Supporting Oral Language Development

词汇量少的孩子在学习的各个方面都处于劣势。除非有针对性的支持，否则起步较慢的孩子将继续落后于语言丰富的同龄人。确保所有孩子都为学习做好准备的一个有效方法，特别是在学校，就是在孩子生命的早期提供高质量的口语教育。早期语言干预的力量得到了大量证据的支持，这些证据表明，强大的口语和听力理解的综合基础与阅读和写作技能相关联。然而，人们对口头语言干预在低收入和中等收入国家的效果知之甚少，因为这些国家的社区往往使用多种语言。我们的目标是通过对生活在印度和菲律宾的3至6岁儿童的混合方法研究来解决文献中的这一差距。该研究将考察在多语言城市贫困环境下的口语发展情况。在这些环境下的研究是很重要的，因为有理由相信，自发支持儿童语言发展的资源可能会对城市贫困人口造成压力（例如，减少社会网络，使用新的学校语言），使他们成为学业失败的特别脆弱群体。共同发展的项目拟议的项目是由多个机构共同发展的。政府合作伙伴认为，一个紧迫的系统性问题是小学识字率低。社区合作伙伴强调需要有证据证明将在当地学校和大学发挥作用的高质量项目，合作伙伴也赞同需要一个全面的研究项目。因此，我们建议在上下文中了解儿童的语言发展，并将测试一种可能更好地为儿童上小学做准备的干预措施。研究地点将是印度的乌都皮区和菲律宾的奎松市。这些网站的特征包括儿童周围的多种语言，以及对母语或多语言教育的政策承诺。因此，这些背景为研究不仅在DAC国家而且在国际上都未得到充分研究的主题提供了机会：多语言环境下儿童口语发展和口语干预。本研究的主要目标是通过三项研究提供关于质量（儿童早期发展和学前教育）和准备（小学教育）的描述性和因果证据，这些研究旨在a)绘制口语发展的机会和障碍，b)验证评估以跟踪儿童口语发展，以及c)检查教师在进入小学一年前提供的有针对性的干预。我们将跟踪30个孩子一天，记录他们的语言经历，检查他们的对话伙伴的语言知识，并对他们参加的课程进行民族志调查，从而绘制机会和障碍。我们将通过分析每个测试的3000个数据点来调整15项评估，并在一项针对800名儿童的研究中，评估由教师设计的、借鉴民间故事和当地叙事的语言干预。这一跨学科项目将通过关注儿童早期学习的语言基础，为实现所有儿童有效学习成果的可持续发展目标提供一种方法。产出包括供决策者使用的证据简报和供教育工作者使用的开放获取工具包。在这些背景下，研究界的多个数据主体将扩大证据基础。这些工具包括词汇库、儿童语言档案、丰富的课堂演讲描述、表现数据和结果数据。总的来说，拟议的研究可能会成为印度、菲律宾和其他发展援助委员会国家知情幼儿教育的催化剂。

Children with a small vocabulary are at a disadvantage for all aspects of learning. Unless there is targeted support, children who start slow will continue to fall behind their language-rich peers. A powerful way to ensure all children are ready for learning, particularly in school, is to offer high quality oral language education early in a child's life. The power of early language intervention is supported by a large body of evidence showing a combined foundation of strong spoken language and listening comprehension cascading to reading and writing skills. However, little is known about the efficacy of oral language interventions in low- and middle-income countries where communities are often multilingual. We aim to address this gap in the literature through a mixed-methods study with children ages of 3-to-6 living in India and the Philippines. The study will examine oral language development under the particular complexities of multilingual urban poor settings. Research in these settings is of importance as there is reason to believe resources that spontaneously support children's language development may be under strain for the urban poor (e.g. reduced social networks, a new school language), making them a particularly vulnerable group for school failure.A co-developed projectThe proposed project was co-developed by multiple agencies. Government partners shared that a pressing systemic concern was the low literacy rates in primary schools. Community partners stressed the need for evidence on quality programs that will work in local schools and university partners echoed the need for a comprehensive program of research. We therefore propose to understand children's language development in-context and will test an intervention that could potentially better prepare children for primary school. The research sites will be Udupi district in India and Quezon City in the Philippines. Defining characteristics of these sites include the multiple languages around the child and a policy commitment to either mother-tongue or multilingual education. Hence, these contexts offer an opportunity to research a topic that is understudied in not just DAC countries but also internationally: children's oral language development and oral language intervention in a multilingual setting.Objectives and OutputsThe primary objective of this research is to provide descriptive and causal evidence on quality (in early childhood development and pre-primary education) and readiness (for primary education) through three studies that aim to a) map opportunities and barriers to oral language development, b) validate assessments to track children's developing oral language and c) examine a targeted intervention delivered by teachers one year before entry into primary school. We will map opportunities and barriers by following thirty children over one day to record their language experiences, examining language knowledge of their conversation partners, and conducting an ethnographic inquiry of classes they attend. We will finetune fifteen assessments by analyzing 3000 data points on each test and, in a study with 800 children, evaluate a language intervention designed with teachers that draws upon folk tales and local narratives.This inter-disciplinary project will provide an approach to reach the Sustainable Development Goal of effective learning outcomes for all children by focusing on the language bedrock of early childhood learning. Outputs include evidence briefs for policy makers and open access toolkits for educators. Multiple bodies of data for the research community will expand the evidence-base in these contexts. These include a word bank, an archive of child language, a rich description of talk in the classroom, performance data and outcomes data. Taken together, the proposed research could potentially act as a catalyst for informed early childhood education in India, the Philippines, and other DAC countries.