Is my eight year old struggling with English?

By Devon Puttick

 

 

Many parents have the worry of "how quick is my child progressing with their English?" "Are they above or below the expected standard?" Hopefully I can give you an insight of what to expect from your child and give you more of an understanding of their English skills.

I know that a lot of boys at this age do not have a very long attention span. Especially sitting down and writing for long periods of time; they would rather be running around playing. I can tell you this from my own personal experience from my little brother. I got him to sit down for ten minutes and write me a few sentences about school. He hated it and got became easily distracted with his surroundings. However he managed to complete his little task. I also researched on the internet on other eight year old style of writing. They both had different styles of writing one was more advanced than the other but how could I tell? I can show you.

 Firstly you need to understand the basic theory created by Kroll in 1981 for children aged around 8. They could be at a consolidation stage, which is a less advance way of writing and the differentiation stage which is the more advanced style of writing.

The consolidation stage consists of the children writing structure to be written on how they would speak rather than in a written language. They use non- standard spelling and have the habit of putting a full stop at the end of every line of writing along with repeating and using simple words; however they are able to write ideas and words independently

The differentiation stage shows that the children have the ability to write with consistence and begin using literate language as their grammar would be improving as they use punctuation accurately.

8 year olds tend to use a lot of conjunctions such as "and" and "because" if your child is doing this they are coming out of the consolidation stage  as they are using other words to not stop their writing rather than using a full stop. This is a good sign.

If you start noticing that your child is starting to use adverbial phrases rather than using simple verbs, noun phrases become more complex and also using preposition phrases this will show you  that your child is becoming more creative with their writing and is moving up. Before you know it they will be young writers able to adapt to various language styles such as writing a story using narrative structures then switching to oral structure for a character and so on.

I wouldn't worry if they are easily distracted from their writing every child is different and prefers to do different activities some are more advanced in different subjects than others. I would suggest that if you wanted to get your child more involved in English then start reading imaginative stories I recommend doing this to improve their creativity when they write as they would similar ideas from their favourite book. Introduce them to new words and explain the meaning, adjectives are more effective as they can use them when writing this enhances their vocabulary.