Discourse Patterns in First Language Use at Hcme and Second Language Learning at School: an Ethnographic Approach

Literature / 54

2.4 Adult-child conversation

2.4.1 Adults' role in language development

In language development literature, the emphasis has shifted from
interest in the construction of children's grammar to interest in
communicative competence; with the emergence of pragmatics and discourse
analysis, children's conversations have become a major focus of research,
along different lines:

- studies on the development of conversational competence, mainly the
ability to initiate and sustain contingent discourse (McTear ,1985);

- studies on the difference between home and school conversation (Tizard

et al.,1982; Tizard,1984; MacLure and French,1981);

- studies on the difference between child-child and child-adult
conversations (Camaioni ,1979);

- studies on different adults' interactive styles (Wells 1983; Olsen-
Fulero,1982);

- studies on the qualities of social cognition in communicative
interaction (Sypher and Applegate,1984);

- studies on requests and replies (reviewed below).

The Bristol study concluded that

... there was clearly observed variation in the quality and quantity
of the conversational experience that the children enjoyed with
adults and this was associated with differences in the ease and
speed of their language development. Some parents more than others
appeared intuitively to know how to facilitate their children's
learning. (Wells,1985:415).

The adjustments adults make in their way of speaking are of various
types (Cross,1977), but the features that were found to be significantly
associated with rapid progress in language learning are not so much

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