One of the more fascinating aspects of pre-school children\u27s verbal language seems to be their uncanny ability to speak in complete sentences. From the time children put two words together meaning fully, they speak in sentences. By the time they arrive in first grade they use simple, compound, and complex sentences. Children can also supply nouns for subjects, verbs for predicates, nouns for objects, and the like

Frederick, E. Coston

Hackleman, Beverly

English

ScholarWorks at WMU

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy andLanguage ArtsVolume 12Issue 1 October 1971 Article 310-1-1971An Investigation of First Grade Children's Use ofLanguage StructureE. Coston FrederickUniversity of OregonBeverly HacklemanSpringfield, OregonFollow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/reading_horizonsPart of the Education CommonsThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by the SpecialEducation and Literacy Studies at ScholarWorks at WMU. It has beenaccepted for inclusion in Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy andLanguage Arts by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks at WMU. For moreinformation, please contact maira.bundza@wmich.edu.Recommended CitationFrederick, E. C., & Hackleman, B. (1971). An Investigation of First Grade Children's Use of Language Structure. Reading Horizons: AJournal of Literacy and Language Arts, 12 (1). Retrieved from https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/reading_horizons/vol12/iss1/3AN INVESTIGATION OF FIRST GRADECHILDREN'S USE OFLANGUAGE STRUCTUREE. Coston FrederickUNIVERSITY OF OREGONandBeverly HacklemanSPRINGFIELD, OREGONOne of the more fascinating aspects of pre-school children's verballanguage seems to be their uncanny ability to speak in completesentences. From the time children put two words together meaningfully, they speak in sentences. By the time they arrive in first gradethey use simple, compound, and complex sentences. Children can alsosupply nouns for subjects, verbs for predicates, nouns for objects,and the like.Labov (1968), for example, reported that "above a certain levelof reading skill, the mistakes are meaningful." In other words, whena child substitutes a wrong word in reading, that substitution usuallyis of the same grammatical structure.Weber (1966) found that better readers were more grammaticalreaders. Perhaps the reverse is true as well; that is, children withbetter grammatical (linguistic) abilities have better reading abilities.Bever (1968) stated, ". . . we know nothing about a range offacts that are an important part of the child's verbal world."Out of a discussion of what little is really known of children'sverbal worlds came some interesting questions: Is a child's verbalsophistication such that he can utilize even the more ambiguousfactors in a sentence structure? It is not necessarily earth-shaking thatchildren will substitute nouns for nouns, verbs for verbs, and so forth,and perhaps even explain their reasons for doing so. But what aboutsomething like a preposition? Most adults probably could not defineor identify the function of a preposition in a sentence. (From aninformal poll of graduate students and secretaries in the Universityof Oregon College of Education, the most understandable definitionwas: any relationship between a rabbit and a hill. Most responseswere: I don't know.) Would children insert a preposition in a slotrh—15calling for a preposition? If so, how many different prepositionscould they insert? Would children use multiple prepositions, such asout of and on top of? Would children with high reading ability insertmore prepositions than children with low reading ability?A small, investigatory classroom study was designed to see ifanswers could be found to these questions.The study was done with first grade children in November, 1968.The cooperating school had four first grades that had been groupedaccording to the Metropolitan Reading Readiness Test and teacherjudgment. Only the lowest and the highest classes were tested. Thelowest group (group II) consisted of fifteen children. The highestgroup (group I) consisted of twenty-eight children.The children were tested individually in the hall away from theclass. Group I was tested one day and group II the next. All testingwas done between 8:30 and 11:00 a.m.; after that time the noise andconfusion in the hall made testing impractical. Care was taken thatthe test situation, including words used, was the same for each child.Each child was shown a drawing of a clown over a house. He wasshown the sentence, The clown over the house, and thesentence was read aloud by the testor. The child was then told, "Thisis a thinking game. Let's see how many different words you can putin here." and the testor pointed to the blank space.This portion of the study was used as a practice session priorto the experiment task. It was interesting to note that many childrenhad difficulty putting in a verb. This might have been because ofthe sentence, rather than difficulty with verbs, but the practice sessiondid indicate to the children what they were to do. If a child appeared uncomfortable, or was unable to supply a verb, the testor said,"The clown