and thecontent of what we say.
Those are all prettybiologically driven behaviors
(09:36):
that all help us respond to kidsin ways that hold their
attention and bondcommunicatively with each other
and tailor language so that it'soptimal for language learning.
That's it's really an importanttime.
And most parents do thatnaturally.
(09:57):
There are obviously culturaldifferences, there are
linguistic differences, thereare regional differences, but
basically we talk a lot to kidsin a way that is about what the
kids are interested in.
So it's responsive to what thekids start watching, playing
with, eating, doing.
(10:19):
And it's contingent.
We talk to kids more when theytalk to us or they communicate
with us, and it's meaningful.
And those are the idealconditions for learning
language.
It's contingent, it'smeaningful, it's about what's
happening in the here and now,and it's for the most part
(10:39):
affectively positive.
And we do that best with littlebitty kids.
Who can hold a baby and not makebaby talks?
She can't do it.
So when kids are typicallydevelopment developing, they
have this window, this bubble inthe first 12 to 18 months of
life where all of our biologykicks in and we do the things
(11:01):
that help kids learn languagefor the most part.
As kids get older, obviouslythey become more outwardly
oriented.
They have life experiences thattheir parents don't participate
in, they go to child care, allof those things.
So there's less of thatresponsive interaction.
For typically developing kids,that is fine.
(11:23):
Kids are changing, developingindependence at a rate that
matches the changes in theenvironment.
For kids who are having languagelearning difficulties, they need
more of that responsiveinteraction with careful
modeling, longer, more frequent,more embedded in their lives.
(11:46):
And that's essentially, it'skind of like kids outgrow the
ideal environment for learninglanguage.
And if you have a language tolearn, you might outgrow that
environment.
You have now have the littlebody of an independent
three-year-old, but you stillneed that scaffolding to help
you learn.
And so we teach parents how tobe more responsive partners in
(12:09):
developmentally appropriatethings like book reading, right?
So we're doing the thing thathelps kids learn language, but
we're thinking about what doesthat look like for a
three-year-old or in a classroomfor a four-year-old, because it
would be weird to hold yourfour-year-old and do face to
face with it.
Yeah.
Pam Austin (12:28):
You know, you use this phrase, the things that we
do.
It's how we do.
And I was thinking about theinterconnectedness of it all,
the systems.
And what you seem to describewas the cognition, the motor
skills, the social development.
And what you're saying isreally, really important to
target that in the middle years.
(12:49):
And it grows and changes asstudents get older.
SPEAKER_02 (12:53):
It does, you know, but this is what's so tricky
because when we think ofclassrooms, I don't know what
pops up in your head.
You're an experienced educator,it's probably fourth grade.
What pops up for me is childcarethat we need, and it needs to be
high quality.
And I totally support kids goingto child care.
But suddenly this little personwho's two is now in a room with
(13:17):
10 kids and one or two adults,and nobody is directly connected
to that child, even among goodteachers, you have a group of
kids.
And so the skills for learninglanguage are really different.
You have to initiate to thoseadults and maybe to your friends
who are also two and who may notbe all that interesting or very
(13:39):
language capable.
You have to find languageopportunities for learning.
And that is hard for some kids.
That's really hard for somekids.
In childcare, we have acurriculum structure and
framework, and there aredesignated learning times, but
language is learned in thecontext of living your life for
(14:02):
the most part.
And so a lot of the day iscoming in, going on the
playground, having a snack,getting ready for nap, playing
in free play.
And then there's some, you know,there's some shared book reading
in large group, and there's someinstruction in a small group.
But really the language learningin those years is constructed by
(14:24):
the child.
It's initiated by the child.
And so the interaction, the waythat adults respond to kids, and
the way that adults understandthat different kids need
different kinds of input inthose across the day
opportunities are reallyimportant.
(14:45):
And for typical kids, it's oftenno problem.
For kids who are shy, withdrawn,reluctant, learning a second
language that might have adevelopmental uh disability that
could be a hearing loss, itcould be a motor development
problem, it could be a languagedelay, then all of that
(15:08):
child-initiated learning isgoing to be slowed down because
they're going to be lower rateinitiators.
So then the adult needs tocompensate for that.
That's a hard job for teachers.
That's a really hard job.
And if, you know, a typicalclassroom of 12 kids will have
three kids that have some kindof language learning issue.
(15:29):
And it can be learning a secondlanguage, which means the kid's
language learning capacity iscompletely intact, but he needs
a bunch of input to learn thatsecond language.
It can be having a mild languagedelay, or it can be a child who
has who presents with a sensoryimpairment, doesn't see or hear
(15:51):
or move as well as otherchildren.
To have three of those kids inyour classroom is a lot of kids.
It can just be a kid who hasn'thad a lot of language experience
before he got there, or a childwho hasn't been in childcare, or
a child who has some potentiallydisruptive behavior that gets in
(16:11):
the middle of those goodlanguage interactions.
So we ask teachers to help kidsmake that transition into being
independent learners.
And literally they have theirhands full of both typical kids
who need day-to-day support andkids who might have extra needs
(16:31):
for support.
And so every one of those littlehumans is moving from one-on-one
or lots of one-on-one time withmom or dad or grandma or auntie
or the nanny or who thebabysitter to an environment
where one-on-one is lessfrequent and child initiated.
(16:53):
And that challenges languagelearners.
For every kid that has any ofthose 12 things I just said that
could disrupt language learning,moving into those group care
environments can be reallychallenging.
And that's when we start tonotice differences.
And that's good that we noticethem.
That's when we start asking forextra support from a speech
(17:16):
language pathologist or aspecial educator.
And that's a good thing.
But it also really puts a lot ofresponsibility on teachers who
are already doing way too muchevery day, all the time.
But it's the nature of earlylanguage learning that we need
that one-on-one responsiveinteraction with language that's
(17:39):
tailored to where we are aslearners.
Pam Austin (17:43):
And that goes back to the word scaffolding that you
used a number of times when Ijust think about all of these
varied languages, these variouslanguage challenges that you all
you described just now.
And teachers are used to theidea of scaffolding, but I love
how you phrase it, theselanguage opportunities.
You're living your life andthinking about those
(18:06):
opportunities to have theconversation and to respond to
the students.
It's something that if I thinkeducators know about and know
that they should do thesethings, they will move more
toward dealing that for sure.
Thank you so much for sharingthat.
SPEAKER_02 (18:24):
Let me say how hard that is.
So we've yesterday I wasteaching this in my class that
we were talking about thetoddler talk model.
And the toddler talk modelbegins with what we call
classroom essentials, which ishow to get your schedule
together and your peopletogether so that there might be
a minute to talk to a kid,because that is the biggest
challenge in child care is howdo we manage all of this and
(18:48):
find those moments that we'retalking about that are so
important for teaching languageas a lived experience.
Well, we got to have a minutewhen we can sit down and talk to
kids.
And sometimes classrooms arechaos, as you know.
And so the base thing we teachteachers is how to organize your
life in your classroom so yougot a minute for a kid.
Pam Austin (19:12):
Right.
And I have heard other literacyexperts talk about having the
30-second conversation, the60-second conversation.
It could be when the kids arelining up and there's this one
child you decide to have aconversation with, and the child
may initiate, or you may eveninitiate, or it might be based
on something you've just donefrom circle time or moving back
(19:32):
into the classroom.
So I can see where those areopportunities that we could help
develop it for, but it's beingintentional and thinking about
it.
Would you say that, Ann?
SPEAKER_02 (19:43):
Oh, yeah.
