Introduction Draft 2

Introduction

   For my English Language investigation, I will be looking at Children’s Language Acquisition, in particular, the developing language complexity of children’s books, specifically the Oxford Reading Tree graded reading scheme. Language becomes increasingly difficult as children progress through the reading schemes; therefore I will compare how language complexity occurs. I believe that I will find significant variety between the sentence and overall book length, grammar, vocabulary used and complexity of consonant clusters as the books progress.

Hypothesis

   I hypothesise that as the reading scheme books progress, there will be a gradual increase in the complexity of the following features:

·         Sentence length (as children become more familiar with sentence formation)

·         Overall book length (when their attention span increases)

·         Grammar (more complex, concrete nouns, adjectives and verb tenses)

·         Vocabulary (wider range of words used to broaden a child’s vocabulary)

·         Repetition of words (this will allow them to learn their meanings faster [1])

·         Consonant clusters (more difficult to develop the letter-sound relationship)

Methodology

   I have chosen a selection of books from the Oxford Reading Tree scheme because these books are used nationwide to teach children to read. I have selected the Magic Key book series as these books are iconic and well-known as they follow the adventures of Biff, Chip and Kipper. “These books were first published in 1985 and there are now over 300 stories which form part of an English language syllabus in line with the National Curriculum, designed to help children learn to speak and read Standard English.” [2]

   There are no ethical issues with gathering this data as it is part of a public domain and therefore already accessible to a wider audience. The books I have chosen will be a representative sample owing to them being a part of a nationwide reading scheme, used in over “80% of schools” [2]. I have chosen six books, three traditional Biff, Chip and Kipper books and three decode and develop Biff, Chip and Kipper books. There is one traditional and one contemporary book from each colour band, yellow, blue and green.

   For my secondary research, I will predominantly use search engines to research about how reading schemes become more complex in their formation to assist children’s reading progression within school. I will also use examples from relevant theories, such as imitation from Skinner’s behaviourist theory and the notion of language scaffolding from Vygotsky to explain hoe language gradually develops. Piaget’s use of stimulation will also be explored in the graphology of the book. I shall also access scholarly articles and books focusing on how language in children’s books becomes more complex as they learn to read. I will need this information to understand how reading schemes work and to understand why the progressions occur in that particular order, such as the length of sentences increasing before vocabulary. Once I have this secondary data, I will ensure that I have a sample of data from a variety of mediums and that I only include relevant details in my actual investigation. I plan to use the “method” structure for analysing my data, for example, I will analyse the sentence length each book before moving on to grammar. 

[1] Chard, D & Osborn, J. (2004)Word Recognition Instruction [online]. UK: WETA [16/10/14]

[2] Wikipedia (2014) The Magic Key [online]. UK: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License [06/10/14]