Linguistic style in educational centers for poor preschool children

Abstract

The linguistic style of paraprofessional adults in charge of poor preschool children, between 3 and 4 years of age, in educational Chilean centers has been analysed in this work to relate it with the children's linguistic development.
With this aim, 18 Nursery School Assistants were observed for about two or three hours each in their classrooms. Written transcriptions and video recordings were used for such purpose. Later on, all intelligible dialogue interactions between adult and children were analysed. Matrices for five linguistic levels ­including non-verbal language­ were employed to register the data.

A global description of three linguistic input styles was obtained. The results of language tests applied to the children were contrasted with the three styles found for the adults.