But you know, I was a preschoolteacher once for a few years.
I get it.
It's exhausting and it takes alot.
You know, one of the things thatI say to my students is you
don't have to be perfect.
You just have to be present.
And so learning to be able to bepresent with kids so you can
(20:05):
have that 30-secondconversation.
You'll know what to say.
If you can get yourself and yourbody and your proximal to a kid
and really zone in on that kid,really tune in and be present,
for the most part, you will knowwhat to say that makes sense,
that's responsive to the kid andthat's at his language level.
(20:28):
And I can teach you all kinds ofrules about doing that, but
mostly teachers do know what todo if we can help them make time
to do it.
Pam Austin (20:37):
Right.
Making the time, that's a bigdifference.
You know, there may be peoplewho are thinking, you know what,
all this talking, what does thathave to do with reading?
What's the connection?
How does this help studentslearn to read?
Can you give us some just somehighlights on that?
SPEAKER_02 (20:53):
Sure.
Well, you know, reading islanguage.
Obviously, written language, butit is language.
And so if you don't havevocabulary, right, then you're
learning what words mean whenyou read them for the first
time.
And that's a heavy lift.
You can know how to decode aword and say it by the
(21:17):
phonological rules, but if youdon't know what that word means,
it doesn't mean anything to youin reading.
So most of vocabulary, earlyvocabulary that we have in
reading, kids already know fromtheir language experience.
The other thing that we reallyunderestimate.
(21:37):
So learning how to makesentences, grammar or syntax, it
starts when kids are 24 monthsold.
That's when they start combiningwords.
Reading depends on being able tounderstand the structure of a
sentence.
It's, you know, that you don'tread single words for very long,
(21:59):
very early.
Reading, you might read somesingle words, but pretty soon
you're reading Jane is jumpinginto the water.
Well, that's a basic kind ofsentence.
You need to be able to know whatthe subject is, what the verb
is, what the prepositionalphrase is.
You may not have those labelsfor it, but you understand and
(22:21):
can predict from the structureof the sentence what the meaning
is likely to be.
So those are two kind ofessential things that are
language foundations for, firstof all, decoding and secondly,
understanding or comprehensionof written material.
(22:42):
And really quickly, academicreading gets pretty complicated
in terms of structure and interms of vocabulary.
So if you don't come with thosethings by the time you're four,
it's going to be really hard toread.
Can you learn from reading?
Absolutely.
We learn from reading all thetime.
(23:03):
We learn new vocabulary, welearn new structure, we learn
new arguments, all of that.
But reading itself will beeasier if you already have that
foundation in oral language.
You can use it, you canunderstand it, you're
comfortable with the language.
Then reading adds a new mode,but you're not learning a core
(23:26):
representational skill in thesame way.
Pam Austin (23:30):
So you're saying the ability to speak, to understand
incomplete sentences, eventhough we don't know what a noun
or verb is or any of that.
We just can represent thelanguage and understand the
language.
We just said that's prepping thebrain for learning to read.
SPEAKER_02 (23:47):
That is exactly you said it, Pam.
That's exactly right.
So we have these neuralnetworks, they're really
malleable.
We make them language specificby our early experience
representing things withindividual words, categories of
words, building a semanticnetwork, and syntax gives us
that sort of core linguisticstructure, which helps us
(24:11):
organize the incoming or writteninformation so that we
comprehend by predicting what'sprobably going to happen in this
sentence.
So those are two really hugeskills, right?
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_02 (25:06):
And it's also not communicative.
It's not scaffolded like thoseinteractions that we were
talking about with kids.
So you're reading, and maybeyou're reading out loud, and
that feels like a performance,not about it like a
communication.
It's not like saying, wow, I amso excited that the daffodils
(25:26):
are blooming.
It's like you're reading, thedaffodils are blooming.
But you're not, you don't havethat motivation of
communication.
You don't have that partnersupport of, oh, I'm really
interested in what you'resaying.
Even if you have a readingpartner who's interested in what
you're reading, that's reallyshifted in an important way.
(25:48):
So reading can feel kind oflonely.
It can feel like I don't havethat partner who's reflecting
back to me and cueing me andsupporting me.
And also someone's judging me.
Did I say that word right?
Am I fluent?
Do I understand this?
And it's it's reading is aschool-based thing.
Communication is a life-basedthing.
(26:11):
And even though we're teachingreading for life, let's be clear
about that.
And it's got great applicationsin everyday life.
When you're first learning it,it just feels like a pretty hard
abstract task for lots of kids.
And if you're not good atlanguage, it's a very hard task.
(26:33):
Honestly, it's not an easy task.
Pam Austin (26:36):
It is a learned skill.
And I love the way you termedthat life base for communication
and speaking, which includes thesemantics, meaning.
I want to go back and highlightthose terms again that you use,
and syntax, word order.
And we learn it by hearing,listening, speaking, doing.
Whereas that shift is this wholeother skill with reading.
(26:59):
And I love the way you describeit.
It is something that'schallenging for many students.
But through scaffolding andsupport, we could help our
students get there.
Am I saying that correctly, Ann?
SPEAKER_02 (27:10):
Yeah, absolutely.
But we might have to make theprecursors to reading fun and
social, right?
Which we can do in preschools.
We do a good job of that.
We might need to make sharedreading a communicative
activity.
You know, we forget that, oh, wecould read a book together, the
(27:31):
four of us, and we could taketurns reading in a way that it's
kind of like reading a play.
That would be fun.
Or we can read directions thatother kids do, or there are
ways, in addition to doing goodscience-based instruction.
Let me say this is not areplacement for the science of
reading.
(27:52):
This is a way to make reading acommunicative and fun activity
for adults and children.
So, you know, if you read toyour three-year-old, if you've
read books to three-year-olds,which I think there's nothing
better than reading a book witha three-year-old, you use the
funny voices and you make thestories louder and crazier and
(28:14):
funner, and you fill in theblank and you engage the child
in that.
So that is a really importantpre-reading experience.
Oh, books can be fun.
Books are something I can dowith somebody.
And guess what?
It can be a really fun exchangethat we laugh about, that we
(28:36):
remember.
And I can tell the story too,even before I can read it.
You know, kids are really greatat learning what the story says
and then telling you, no, no,you didn't read all of that,
mom.
You did not, that's not how itends.
You didn't read that right,which tells us how tuned in they
(28:57):
are to language and reading andthat process, even before
they're readers.
So the more experience kids havewith books and text and reading
that's communicative, that'sfun, that's functional in their
environment with people thatthey care about, the more the
idea of learning to read willfeel like a good thing.
Pam Austin (29:22):
So it's a joy.
SPEAKER_02 (29:24):
Yep.
And then they figure out you canknow stuff from reading.
That's the most exciting part.
Oh my gosh, what did you figureout from reading that?
And not, you know, I really wework a lot on shared book
reading in in my projects.
And really the authenticquestion, what did you learn
(29:45):
from that book?
What did you learn from readingthat?
What do you know now you didn'tknow?
Queuing kids, that reading islike this treasure chest that
you can know stuff grown-upsdon't know.
Other kids don't know.
It's magic.
That kind of excitement aboutreading, about writing, which is
(30:09):
another one of my passions, canreally motivate kids to do the
parts that are hard.
And I think what's challengingfor kids that are having reading
problems is that you know, youget extra instruction, all good,
all important, systematic,direct instruction, totally
support it.
But it can be just a really hardslog.