stepped over the house." If no other words could besupplied, at that point, the testor said, "The clown jumped over thehouse," and then went directly to the test.Each child was shown a drawing of a tree and several birds. Thetestor said each time, "Here we have a tree and some birds; andagain we want you to fill in a blank space with a word." The childwas shown the sentence, The birds flew the trees, and thetestor read the sentence, pointing to each word as it was spoken.Without exception, each child responded with a preposition. Afterthe first response the testor said, "Good! Now put another word inhere (pointing to the blank). The birds flew " Ifthere was a five second pause the testor would repeat the sentencethat the child had successfully done and then repeat the sentence up16—rhto where the preposition would be the next word to be said.The children were verbally encouraged to continue as long as theycould, until they either became visibly nervous or could only repeatthe same preposition they had previously used. The repetitions, ofcourse, were not counted.OBSERVATIONSThe study was not intended to be a "classic" one; the method ofresearch and the size of the groups limited the observations, andthus, the conclusions. However, an analysis of the data did showseveral interesting aspects.1. The mean number of prepositions for the highest group was6.03. The range was one to fifteen.2. The mean number of prepositions for the lowest group was4.86. The range was two to ten.3. Every response made was either a single word preposition or amultiple preposition. The six most commonly used prepositions were(in order of frequency) : over, in, on, under, around, on top of. Othermultiple prepositions were: down under, on the side of, away from,on the trunk of. The most startling multiple preposition was, awayfrom the bottom of.4. Two children in the highest group made only one responseeach, the same preposition in both cases—over. Both children appearedto be quite nervous and were either afraid of the testing situation or,possibly, unable to function in a choice-making situation. The scoresfor these two children seriouslyaffected the mean for the highest group.DISCUSSIONWhat is a preposition? Webster's New World Dictionary gives thefollowing definition: "... a relation word . . . that connects a noun,pronoun, or noun phrase to another element of a sentence . . ."Needless to say, children (and even adults) are not aware of thefunction of the preposition in our language. Seemingly, it is a culturallyinherent part of our language (not all languages have prepositions)that is learned right along with doggie, Mommy, Daddy, etc. Although a child learns prepositions along with the rest of his language,he evidently is not conscious of the linguistic structure of his language.Went mountain the over the bear doesn't make sense to the child,because (giggle) "That's silly." Perhaps the word silly is as applicable as any other word when describing a statement that is out oflinguistic sequence to a child. He doesn't know why it's silly—it'srTi-njust silly. In much the same way a child will learn that the outergarment worn in cold weather is a "coaton," because he's heard hisparents say, "Come get your coat on."The interesting thing about the preposition is its ambiguity; thatis, few, if any, children are aware of its function, yet it is an integralpart of their language. Could the type of test used in this study bea valid and reliable measure of language ability as related to reading?More refinement and more research will be needed before that questionis answered. However, it is suggested in this study that there may bea connection between the common elements of reading ability andthe ability to provide prepositions in the appropriate place,Seemingly the test is not directly affected by vocabulary, sincethe children's responses overlapped a great deal. It appeared thatnone of the prepositions was unknown to any of the children.A perplexing factor was the two children who apparently couldnot function where multiple answers were requested. The source ofthe inference was, of course, unknown and needs further study.SUMMARYA test was devised in which first grade children were asked to fillin orally a preposition in the appropriate blank. The high readinggroup appeared to be able to provide more prepositions than the lowreading group, which suggested that there is some relationship betweenreading ability and language ability as expressed by numbers ofprepositions.More research is needed to determine if the relationship actuallyexists and of what value it might be.REFERENCES1. Bever, Thomas, The Reading Process, Proceedings of the Conference on Communicating by Language, James F. Kavanaugh,ed., U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Washington, D.C., 1968, p. 77.2. Labov, William, The Reading Process, Proceedings of the Conference on Communicating by Language, James F. Kavanaugh,Ed., U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Washington, D.C., 1968, p. 72.3. Weber, R. M., A Linguistic Analysis of First-Grade ReadingErrors, mimeographed, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Laboratoryfor Research on Language Skills, 1966.

