7.5: Language in Middle Childhood

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Identify milestones in language development in middle childhood
• Discuss the benefits and challenges facing multilingual speakers and learners

Eight-year-old Troy’s aunt has noticed that his vocabulary has grown considerably, and that she can now have detailed conversations with him about his day as well as about his hopes and dreams. He still makes some grammatical errors when he’s speaking, but they are becoming less frequent. He’s also starting to love puns and knock-knock jokes, which makes conversations with him so much more fun. And he loves sharing that he can count to ten in Spanish, French, and Mandarin—all thanks to a new initiative in his elementary school to expose children to world languages at an earlier age.

Language skills continue to develop during middle childhood, which is when children become much more effective communicators, both verbally and nonverbally. In this section, you’ll explore some of the major milestones they achieve before considering the benefits and challenges of multilingualism in middle childhood.

Language Milestones

By middle childhood children can easily express their thoughts and engage in full conversations, but language is complicated and continues to develop throughout childhood. There are significant increases in vocabulary and children continue to learn grammatical rules. They also learn that language changes when communicating with people in different social contexts (adults versus peers, for example). Children also make great strides in their reading abilities during middle childhood, which will become one of the major ways in which they learn as they get older. Facets of language development that improve in middle childhood including vocabulary and grammar, pragmatic skills, and reading skills.

Vocabulary and Grammar

Vocabulary increases dramatically in middle childhood and is associated with other developmental outcomes. Vocabulary is important for reading as well as for language processing (Li et al., 2021). Children with larger vocabulary sizes are also better at describing and recognizing emotions (Beck et al., 2012).

As children get older, they become more aware of the qualities of language and can think about and evaluate language, a skill known as metalinguistic awareness (Simard & Gutiérrez, 2017). For example, in addition to mastering new words, children begin to learn that many words have similar meanings and can refer to the same object or action, such as animal and mammal. They also begin to understand that one word can have multiple meanings. For example, duck can refer to an animal or an action. This new ability is one of the reasons children begin to appreciate humor, puns, and eventually sarcasm. For example, in the preceding vignette, Troy loves jokes. He might enjoy one like this: “What did Baby Corn say to Mama Corn? Answer: Where is Popcorn?”

What fuels the vocabulary explosion seen during middle childhood? Certainly, our everyday experiences are important for introducing us to specific words. Learning vocabulary is closely tied to reading, too, as well as to socioeconomic status (Van der Kleij et al., 2022). Children from lower socioeconomic statuses tend to be exposed to less language with less diverse vocabulary, which has consequences for vocabulary development and for reading (Lervåg et al., 2019). Vocabulary has also been shown to grow significantly during the school year but less so during summer holidays, particularly among low SES children (Van der Kleij et al., 2022).

More grammatical rules become familiar during middle childhood. Children begin studying the parts of language and sentence structure as one element of their formal schooling. They also begin to understand more complex grammar, such as passive voice (“The baby is being fed”) and conditional sentences (“If I had been home, I would have finished my chores”). For English-speaking children, grasping these more complex grammatical structures depends on gaining more experience with and exposure to sophisticated language and sentence structure. Thus, it takes longer to master these types of sentences than sentences that use active voice (“The baby is eating”). However, in other cultures that use more passive-voice sentences, children understand and use the passive voice earlier. For example, in Northern East Cree, a language spoken by Indigenous peoples in Canada, children use the passive voice much earlier than do children who are speaking English (Henke et al., 2024).

Pragmatics

As children get older, they continue to learn to change their speech in response to the needs of the listener. As discussed in 5.4 Language in Early Childhood, pragmatics is the way we use language in different social contexts, and a useful tool for developing social relationships with others. It requires understanding 1) how to use language for different functions such as requesting something, telling a story, or conveying knowledge, 2) how to use written language differently across contexts such as text messages versus emails or writing an essay for school, 3) how to change language to meet the needs of listeners as different as a grandparent and a friend, or to speak up in a noisy room, and 4) the “hidden” rules of conversation such as taking turns and using eye contact, body gestures, and facial expressions. The use of pragmatics during middle childhood also includes code-switching, which refers to using more than one form of language within a single conversation. Although it is often seen among multilingual speakers, children may also code switch when alternating between speech used in different social contexts such as speaking differently to peers versus teachers. For example, if you are talking to a peer you might use more casual language and slang, but quickly switch to more formal language when a teacher calls on you.