(30:32):
And so that helps technically,but when we can bring joy and
excitement and fun and make itnot punitive and not
stigmatizing, we are reallydoing something so important for
motivating kids to hang with uswhile they learn to decode and
(30:52):
to put sentences and paragraphsand narrative together.
Pam Austin (30:57):
And a little bit of fun and joy to that interaction.
I love the idea of cueing kidsbecause we want them thinking
while they're reading.
And this is a perfect waybecause I want to know what
you're thinking.
What did you learn?
I love those ideas.
Uh, you know, I do want to askyou something.
You know, a lot of kids maybethey're just thinking, you know,
child is a little bit behind.
(31:18):
They may be underrecognized fordevelopmental language
disorders.
What should teachers know forearly identification?
SPEAKER_02 (31:27):
Yeah.
So there are kind of two flagsfor little kids.
One is a kid whose vocabulary isreally low, who, you know, and
who at age, say at 30 months,kids should have around a couple
hundred words.
And if you have a kid that haslike 20 words or 30 words, even
though he's talking, he's in bigtrouble because he has a very
(31:51):
low, slow grow for building wordknowledge.
And that's a kid who needs earlyintervention that focuses on
developing vocabulary.
We're really good at that.
There's a ton of data to supporthow to do that in all kinds of
positive ways.
Those kids are pretty easy todetect.
(32:13):
We think of them as latetalkers.
They're kids that we anticipatewill have language problems,
kids with Down syndrome,sometimes kids with autism, and
sometimes just kids who haven'thad a lot of language exposure
and we don't know what theirdevelopmental status is, but we
know they're coming in at threeand they have a hundred words,
(32:35):
and they should have six orseven hundred words at least.
And they should be putting wordstogether.
So the average age to startputting words together is 24
months.
If you have a kid who isn'tputting words together or only
says, bye-bye, mom, and wantthat, you should be worried
(32:55):
about that kid if he's three.
You should be worried about thatkid if he's 30 months old.
That 30 months is kind of areally important marker for us.
That's the point at which youcan usually tell late talkers
who are going to recover fromkids who are going to need extra
support to learn language.
And you can tell two ways (33:14):
very small for age vocabulary, and
very slow to combine words.
So that's one trajectory that'spretty clear.
There are also kids who aredoing okay-ish for vocabulary at
30 months.
They're we have less than we'dexpect, but they're not terrible
(33:37):
and they're clearly talking.
But what's not emerging arethose sentences.
So they might have some two-wordcombinations, but they're not
very many of them, and they'reprobably wrote.
And what you should be seeing by30 months is a pretty good three
to four-word sentence that'snovel, that really describes
(34:00):
something, and kids understandsentences, not just instructions
that are super supported by I'mpointing to get your coat, but
also understand when you sayabout another kid, oh Bobby's
eating his lunch first, and thenhe's going to have his drink.
That the kid can tell you, youcan tell the kid understands
(34:24):
what you said to him.
So comprehension is a clue, butwe're not, there are measures,
tests for receptive language,but we're just not as good as
detecting when kids aren'tcomprehenders.
But low comprehension that canlook like not following
instructions, but might be notunderstanding.
Inattention, which can also benot understanding what's being
(34:47):
said in an activity, and lowproduction of two, three,
four-word sentences that markthings like past tense and
plurals.
Those are kids that, even thoughthey are smart, so let's not
confuse any of this with beingsmart and having verbal
capacity, those are kids thatare at risk for dyslexia.
(35:12):
The kids that are low vocabularyusers, those are kids that
because dyslexia is aword-level, I don't want to say
problem, but a word-leveldifficulty, if they're having
difficulty learning vocabulary,they're probably going to have
difficulty with word-levelreading.
The kids who are doing okay forvocabulary, but are having
(35:36):
trouble with sentences might notflag for dyslexia or might, but
they will show up in third gradewith reading comprehension
problems because they're notunderstanding the syntactic
structure, the morphosyntacticstructure of language.
So they might get through thatvocabulary stage.
They might have phonologicalawareness, they might be able to
(35:59):
decode words pretty well, butthey're going to show up again
later when they're havingtrouble with passage
comprehension and learning fromwritten text because they're not
understanding the grammar.
Vocabulary and grammar dancewith each other the whole time.
If you're good at one, you'reprobably good at the other.
(36:21):
If you're not good at one ofthem, you're going to struggle
with the other.
But one path leads withvocabulary-level problems,
word-level problems, and theother path kind of leads with
sentence-level problems.
So understanding those thingsabout your kid, how's he doing
for vocabulary, both receptiveand expressive, understanding
(36:42):
and using, and how's he doingwith combining words?
Those are the things thatpreschool teachers should be
paying attention to, parentsshould be paying attention to.
And sometimes kids can be realchatty, and so you don't notice
it, you don't notice how fewdifferent words the kid has
because he's got a lot oftalking, or that he's still
(37:05):
really using single words whenyou'd expect him to use a little
sentence, or that he doesn'tunderstand sentences out of
context in particular.
And those two things are prettyimportant predictors for reading
problems.
Pam Austin (37:22):
So then we could change the trajectory of how
students develop and grow asearly as two and a half, you
mentioned before.
unknown (37:31):
Yeah.
Yep.
SPEAKER_02 (37:32):
We just finished a study where kids started at two
and a half, and we saw them for18 months with their parents,
you know, at first two times aweek, then once a week, then
once a month.
And there's some reallyinteresting outcomes, but the
most important one is that wegot differential rates of
diagnosis of DLD in the groupthat had early language
(37:57):
intervention.
There were many fewer kids thatmet the criteria at age four for
emergent developmental languagedisorders in the treatment group
than in the control group.
And then this is very exciting.
We got that same finding withlow-income Spanish-speaking
kids.
Different intervention, alsoparent-centered, but with
(38:19):
bilingual with a therapist and aparent, shorter term, about
three and a half months ofintervention, three to four
months of intervention.
But we got a differentialdiagnosis rate that was
significantly lower for thetreatment group than the control
group.
So we haven't yet followed thosekids up.
(38:41):
So I don't know what they'regoing to look like as early
readers.
Most of them were not readers atthe end at when they turned
four, but that's reallypromising.
So we know we can impact bothvocabulary development.
That's kind of old news, butthose two studies are important
because we were able to impactsyntax development.
(39:03):
And that's a new thing, startingat 30 months, 36 months, and
going up through age four.
If we can do that, maybe we canchange their trajectories as
readers.
Pam Austin (39:16):
Wonderful.
You know, you just mentionedyour studies.
And I'd like to kind of shift tothinking about environment,
right?
And well-being.
How can a student's environmenthow can this influence that
child's language development,their language and learning?
And how does it show up in theclassrooms and homes?
(39:38):
And how can we help?
Because you talked a little bitabout the study.
What is help?
We talked about what teacherscan do, and you talked about
what you can do as parents, somespecific focuses on the
environment and self and howthat makes a difference.
SPEAKER_02 (39:54):
So the simple answers talk to your kids.
Listen to your kids and and thentalk to them.
Listen as much as you talk.
Don't talk at them, talk withthem, play with them, join them,
join them in tasks, you know,talk to them when they unload
the dishwasher with you, talk tothem in the bath.
(40:15):
We have done so much water playwith children in bathrooms that
we do not publicly display, butactually, bath time is a
wonderful time because it can bea lot of fun.
And that those are the things weteach parents a set of
strategies that areresearch-based, and then we help
them do that across the day inroutines, but we also teach it
(40:39):
in book reading, and we reallysupport a lot of shared book
reading with parents, a lot ofplay-based activities.