An Investigation of First Grade Children\u27s Use of Language Structure

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and 
Language Arts 
Volume 12 
Issue 1 October 1971 Article 3 
10-1-1971 
An Investigation of First Grade Children's Use of Language 
Structure 
E. Coston Frederick 
University of Oregon 
Beverly Hackleman 
Springfield, Oregon 
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/reading_horizons 
 Part of the Education Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Frederick, E. C., & Hackleman, B. (1971). An Investigation of First Grade Children's Use of Language 
Structure. Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts, 12 (1). Retrieved from 
https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/reading_horizons/vol12/iss1/3 
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by 
the Special Education and Literacy Studies at 
ScholarWorks at WMU. It has been accepted for inclusion 
in Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language 
Arts by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks at WMU. 
For more information, please contact wmu-
scholarworks@wmich.edu. 
AN INVESTIGATION OF FIRST GRADE
CHILDREN'S USE OF
LANGUAGE STRUCTURE
E. Coston Frederick
UNIVERSITY OF OREGON
and
Beverly Hackleman
SPRINGFIELD, OREGON
One of the more fascinating aspects of pre-school children's verbal
language seems to be their uncanny ability to speak in complete
sentences. From the time children put two words together meaning
fully, they speak in sentences. By the time they arrive in first grade
they use simple, compound, and complex sentences. Children can also
supply nouns for subjects, verbs for predicates, nouns for objects,
and the like.
Labov (1968), for example, reported that "above a certain level
of reading skill, the mistakes are meaningful." In other words, when
a child substitutes a wrong word in reading, that substitution usually
is of the same grammatical structure.
Weber (1966) found that better readers were more grammatical
readers. Perhaps the reverse is true as well; that is, children with
better grammatical (linguistic) abilities have better reading abilities.
Bever (1968) stated, ". . . we know nothing about a range of
facts that are an important part of the child's verbal world."
Out of a discussion of what little is really known of children's
verbal worlds came some interesting questions: Is a child's verbal
sophistication such that he can utilize even the more ambiguous
factors in a sentence structure? It is not necessarily earth-shaking that
children will substitute nouns for nouns, verbs for verbs, and so forth,
and perhaps even explain their reasons for doing so. But what about
something like a preposition? Most adults probably could not define
or identify the function of a preposition in a sentence. (From an
informal poll of graduate students and secretaries in the University
of Oregon College of Education, the most understandable definition
was: any relationship between a rabbit and a hill. Most responses
were: I don't know.) Would children insert a preposition in a slot
rh—15
calling for a preposition? If so, how many different prepositions
could they insert? Would children use multiple prepositions, such as
out of and on top of? Would children with high reading ability insert
more prepositions than children with low reading ability?
A small, investigatory classroom study was designed to see if
answers could be found to these questions.
The study was done with first grade children in November, 1968.
The cooperating school had four first grades that had been grouped
according to the Metropolitan Reading Readiness Test and teacher
judgment. Only the lowest and the highest classes were tested. The
lowest group (group II) consisted of fifteen children. The highest
group (group I) consisted of twenty-eight children.
The children were tested individually in the hall away from the
class. Group I was tested one day and group II the next. All testing
was done between 8:30 and 11:00 a.m.; after that time the noise and
confusion in the hall made testing impractical. Care was taken that
the test situation, including words used, was the same for each child.
Each child was shown a drawing of a clown over a house. He was
shown the sentence, The clown over the house, and the
sentence was read aloud by the testor. The child was then told, "This
is a thinking game. Let's see how many different words you can put
in here." and the testor pointed to the blank space.
This portion of the study was used as a practice session prior
to the experiment task. It was interesting to note that many children
had difficulty putting in a verb. This might have been because of
the sentence, rather than difficulty with verbs, but the practice session
did indicate to the children what they were to do. If a child ap
peared uncomfortable, or was unable to supply a verb, the testor said,
"The clown stepped over the house." If no other words could be
supplied, at that point, the testor said, "The clown jumped over the
house," and then went directly to the test.
Each child was shown a drawing of a tree and several birds. The
testor said each time, "Here we have a tree and some birds; and