Although many children are able learn pragmatics through everyday social interactions, those with certain developmental disabilities may struggle to do so. For example, one study found that children with ADHD scored lower on a pragmatic language assessment than typically developing children, but higher than children with a developmental language disorder (Vassiliu et al., 2023). For example, a child with ADHD might sometimes have difficulty with language pragmatics by frequently interrupting others during conversations or speaking too loudly in a quieter space, which could be distracting or disruptive to peers.

Reading

Learning to read and write is a significant milestone for middle childhood. The fundamentals needed for reading—such as spoken language, an understanding of the alphabet and the sounds each letter makes, and the knowledge that spoken sounds correspond to written words—begins during infancy and early childhood. But it is during middle childhood that children coordinate these skills and begin to read (Figure 7.19). Unlike many other developmental skills, reading does not come naturally to most children. In fact, only 5 percent of children learn to read without help (Willingham, 2015). Reading requires explicit teaching as well as practice. The teaching of reading to children has been approached in several ways. The ongoing debate regarding which method is most effective is often referred to as the “reading wars” (Castles et al., 2018).

Figure 7.19 The improved reading skills of middle childhood can open new worlds of learning and curiosity. (credit: “Children and Nature” by Children Nature Network/nappy, Public Domain)

There are two primary approaches to teaching reading. The phonics approach helps children understand how to translate letters into sounds and then put those individual sounds together to create words. In essence, children are taught how to sound out words. Unlike many languages, however, English has more sounds (44) than letters (26) which makes learning to read it more difficult (Kerestes et al., 2024). For example, the letter C can make more than one sound including the /k/ sound as in “car” or the /s/ sound as in ‘pencil’. Even more confusing is that C can make both sounds within one word such as ‘council.’

A second approach to teaching reading, the whole-language approach, focuses on teaching reading in natural contexts such as books rather than focusing on the sounds that make up words. Since the early 2000s, many schools have adopted a balanced literacy approach, intending to blend the best elements of the phonics-based and whole-language methods. In addition to sounding out words phonetically, the balanced approach teaches students to recognize core words (often referred to as “sight words” in schools) like “they” or “and” as a single word rather than a collection of letters. Phonics is included based on research showing that phonics and phonemic awareness, the ability to identify and manipulate the individual sounds in words, are both important predictors of reading skills (Faris, 2023). In fact, children who have received instruction on phonics score significantly better on standardized tests of reading (National Early Literacy Panel, 2008). Recent research has also shown that a balanced literacy approach is effective for teaching English language learners (Mirhosseini & Sharif, 2022).³

Despite this intense focus on how to teach reading, by fourth grade only 32 percent of U.S. children are proficient readers (National Assessment of Educational Progress, 2023). Unfortunately, school closures related to the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a lower rate of proficient readers in elementary school and the negative impact was worse for students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds as well as for English learners and students with disabilities (Relyea et al., 2023).⁴ Difficulties learning to read are associated with later challenges in mental health, academic achievement, and vocations (Hendren et al., 2018). Children who are struggling with academic achievement, including reading, are more likely to drop out of school (Lowder et al., 2022). Many continue to have difficulty reading as adults. In fact, about 23 percent of U.S. adults lack literacy skills which is defined by the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies as “the ability to understand, evaluate, use and engage with written texts to participate in society, to achieve one’s goals, and to develop one’s knowledge and potential” (p. 61, OECD 2013). Compare this to other countries, such as Costa Rica, where only 4 percent of the population does not have literacy skills.