We have done that same thingwith teachers in toddler
classrooms, very same approach.
Challenging for teachers for thereasons we were talking about at
the beginning, but shared bookreading one-on-one or with a
small group of kids, where youdo all the things.
(41:03):
You let kids initiate whatthey're interested in in the
book, and you model language andyou ask questions that give them
a chance to respond.
And sometimes you just wait forthem to tell you what they're
interested in.
And you change over time.
You read progressively.
You know, the same things thatwe know are important for older
(41:25):
kids, repeated reading can bereally important for little kids
because it reduces the cognitiveload and it gives kids a space
to initiate, and then you cangive them information in
response to them.
So that whole idea of teachingin response to the kid is like a
magic window.
It's like the kid opens thewindow and you can pour in
(41:50):
language.
And it's very different thanwhen you just narrate or you're
standing above the kid talkingabout what's going on or giving
a whole bunch of directions.
Not that that doesn't have arole and a place, but those
things that you say after thekid told you what he was
(42:11):
interested in have magic powers.
That's where an expansion ofwhat the child said, or an
explanation of something, or anew word that's more complicated
can sneak in through the windowand make it easy for the child
to learn that.
And so that's what we teachparents to do.
(42:32):
That's what we teach teachers todo.
We have some nice outcomes froma toddler study that we just
finished that says class, youcan do this in classrooms.
It makes a difference in kids'vocabulary, it makes a kid
difference in kids' sentences.
So we can do this, humans can dothis.
We got to just make space andtime and energy.
(42:54):
We're doing it.
Pam Austin (42:56):
Yep, sneaking it in through the window.
I just love that.
You know, you've provided lotsand lots of valuable information
for the importance of orallanguage and the impact on
reading.
And we know it starts early, butit doesn't stop there, right?
We continue to use oral languageto learn.
You talked about your brother atthe age of 40 and how his oral
(43:19):
language development increases,but starting early and never
stopping.
Would you agree with that, Anne?
SPEAKER_02 (43:26):
Life's the conversation.
You know, who are the people welove most?
The people who talk to us, whodo we get most frustrated with?
The people we live with thatdon't talk to us.
You know, that's the deal.
That's why these blogs are somuch fun.
That's why podcasts are funbecause two people who share
passion about something aretalking to each other about it.
Pam Austin (43:46):
Excellent.
You know, I've got one questionfor you.
This is our last one.
What gives you hope right nowabout the future of early
language and literacy researchand practice?
SPEAKER_02 (44:00):
That's a great impressive.
So every time I see a kid, itgives me hope.
Let me be really clear.
Every time we train a teacher,every time I have these
beautiful master students whoare want to be teachers and want
to be speech pathologists, andthey're so excited about this.
I'm always hopeful.
But I also just feel like theawareness of reading and
(44:23):
language is changingexponentially.
I was part of this group thatfocused on bridging the word gap
for all young children andtalking about language as
nutrition.
And they were able to do somecommunity level things about
raising awareness, makinglibraries more accessible,
putting books in laundromats,all kinds of things that just
(44:47):
say, oh, we can do this.
When we care for each other as acommunity, we can do this.
We can do this one kid at atime, or we can do this in our
town, we can do this in ourclassroom.
We can do this.
You know, that's probably thething that gives me the most
hope.
Pam Austin (45:06):
We can do this.
We really thank you for sharingyour knowledge and expertise
with our audience today.
That's it for another greatEdView360 podcast.
Please join us again next monthand visit VoyagerSolpers.com
(45:26):
slash Edview to learn about ourwebinars, blogs, and other
podcasts.
This has been Pam Austin.
We hope to see you all againsoon.
Narrator (45:36):
This has been an Edview360 podcast.
For additional thought-provokingdiscussions, sign up for our
blog, webinar, and podcastseries at Voyager Sopras.com
slash Edview360.
If you enjoyed the show, we'dlove a five star review wherever
you listen to podcasts and tohelp other people like you find
(45:59):
our show.
Thank you.
Welcome to Edview 360.
(00:05):
Every time I see a kid, it givesme hope.
Let me be really clear.
Every time we train a teacher,every time I have these
beautiful master students whoare want to be teachers and want
to be speech pathologists,they're so excited about this.
Always.
But I also just feel like theawareness of reading and
(00:26):
language is changingexponentially.
I was part of this group thatfocused on bridging the word gap
for all young children andtalking about language as
nutrition.
And they were able to do somecommunity-level things about
raising awareness, makinglibraries more accessible,
putting books in laundromats,all kinds of things that just
(00:50):
say, oh, we can do this.
When we care for each other as acommunity, we can do this.
We can do this one kid at atime, or we can do this.
In our town, we can do this.
In our classroom, we can dothis.
You know, that's probably thething that gives me the most
hope.
Narrator (01:09):
You just heard from renowned literacy expert Dr.
Ann Kaiser of VanderbiltUniversity.
Dr.
Kaiser is our podcast guesttoday on FU360.
Pam Austin (01:23):
Today on FU360, we are honored to welcome Dr.
Ann P.
Kaiser, the Susan W.
Gray Professor of Education andHuman Development at Vanderbilt
University, and one of thenation's most influential
researchers in early languagedevelopment.
Dr.
Kaiser is a developmentalpsychologist and early childhood
educator whose work hastransformed our understanding of
(01:46):
how young children learn tocommunicate and how those
earliest language experiencesshape lifelong reading success.
Across decades of groundbreakingfederal-funded research, Dr.
Kaiser has focused on youngchildren with language
disabilities, especially thoseat high risk for later reading
difficulties.
She is deeply committed to theearly identification of
(02:09):
developmental language disorder,knowing that children with DLD
face significantly higher riskfor reading academic and social
challenges.
Her work asks a criticalquestion.
Can early language interventionprevent later reading problems?
While definitive research isstill emerging, Dr.
(02:29):
Kaiser's theoretical andcorrelational findings strongly
suggests that beginningintervention as early as age 2.5
or 2.5 may mean meaningfullychange a child's reading
trajectory.
Dr.
Kaiser's work bridgesdevelopmental psychology,
linguistics, and education,offering educators a holistic,
(02:55):
deeply human framework forunderstanding how language,
cognition, and environmentinteract.
Today, he will help us toexplore early language
development that connects toliteracy, how responsive adult
child interactions acceleratethat growth, and what educators
can do starting right now tosupport our young learners and
(03:19):
to identify those who may be atrisk.
Dr.
Kaiser, welcome.
SPEAKER_02 (03:24):
Thank you.
It's good to be here.
Thank you, Pam.
Pam Austin (03:28):
We're going to get right into it.
We're going to go ahead andstart.
You know, we want to know yourliteracy why.
Was there a moment or child thatyou encountered or parent that
you support that helped to pullyou into studying early language
in DLD?
SPEAKER_02 (03:44):
Well, really, I think I've been interested in
language since the day I wasborn.
And my mom would probably saythat's true because I was an
early talker.
But two things really influencedthat.
One is that I had a brother whowas 18 months younger than I am
who had autism and wasnon-speaking.
And what I knew about my brotherwas that he was smart and that
(04:07):
he knew things and that he couldread signs and that he could get
around really well.
And other people saw him as achild with a severe disability
that couldn't easily learn.
And I knew, because I knew him,that wasn't true.
So that probably shaped mycareer more than anything else,
which is how to help childrenwho we know are intelligent and
(04:32):
capable, but can't use languagewell.
How can we help them learnlanguage?
