Testing out developmental, psycholinguistics: Teachers research the adult/child role in conversation

Summary
Teachers generally assume that children's language expertise develops with the age of the child, and that any teacher/adult coversation with the child provides modelling on the part of the adult in the use of grammar, syntax and in vocabulary. The teachers in this study start out as a group to prove that language facility is age related and that adultlchild conversation is led and developed in the linguistic context by the adult. This article is based on the findings of a group of twelve teachers, although direct evidence is cited from only three teacher texts. After the teachers' investigations and analyses of audio tapes based on conversations with individual children, the teachers involved were surprised and in some cases shocked by their inevitable conclusions.