Intersections and Contexts: How Much Did COVID School Closures Set Students Back?

COVID-19 school closures had a significant impact on student learning. The pivot to remote learning negatively impacted student academic performance and many students did not perform at grade level on standardized assessment for both mathematics and reading both during the closures or after schools reopened (Colvin et al., 2022; Cortés-Albornoz et al., 2023). Furthermore, the loss of learning was worse for children living in lower SES families (Moscoviz & Evans, 2022). For example, low-income families had less access to devices and to reliable internet (Francis & Weller, 2022). In low-income households with several school-aged children, students were often forced to share a single device. As a result, many children from lower SES families were forced to drop out of school or received less learning time (Zagalaz-Sánchez et al., 2021).

The pandemic also increased stressors more for lower-income families with many households experiencing unemployment or underemployment that led to food and housing insecurity and increases in parental depression and anxiety (Fahle et al., 2023). All these factors may have impacted the mental health of children and their parents’ ability to help them with schoolwork. Finally, the pandemic increased social isolation in children due to the major disruptions that happened to daily life and activities (Fahle et el., 2023).

As a result of all these factors, research studies have reported larger losses in learning among children attending schools with higher levels of poverty than among children in lower poverty schools (Kuhfeld et al., 2022).⁵ It will likely take years to fully recover from this loss of learnings and will require schools to make significant investments in student learning over several years (Fahle et al., 2023).

Multilingualism

Many children around the world grow up in multilingual households, where more than one language is spoken. In the United States, approximately 26 percent of children are multilingual, a relatively low rate compared to other areas such as Singapore (90 percent), Europe (67 percent), and Canada (55 percent) although multilingualism is increasing in the United States (Luk, 2017; Wu et al., 2020). It varies quite a bit from state to state, with California having the highest rates at 43 percent and West Virginia the lowest, around 2 percent (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2018). U.S. multilingual children speak a total of more than 100 different languages, but approximately 75 percent speak Spanish and English (Dietrich & Hernandez, 2022).

Thus, in many parts of the United States, multiple languages may be spoken by the children in a single classroom. Even more challenging for teachers is the wide range of abilities among these children. While some may speak more than one language well and may have homes that are multilingual, others may not speak English as well as the language they speak at home. Others may be losing competence in their home language as they become more competent in the language spoken at school (Tse, 2001). Still others may view English as being more important for the future success than their first or home language and, thus, may be less likely to use the latter regularly (Mohamed, 2020).

Children who are multilingual must become adept at regularly switching between languages (Tulloch & Erika, 2023), a speech style called multilingual code-switching (or translanguaging). Multilingual code-switching requires competency in at least two languages and is associated with strongly identifying with two cultures (Yim & Clément, et al., 2021). While some children learn multiple languages at the same time beginning at birth, others may learn one language in their early years and then add a second. In this case it takes longer to master the second language than it does if both languages are learned at the same time (Paradis, 2023).

Link to Learning

Some people are unsure about how to handle themselves in unfamiliar social situations and will feel intimidated. Others can easily maneuver in any social situation and blend in easily because they understand how to code switch. Watch this TED Talk about code-switching by Katelynn Duggins to learn more.

The Impact of Multilingualism on Development

Recent research suggests that any disadvantages associated with being bilingual are erased by its numerous advantages (Dentella et al., 2024). These include better executive functioning, memory, selective attention, and analytical reasoning (Nguyen et al., 2023; Planckaert et al., 2023). For example, children who speak multiple languages have better cognitive control because they must inhibit one language while they use another. They also have better metalinguistic skills than children who only speak one language. For example, children who are bilingual can understand grammatical rules more easily than children who speak a single language. There are also social benefits to multilingualism, such as being able to participate in diverse communities (Djonov, 2019).

Link to Learning

What are the advantages to having a bilingual (or multilingual) brain? Watch this TED Talk by Educator Mia Nacamulli about how our brains benefit from knowing more than one language to learn more.