And how can we help theirpartners, their parents, their
siblings, their teachers see thechild that's there and scaffold
communication so that we canmake the most of their abilities
to learn and use language?
(04:53):
And that's guided my careerforever.
But my link to reading was I wasa really early reader.
At three, I basically taughtmyself to read, not out of any
great academic ability, but justbecause I knew people were
reading stuff and I wanted toknow what they knew and how they
(05:14):
knew it.
And I just pestered my mom aboutexplaining reading to me, which
is crazy, of course.
And I grew up in this reallysmall town, and there weren't a
lot of things to do, but one ofthem was to go to the city
library, which was in thebasement of the bank.
So you know this is not a biglibrary.
(05:34):
And every Saturday, my cousinBonnie and I would go on our
bikes, get as many books as theywould let us check out, which
was seven, and we would takebooks home and we would read.
And I read every book thatwasn't on the pay shelf or on
the adults only shelf in thelibrary as a kid.
And that was, I mean, it's likeI could fall into a book and
(06:00):
have a life that I didn't have.
I could know about forests.
I lived in Kansas.
There were four trees in mytown.
It I could learn abouteverything.
And that just triggered alifelong interest in reading and
writing, and eventually led to apath of being a developmental
psychologist who studies howkids develop language and how
(06:22):
language turns into reading.
Pam Austin (06:25):
Well, you know, I just think about your love of
language and your understandingof how smart your brother was at
the time and just could notcommunicate and the idea of
scaffolding down to ways for himto communicate.
And you wanted him to experiencethat love.
Is that what I'm hearing there,Anne?
SPEAKER_02 (06:44):
Well, that's what you heard.
I mean, I did understand him.
I did, you know, I did know whohe was.
And I didn't know that becausehe told me, but because I knew
him.
But I also knew that not havinglanguage was a real problem for
kids.
You know, when I was an adultand I didn't live in Kansas
(07:05):
anymore, I would call my brotherevery week, and we would have
these really crazy, limitedconversations on the phone.
And one of the most amazingthings that happened to him was
when he was around 40, he movedto living in an apartment with a
young man who was a really goodlanguage user, had other
developmental concerns.
(07:25):
But and my brother's languageexpanded in that time.
And he started to talk aboutthings like wearing jeans and
t-shirts and about things thathe liked and where he liked to
go.
And it made me realize that,first of all, even though we
think early intervention isimportant, and it is, the
capacity for language learningis lifelong.
(07:48):
And when you have things thatare important in your life to
communicate, you're motivated touse language.
So having a friend who talkedabout cool stuff, even when
you're 40, is was a real pathwayfor him learning how to use
language when he was older.
And so there's, you know, I havethis optimism about language
(08:10):
learning and about reading, thateven though we know there are
developmentally optimal timesfor everything, there's no time
which is impossible.
Pam Austin (08:21):
No time which is impossible.
I absolutely love it.
But let's take a step back here.
You focused on reflecting onexpanding language when you gave
this example for your brother.
Let's take that step back tozero to three, those first three
years of life and think aboutwhat stands out as most
(08:44):
important.
What's the most powerful waysthat we can get that early
language development in that'sgoing to shape reading in the
future?
SPEAKER_02 (08:53):
Parents.
And, you know, in a nutshell,you know, first of all, language
is communication.
Communication requires apartner.
And so, you know, everythingabout human biology prepares us
to be partners in relationshipin early development.
Those are the years ofattachment, those are the years
(09:15):
of real dependence, moving toreal independence.
Those are the years offace-to-face kinds of
interactions.
We hold our babies, we get downon the floor, we change the
register and the pacing and thecontent of what we say.
Those are all prettybiologically driven behaviors
(09:36):
that all help us respond to kidsin ways that hold their
attention and bondcommunicatively with each other
and tailor language so that it'soptimal for language learning.
That's it's really an importanttime.
And most parents do thatnaturally.
(09:57):
There are obviously culturaldifferences, there are
linguistic differences, thereare regional differences, but
basically we talk a lot to kidsin a way that is about what the
kids are interested in.
So it's responsive to what thekids start watching, playing
with, eating, doing.
(10:19):
And it's contingent.
We talk to kids more when theytalk to us or they communicate
with us, and it's meaningful.
And those are the idealconditions for learning
language.
It's contingent, it'smeaningful, it's about what's
happening in the here and now,and it's for the most part
(10:39):
affectively positive.
And we do that best with littlebitty kids.
Who can hold a baby and not makebaby talks?
She can't do it.
So when kids are typicallydevelopment developing, they
have this window, this bubble inthe first 12 to 18 months of
life where all of our biologykicks in and we do the things
(11:01):
that help kids learn languagefor the most part.
As kids get older, obviouslythey become more outwardly
oriented.
They have life experiences thattheir parents don't participate
in, they go to child care, allof those things.
So there's less of thatresponsive interaction.
For typically developing kids,that is fine.
(11:23):
Kids are changing, developingindependence at a rate that
matches the changes in theenvironment.
For kids who are having languagelearning difficulties, they need
more of that responsiveinteraction with careful
modeling, longer, more frequent,more embedded in their lives.
(11:46):
And that's essentially, it'skind of like kids outgrow the
ideal environment for learninglanguage.
And if you have a language tolearn, you might outgrow that
environment.
You have now have the littlebody of an independent
three-year-old, but you stillneed that scaffolding to help
you learn.
And so we teach parents how tobe more responsive partners in
(12:09):
developmentally appropriatethings like book reading, right?
So we're doing the thing thathelps kids learn language, but
we're thinking about what doesthat look like for a
three-year-old or in a classroomfor a four-year-old, because it
would be weird to hold yourfour-year-old and do face to
face with it.
Yeah.
Pam Austin (12:28):
You know, you use this phrase, the things that we
do.
It's how we do.
And I was thinking about theinterconnectedness of it all,
the systems.
And what you seem to describewas the cognition, the motor
skills, the social development.
And what you're saying isreally, really important to
target that in the middle years.
(12:49):
And it grows and changes asstudents get older.
SPEAKER_02 (12:53):
It does, you know, but this is what's so tricky
because when we think ofclassrooms, I don't know what
pops up in your head.
You're an experienced educator,it's probably fourth grade.
What pops up for me is childcarethat we need, and it needs to be
high quality.
And I totally support kids goingto child care.
But suddenly this little personwho's two is now in a room with
(13:17):
10 kids and one or two adults,and nobody is directly connected
to that child, even among goodteachers, you have a group of
kids.
And so the skills for learninglanguage are really different.
You have to initiate to thoseadults and maybe to your friends
who are also two and who may notbe all that interesting or very
(13:39):
language capable.
You have to find languageopportunities for learning.
And that is hard for some kids.
That's really hard for somekids.
In childcare, we have acurriculum structure and
framework, and there aredesignated learning times, but
language is learned in thecontext of living your life for
(14:02):
the most part.
And so a lot of the day iscoming in, going on the
playground, having a snack,getting ready for nap, playing
in free play.
And then there's some, you know,there's some shared book reading
in large group, and there's someinstruction in a small group.
But really the language learningin those years is constructed by
(14:24):
the child.
It's initiated by the child.
And so the interaction, the waythat adults respond to kids, and
the way that adults understandthat different kids need
different kinds of input inthose across the day
opportunities are reallyimportant.
(14:45):
And for typical kids, it's oftenno problem.
For kids who are shy, withdrawn,reluctant, learning a second
language that might have adevelopmental uh disability that
could be a hearing loss, itcould be a motor development
problem, it could be a languagedelay, then all of that
(15:08):
child-initiated learning isgoing to be slowed down because
they're going to be lower rateinitiators.