again we want you to fill in a blank space with a word." The child
was shown the sentence, The birds flew the trees, and the
testor read the sentence, pointing to each word as it was spoken.
Without exception, each child responded with a preposition. After
the first response the testor said, "Good! Now put another word in
here (pointing to the blank). The birds flew " If
there was a five second pause the testor would repeat the sentence
that the child had successfully done and then repeat the sentence up
16—rh
to where the preposition would be the next word to be said.
The children were verbally encouraged to continue as long as they
could, until they either became visibly nervous or could only repeat
the same preposition they had previously used. The repetitions, of
course, were not counted.
OBSERVATIONS
The study was not intended to be a "classic" one; the method of
research and the size of the groups limited the observations, and
thus, the conclusions. However, an analysis of the data did show
several interesting aspects.
1. The mean number of prepositions for the highest group was
6.03. The range was one to fifteen.
2. The mean number of prepositions for the lowest group was
4.86. The range was two to ten.
3. Every response made was either a single word preposition or a
multiple preposition. The six most commonly used prepositions were
(in order of frequency) : over, in, on, under, around, on top of. Other
multiple prepositions were: down under, on the side of, away from,
on the trunk of. The most startling multiple preposition was, away
from the bottom of.
4. Two children in the highest group made only one response
each, the same preposition in both cases—over. Both children appeared
to be quite nervous and were either afraid of the testing situation or,
possibly, unable to function in a choice-making situation. The scores
for these two children seriouslyaffected the mean for the highest group.
DISCUSSION
What is a preposition? Webster's New World Dictionary gives the
following definition: "... a relation word . . . that connects a noun,
pronoun, or noun phrase to another element of a sentence . . ."
Needless to say, children (and even adults) are not aware of the
function of the preposition in our language. Seemingly, it is a culturally
inherent part of our language (not all languages have prepositions)
that is learned right along with doggie, Mommy, Daddy, etc. Al
though a child learns prepositions along with the rest of his language,
he evidently is not conscious of the linguistic structure of his language.
Went mountain the over the bear doesn't make sense to the child,
because (giggle) "That's silly." Perhaps the word silly is as appli
cable as any other word when describing a statement that is out of
linguistic sequence to a child. He doesn't know why it's silly—it's
rTi-n
just silly. In much the same way a child will learn that the outer
garment worn in cold weather is a "coaton," because he's heard his
parents say, "Come get your coat on."
The interesting thing about the preposition is its ambiguity; that
is, few, if any, children are aware of its function, yet it is an integral
part of their language. Could the type of test used in this study be
a valid and reliable measure of language ability as related to reading?
More refinement and more research will be needed before that question
is answered. However, it is suggested in this study that there may be
a connection between the common elements of reading ability and
the ability to provide prepositions in the appropriate place,
Seemingly the test is not directly affected by vocabulary, since
the children's responses overlapped a great deal. It appeared that
none of the prepositions was unknown to any of the children.
A perplexing factor was the two children who apparently could
not function where multiple answers were requested. The source of
the inference was, of course, unknown and needs further study.
SUMMARY
A test was devised in which first grade children were asked to fill
in orally a preposition in the appropriate blank. The high reading
group appeared to be able to provide more prepositions than the low
reading group, which suggested that there is some relationship between
reading ability and language ability as expressed by numbers of
prepositions.
More research is needed to determine if the relationship actually
exists and of what value it might be.
REFERENCES
1. Bever, Thomas, The Reading Process, Proceedings of the Con
ference on Communicating by Language, James F. Kavanaugh,
ed., U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Wash
ington, D.C., 1968, p. 77.
2. Labov, William, The Reading Process, Proceedings of the Con
ference on Communicating by Language, James F. Kavanaugh,
Ed., U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Wash
ington, D.C., 1968, p. 72.
3. Weber, R. M., A Linguistic Analysis of First-Grade Reading
Errors, mimeographed, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Laboratory
for Research on Language Skills, 1966.


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An Investigation of First Grade Children\u27s Use of Language Structure

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