There are some challenges associated with multilingualism. Some children may have smaller vocabularies in both languages than children who only speak a single language (Bialystok & Feng, 2011). They may also have difficulties maintaining the language they speak at home. For example, some studies have shown that children who were multilingual before five years of age often ended up speaking only the dominant language of the country in which they lived by the time they were 5 years old (Verdon et al., 2014). However, the children of parents who encourage their children to be bilingual have more positive language outcomes than other multilingual children (Mak et al., 2023).

Approaches to Multilingualism in the Classroom

There is a long debate about how best to teach English to multilingual children who are English Language Learners (ELL), meaning they are not yet proficient in English by the time they start school. Several different strategies exist (ALİSOY, 2024). One consists of immersion programs, which teach all academic subjects in English. These programs are associated with an increased loss of the native language. Another strategy is to begin instruction in the primary language of the student and gradually add in instruction in English. These programs are referred to as developmental bilingual programs.

Programs between immersion and developmental bilingual programs are English as a Second Language (ESL) and two-way immersion programs. In ESL programs, all non-English speaking students are taught in a single classroom. Children often spend part of their day learning English in specific ESL classrooms, but there is no accommodation for their native language in other academic classes. In two-way immersion programs, instruction occurs equally in two languages (Collier & Thomas, 2017). Since both languages are valued equally, students feel their cultural heritage is respected. They have also been found to have enhanced self-esteem and to retain their native language better than students in other types of bilingual programs (Pedrone, 2018).

Two-way immersion programs are more effective than immersion programs for the successful learning of English (Linholm-Leary, 2011). However, two-way immersion programs are not universally accepted. Some research has suggested that there may not be positive impacts for all core academic subjects such as mathematics, reading, and science (Steele et al., 2017) and that it there are racial disparities for access to schools that offer this approach to language learning (Flores & Garcia, 2017). In addition, these programs are less common than immersion programs because they require teachers who are highly skilled and fluent in both languages. Two-way immersion is also not practical in schools in which multiple other languages are spoken besides English. Ultimately, the specific method applied often depends on the goals of the school. If the primary goal is to assimilate children into U.S. society and culture, the school will likely use an immersion approach. If the goal is to encourage multiculturalism, the two-way immersion approach is more likely to be effective.

Second Language Education

Children tend to learn new languages more easily than adults (Ghasemi & Hashemi, 2011). This may be partly because they are more willing to use the language without fear of making errors or because their brains have more neural plasticity or flexibility (Birdsong, 2017). In addition, non-native speakers who learned a language before the age of 10 are often difficult to distinguish from a native speaker of that language (Ghasemi & Hashemi, 2011). For this reason, childhood is often referred to as a critical period for the acquisition of a second language (Birdsong, 2017). Even adolescents up to age 17 or 18 can learn the grammar structure of a new language more easily than adults (Hartshorne et al., 2018).

Despite the clear research showing that children can learn a new language much more easily than they will be able to do so later in life, children often do not begin learning a new language in school until adolescence—if at all. In fact, only about 20 percent of children in the United States learn a second language during school (Stein-Smith, 2019). This is very different than in other countries where learning a second language is prioritized. For example, in most European countries, learning a second language is required and students begin learning another language in school between 6 and 9 years of age (Pew Research Center, 2018; Devlin, 2018) (Figure 7.20).

Figure 7.20 Learning more than one language in school is much more common in many European countries than in the United States. (data source: Pew Research Center; attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY 4.0 license)

Taken together, the human ability to learn multiple languages shows how adaptable and resilient the human brain is. The fact that children do such learning with more ease is another example illustrating a sensitive period in lifespan development.

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Footnotes

• 3This study (Mirhosseini & Sharif, 2022) uses the term “English as a Foreign Language (EFL).”
• 4This study (Relyea et al., 2023) uses the terms “English learner” and “English-fluent.”
• 5This study (Kuhfeld et al., 2022) uses the terms “low-poverty schools” and “high-poverty schools.”