So then the adult needs tocompensate for that.
That's a hard job for teachers.
That's a really hard job.
And if, you know, a typicalclassroom of 12 kids will have
three kids that have some kindof language learning issue.
(15:29):
And it can be learning a secondlanguage, which means the kid's
language learning capacity iscompletely intact, but he needs
a bunch of input to learn thatsecond language.
It can be having a mild languagedelay, or it can be a child who
has who presents with a sensoryimpairment, doesn't see or hear
(15:51):
or move as well as otherchildren.
To have three of those kids inyour classroom is a lot of kids.
It can just be a kid who hasn'thad a lot of language experience
before he got there, or a childwho hasn't been in childcare, or
a child who has some potentiallydisruptive behavior that gets in
(16:11):
the middle of those goodlanguage interactions.
So we ask teachers to help kidsmake that transition into being
independent learners.
And literally they have theirhands full of both typical kids
who need day-to-day support andkids who might have extra needs
(16:31):
for support.
And so every one of those littlehumans is moving from one-on-one
or lots of one-on-one time withmom or dad or grandma or auntie
or the nanny or who thebabysitter to an environment
where one-on-one is lessfrequent and child initiated.
(16:53):
And that challenges languagelearners.
For every kid that has any ofthose 12 things I just said that
could disrupt language learning,moving into those group care
environments can be reallychallenging.
And that's when we start tonotice differences.
And that's good that we noticethem.
That's when we start asking forextra support from a speech
(17:16):
language pathologist or aspecial educator.
And that's a good thing.
But it also really puts a lot ofresponsibility on teachers who
are already doing way too muchevery day, all the time.
But it's the nature of earlylanguage learning that we need
that one-on-one responsiveinteraction with language that's
(17:39):
tailored to where we are aslearners.
Pam Austin (17:43):
And that goes back to the word scaffolding that you
used a number of times when Ijust think about all of these
varied languages, these variouslanguage challenges that you all
you described just now.
And teachers are used to theidea of scaffolding, but I love
how you phrase it, theselanguage opportunities.
You're living your life andthinking about those
(18:06):
opportunities to have theconversation and to respond to
the students.
It's something that if I thinkeducators know about and know
that they should do thesethings, they will move more
toward dealing that for sure.
Thank you so much for sharingthat.
SPEAKER_02 (18:24):
Let me say how hard that is.
So we've yesterday I wasteaching this in my class that
we were talking about thetoddler talk model.
And the toddler talk modelbegins with what we call
classroom essentials, which ishow to get your schedule
together and your peopletogether so that there might be
a minute to talk to a kid,because that is the biggest
challenge in child care is howdo we manage all of this and
(18:48):
find those moments that we'retalking about that are so
important for teaching languageas a lived experience.
Well, we got to have a minutewhen we can sit down and talk to
kids.
And sometimes classrooms arechaos, as you know.
And so the base thing we teachteachers is how to organize your
life in your classroom so yougot a minute for a kid.
Pam Austin (19:12):
Right.
And I have heard other literacyexperts talk about having the
30-second conversation, the60-second conversation.
It could be when the kids arelining up and there's this one
child you decide to have aconversation with, and the child
may initiate, or you may eveninitiate, or it might be based
on something you've just donefrom circle time or moving back
(19:32):
into the classroom.
So I can see where those areopportunities that we could help
develop it for, but it's beingintentional and thinking about
it.
Would you say that, Ann?
SPEAKER_02 (19:43):
Oh, yeah.
But you know, I was a preschoolteacher once for a few years.
I get it.
It's exhausting and it takes alot.
You know, one of the things thatI say to my students is you
don't have to be perfect.
You just have to be present.
And so learning to be able to bepresent with kids so you can
(20:05):
have that 30-secondconversation.
You'll know what to say.
If you can get yourself and yourbody and your proximal to a kid
and really zone in on that kid,really tune in and be present,
for the most part, you will knowwhat to say that makes sense,
that's responsive to the kid andthat's at his language level.
(20:28):
And I can teach you all kinds ofrules about doing that, but
mostly teachers do know what todo if we can help them make time
to do it.
Pam Austin (20:37):
Right.
Making the time, that's a bigdifference.
You know, there may be peoplewho are thinking, you know what,
all this talking, what does thathave to do with reading?
What's the connection?
How does this help studentslearn to read?
Can you give us some just somehighlights on that?
SPEAKER_02 (20:53):
Sure.
Well, you know, reading islanguage.
Obviously, written language, butit is language.
And so if you don't havevocabulary, right, then you're
learning what words mean whenyou read them for the first
time.
And that's a heavy lift.
You can know how to decode aword and say it by the
(21:17):
phonological rules, but if youdon't know what that word means,
it doesn't mean anything to youin reading.
So most of vocabulary, earlyvocabulary that we have in
reading, kids already know fromtheir language experience.
The other thing that we reallyunderestimate.
(21:37):
So learning how to makesentences, grammar or syntax, it
starts when kids are 24 monthsold.
That's when they start combiningwords.
Reading depends on being able tounderstand the structure of a
sentence.
It's, you know, that you don'tread single words for very long,
(21:59):
very early.
Reading, you might read somesingle words, but pretty soon
you're reading Jane is jumpinginto the water.
Well, that's a basic kind ofsentence.
You need to be able to know whatthe subject is, what the verb
is, what the prepositionalphrase is.
You may not have those labelsfor it, but you understand and
(22:21):
can predict from the structureof the sentence what the meaning
is likely to be.
So those are two kind ofessential things that are
language foundations for, firstof all, decoding and secondly,
understanding or comprehensionof written material.
(22:42):
And really quickly, academicreading gets pretty complicated
in terms of structure and interms of vocabulary.
So if you don't come with thosethings by the time you're four,
it's going to be really hard toread.
Can you learn from reading?
Absolutely.
We learn from reading all thetime.
(23:03):
We learn new vocabulary, welearn new structure, we learn
new arguments, all of that.
But reading itself will beeasier if you already have that
foundation in oral language.
You can use it, you canunderstand it, you're
comfortable with the language.
Then reading adds a new mode,but you're not learning a core
(23:26):
representational skill in thesame way.
Pam Austin (23:30):
So you're saying the ability to speak, to understand
incomplete sentences, eventhough we don't know what a noun
or verb is or any of that.
We just can represent thelanguage and understand the
language.
We just said that's prepping thebrain for learning to read.
SPEAKER_02 (23:47):
That is exactly you said it, Pam.
That's exactly right.
So we have these neuralnetworks, they're really
malleable.
We make them language specificby our early experience
representing things withindividual words, categories of
words, building a semanticnetwork, and syntax gives us
that sort of core linguisticstructure, which helps us
(24:11):
organize the incoming or writteninformation so that we
comprehend by predicting what'sprobably going to happen in this
sentence.
So those are two really hugeskills, right?
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_02 (25:06):
And it's also not communicative.
It's not scaffolded like thoseinteractions that we were
talking about with kids.
So you're reading, and maybeyou're reading out loud, and
that feels like a performance,not about it like a
communication.
It's not like saying, wow, I amso excited that the daffodils
(25:26):
are blooming.
It's like you're reading, thedaffodils are blooming.
But you're not, you don't havethat motivation of
communication.
You don't have that partnersupport of, oh, I'm really
interested in what you'resaying.
Even if you have a readingpartner who's interested in what
you're reading, that's reallyshifted in an important way.
