The Language of Children

The Intertext series has been specifically designed to meet the needs of contemporary English Language Studies. Working with Texts: A Core Introduction to Language Analysis (second edition, 2001) is the foundation text, which is complemented by a range of 'satellite' titles. These provide students with hands-on practical experience of textual analysis through special topics and can be used individually or in conjunction with Working with Texts. The Language of Children: introduces the key theories of language acquisition and provides a historical ov.

Cover; Title Page; Copyright Page; Dedication; Contents; Acknowledgements; Unit one: Setting the scene; Aim of this book; Starting points in investigating children's language; Towards a sociocultural approach to language development; Summary; How to use this book; Unit two: Writing and multimodality; Meaning-making; Mathematical understanding; Writing in context; Summary; Unit three: Play and talk; Transcribing talk; Language in play; Theorising the significance of play; The Childphone Project; Summary; Unit four: Early words; First words: nineteenth-century studies.

Comprehension and production: fluidity in meaningLanguage routines; Summary; Unit five: Communication before language; Books before speech?!; Newborn babies; Early communication development; Summary; Unit six: Conclusions: theories about child language development; Sociocultural explanations of language development; Cognitivism; Nativists; Vygotsky and his influence; Ipa symbols for English phonemes; Ideas for further projects; Further reading; Bibliography; Index of terms.