(25:48):
So reading can feel kind oflonely.
It can feel like I don't havethat partner who's reflecting
back to me and cueing me andsupporting me.
And also someone's judging me.
Did I say that word right?
Am I fluent?
Do I understand this?
And it's it's reading is aschool-based thing.
Communication is a life-basedthing.
(26:11):
And even though we're teachingreading for life, let's be clear
about that.
And it's got great applicationsin everyday life.
When you're first learning it,it just feels like a pretty hard
abstract task for lots of kids.
And if you're not good atlanguage, it's a very hard task.
(26:33):
Honestly, it's not an easy task.
Pam Austin (26:36):
It is a learned skill.
And I love the way you termedthat life base for communication
and speaking, which includes thesemantics, meaning.
I want to go back and highlightthose terms again that you use,
and syntax, word order.
And we learn it by hearing,listening, speaking, doing.
Whereas that shift is this wholeother skill with reading.
(26:59):
And I love the way you describeit.
It is something that'schallenging for many students.
But through scaffolding andsupport, we could help our
students get there.
Am I saying that correctly, Ann?
SPEAKER_02 (27:10):
Yeah, absolutely.
But we might have to make theprecursors to reading fun and
social, right?
Which we can do in preschools.
We do a good job of that.
We might need to make sharedreading a communicative
activity.
You know, we forget that, oh, wecould read a book together, the
(27:31):
four of us, and we could taketurns reading in a way that it's
kind of like reading a play.
That would be fun.
Or we can read directions thatother kids do, or there are
ways, in addition to doing goodscience-based instruction.
Let me say this is not areplacement for the science of
reading.
(27:52):
This is a way to make reading acommunicative and fun activity
for adults and children.
So, you know, if you read toyour three-year-old, if you've
read books to three-year-olds,which I think there's nothing
better than reading a book witha three-year-old, you use the
funny voices and you make thestories louder and crazier and
(28:14):
funner, and you fill in theblank and you engage the child
in that.
So that is a really importantpre-reading experience.
Oh, books can be fun.
Books are something I can dowith somebody.
And guess what?
It can be a really fun exchangethat we laugh about, that we
(28:36):
remember.
And I can tell the story too,even before I can read it.
You know, kids are really greatat learning what the story says
and then telling you, no, no,you didn't read all of that,
mom.
You did not, that's not how itends.
You didn't read that right,which tells us how tuned in they
(28:57):
are to language and reading andthat process, even before
they're readers.
So the more experience kids havewith books and text and reading
that's communicative, that'sfun, that's functional in their
environment with people thatthey care about, the more the
idea of learning to read willfeel like a good thing.
Pam Austin (29:22):
So it's a joy.
SPEAKER_02 (29:24):
Yep.
And then they figure out you canknow stuff from reading.
That's the most exciting part.
Oh my gosh, what did you figureout from reading that?
And not, you know, I really wework a lot on shared book
reading in in my projects.
And really the authenticquestion, what did you learn
(29:45):
from that book?
What did you learn from readingthat?
What do you know now you didn'tknow?
Queuing kids, that reading islike this treasure chest that
you can know stuff grown-upsdon't know.
Other kids don't know.
It's magic.
That kind of excitement aboutreading, about writing, which is
(30:09):
another one of my passions, canreally motivate kids to do the
parts that are hard.
And I think what's challengingfor kids that are having reading
problems is that you know, youget extra instruction, all good,
all important, systematic,direct instruction, totally
support it.
But it can be just a really hardslog.
(30:32):
And so that helps technically,but when we can bring joy and
excitement and fun and make itnot punitive and not
stigmatizing, we are reallydoing something so important for
motivating kids to hang with uswhile they learn to decode and
(30:52):
to put sentences and paragraphsand narrative together.
Pam Austin (30:57):
And a little bit of fun and joy to that interaction.
I love the idea of cueing kidsbecause we want them thinking
while they're reading.
And this is a perfect waybecause I want to know what
you're thinking.
What did you learn?
I love those ideas.
Uh, you know, I do want to askyou something.
You know, a lot of kids maybethey're just thinking, you know,
child is a little bit behind.
(31:18):
They may be underrecognized fordevelopmental language
disorders.
What should teachers know forearly identification?
SPEAKER_02 (31:27):
Yeah.
So there are kind of two flagsfor little kids.
One is a kid whose vocabulary isreally low, who, you know, and
who at age, say at 30 months,kids should have around a couple
hundred words.
And if you have a kid that haslike 20 words or 30 words, even
though he's talking, he's in bigtrouble because he has a very
(31:51):
low, slow grow for building wordknowledge.
And that's a kid who needs earlyintervention that focuses on
developing vocabulary.
We're really good at that.
There's a ton of data to supporthow to do that in all kinds of
positive ways.
Those kids are pretty easy todetect.
(32:13):
We think of them as latetalkers.
They're kids that we anticipatewill have language problems,
kids with Down syndrome,sometimes kids with autism, and
sometimes just kids who haven'thad a lot of language exposure
and we don't know what theirdevelopmental status is, but we
know they're coming in at threeand they have a hundred words,
(32:35):
and they should have six orseven hundred words at least.
And they should be putting wordstogether.
So the average age to startputting words together is 24
months.
If you have a kid who isn'tputting words together or only
says, bye-bye, mom, and wantthat, you should be worried
(32:55):
about that kid if he's three.
You should be worried about thatkid if he's 30 months old.
That 30 months is kind of areally important marker for us.
That's the point at which youcan usually tell late talkers
who are going to recover fromkids who are going to need extra
support to learn language.
And you can tell two ways (33:14):
very small for age vocabulary, and
very slow to combine words.
So that's one trajectory that'spretty clear.
There are also kids who aredoing okay-ish for vocabulary at
30 months.
They're we have less than we'dexpect, but they're not terrible
(33:37):
and they're clearly talking.
But what's not emerging arethose sentences.
So they might have some two-wordcombinations, but they're not
very many of them, and they'reprobably wrote.
And what you should be seeing by30 months is a pretty good three
to four-word sentence that'snovel, that really describes
(34:00):
something, and kids understandsentences, not just instructions
that are super supported by I'mpointing to get your coat, but
also understand when you sayabout another kid, oh Bobby's
eating his lunch first, and thenhe's going to have his drink.
That the kid can tell you, youcan tell the kid understands
(34:24):
what you said to him.
So comprehension is a clue, butwe're not, there are measures,
tests for receptive language,but we're just not as good as
detecting when kids aren'tcomprehenders.
But low comprehension that canlook like not following
instructions, but might be notunderstanding.
Inattention, which can also benot understanding what's being
(34:47):
said in an activity, and lowproduction of two, three,
four-word sentences that markthings like past tense and
plurals.
Those are kids that, even thoughthey are smart, so let's not
confuse any of this with beingsmart and having verbal
capacity, those are kids thatare at risk for dyslexia.
(35:12):
The kids that are low vocabularyusers, those are kids that
because dyslexia is aword-level, I don't want to say
problem, but a word-leveldifficulty, if they're having
difficulty learning vocabulary,they're probably going to have
difficulty with word-levelreading.
The kids who are doing okay forvocabulary, but are having
(35:36):
trouble with sentences might notflag for dyslexia or might, but
they will show up in third gradewith reading comprehension
problems because they're notunderstanding the syntactic
structure, the morphosyntacticstructure of language.
So they might get through thatvocabulary stage.
They might have phonologicalawareness, they might be able to
(35:59):
decode words pretty well, butthey're going to show up again
later when they're havingtrouble with passage
comprehension and learning fromwritten text because they're not
understanding the grammar.
Vocabulary and grammar dancewith each other the whole time.
If you're good at one, you'reprobably good at the other.
(36:21):
If you're not good at one ofthem, you're going to struggle
with the other.
But one path leads withvocabulary-level problems,
word-level problems, and theother path kind of leads with
sentence-level problems.
So understanding those thingsabout your kid, how's he doing
for vocabulary, both receptiveand expressive, understanding
(36:42):
and using, and how's he doingwith combining words?
Those are the things thatpreschool teachers should be
paying attention to, parentsshould be paying attention to.
And sometimes kids can be realchatty, and so you don't notice
it, you don't notice how fewdifferent words the kid has
because he's got a lot oftalking, or that he's still
(37:05):
really using single words whenyou'd expect him to use a little
sentence, or that he doesn'tunderstand sentences out of
context in particular.
And those two things are prettyimportant predictors for reading
problems.
Pam Austin (37:22):
So then we could change the trajectory of how
students develop and grow asearly as two and a half, you
mentioned before.
unknown (37:31):
Yeah.
Yep.
SPEAKER_02 (37:32):
We just finished a study where kids started at two
and a half, and we saw them for18 months with their parents,
you know, at first two times aweek, then once a week, then
once a month.
And there's some reallyinteresting outcomes, but the
most important one is that wegot differential rates of
diagnosis of DLD in the groupthat had early language
(37:57):
intervention.
There were many fewer kids thatmet the criteria at age four for
emergent developmental languagedisorders in the treatment group
than in the control group.
And then this is very exciting.
We got that same finding withlow-income Spanish-speaking
kids.
Different intervention, alsoparent-centered, but with
(38:19):
bilingual with a therapist and aparent, shorter term, about
three and a half months ofintervention, three to four
months of intervention.
But we got a differentialdiagnosis rate that was
significantly lower for thetreatment group than the control
group.
So we haven't yet followed thosekids up.
(38:41):
So I don't know what they'regoing to look like as early
readers.
Most of them were not readers atthe end at when they turned
four, but that's reallypromising.
So we know we can impact bothvocabulary development.
That's kind of old news, butthose two studies are important
because we were able to impactsyntax development.
(39:03):
And that's a new thing, startingat 30 months, 36 months, and
going up through age four.
If we can do that, maybe we canchange their trajectories as
readers.
Pam Austin (39:16):
Wonderful.
You know, you just mentionedyour studies.
And I'd like to kind of shift tothinking about environment,
right?
And well-being.
How can a student's environmenthow can this influence that
child's language development,their language and learning?
And how does it show up in theclassrooms and homes?
(39:38):
And how can we help?
Because you talked a little bitabout the study.
What is help?
We talked about what teacherscan do, and you talked about
what you can do as parents, somespecific focuses on the
environment and self and howthat makes a difference.
SPEAKER_02 (39:54):
So the simple answers talk to your kids.
Listen to your kids and and thentalk to them.
Listen as much as you talk.
Don't talk at them, talk withthem, play with them, join them,
join them in tasks, you know,talk to them when they unload
the dishwasher with you, talk tothem in the bath.
(40:15):
We have done so much water playwith children in bathrooms that
we do not publicly display, butactually, bath time is a
wonderful time because it can bea lot of fun.
And that those are the things weteach parents a set of
strategies that areresearch-based, and then we help
them do that across the day inroutines, but we also teach it
(40:39):
in book reading, and we reallysupport a lot of shared book
reading with parents, a lot ofplay-based activities.
We have done that same thingwith teachers in toddler
classrooms, very same approach.
Challenging for teachers for thereasons we were talking about at
the beginning, but shared bookreading one-on-one or with a
small group of kids, where youdo all the things.
(41:03):
You let kids initiate whatthey're interested in in the
book, and you model language andyou ask questions that give them
a chance to respond.
And sometimes you just wait forthem to tell you what they're
interested in.
And you change over time.
You read progressively.
You know, the same things thatwe know are important for older
(41:25):
kids, repeated reading can bereally important for little kids
because it reduces the cognitiveload and it gives kids a space
to initiate, and then you cangive them information in
response to them.
So that whole idea of teachingin response to the kid is like a
magic window.
It's like the kid opens thewindow and you can pour in
(41:50):
language.
And it's very different thanwhen you just narrate or you're
standing above the kid talkingabout what's going on or giving
a whole bunch of directions.
Not that that doesn't have arole and a place, but those
things that you say after thekid told you what he was
(42:11):
interested in have magic powers.
That's where an expansion ofwhat the child said, or an
explanation of something, or anew word that's more complicated
can sneak in through the windowand make it easy for the child
to learn that.
And so that's what we teachparents to do.
(42:32):
That's what we teach teachers todo.
We have some nice outcomes froma toddler study that we just
finished that says class, youcan do this in classrooms.
It makes a difference in kids'vocabulary, it makes a kid
difference in kids' sentences.
So we can do this, humans can dothis.
We got to just make space andtime and energy.
(42:54):
We're doing it.
Pam Austin (42:56):
Yep, sneaking it in through the window.
I just love that.
You know, you've provided lotsand lots of valuable information
for the importance of orallanguage and the impact on
reading.
And we know it starts early, butit doesn't stop there, right?
We continue to use oral languageto learn.
You talked about your brother atthe age of 40 and how his oral
(43:19):
language development increases,but starting early and never
stopping.
Would you agree with that, Anne?
SPEAKER_02 (43:26):
Life's the conversation.
You know, who are the people welove most?
The people who talk to us, whodo we get most frustrated with?
The people we live with thatdon't talk to us.
You know, that's the deal.
That's why these blogs are somuch fun.
That's why podcasts are funbecause two people who share
passion about something aretalking to each other about it.
Pam Austin (43:46):
Excellent.
You know, I've got one questionfor you.
This is our last one.
What gives you hope right nowabout the future of early
language and literacy researchand practice?
SPEAKER_02 (44:00):
That's a great impressive.
So every time I see a kid, itgives me hope.
Let me be really clear.
Every time we train a teacher,every time I have these
beautiful master students whoare want to be teachers and want
to be speech pathologists, andthey're so excited about this.
I'm always hopeful.
But I also just feel like theawareness of reading and
(44:23):
language is changingexponentially.
I was part of this group thatfocused on bridging the word gap
for all young children andtalking about language as
nutrition.
And they were able to do somecommunity level things about
raising awareness, makinglibraries more accessible,
putting books in laundromats,all kinds of things that just
(44:47):
say, oh, we can do this.
When we care for each other as acommunity, we can do this.
We can do this one kid at atime, or we can do this in our
town, we can do this in ourclassroom.
We can do this.
You know, that's probably thething that gives me the most
hope.
Pam Austin (45:06):
We can do this.
We really thank you for sharingyour knowledge and expertise
with our audience today.
That's it for another greatEdView360 podcast.
Please join us again next monthand visit VoyagerSolpers.com
(45:26):
slash Edview to learn about ourwebinars, blogs, and other
podcasts.
This has been Pam Austin.
We hope to see you all againsoon.
Narrator (45:36):
This has been an Edview360 podcast.
For additional thought-provokingdiscussions, sign up for our
blog, webinar, and podcastseries at Voyager Sopras.com
slash Edview360.
If you enjoyed the show, we'dlove a five star review wherever
you listen to podcasts and tohelp other people like you find
(45:59):
our show.
Thank you.
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