Abstract
Question-asking plays a fundamental role in how children come to understand the world around them. When children ask questions, including wh-questions (those that begin with words like who, what, when, where, why and how), they actively engage in learning, because question-asking is a means of exploring concepts and building knowledge. Child speakers of Germanic and some other languages start to acquire single wh-questions (such as Where is Mommy?) early, but mastery of more complex wh-questions (such as Who is holding what, and why? or What did he think he heard?) occurs later, causing wh-questions to be viewed as later-developing syntactic structures. Investigating how young learners acquire the ability to understand and produce wh-questions can offer insights into their cognitive and linguistic development, and could allow one to establish whether there are groups of children who are at risk for developmental delays and therefore in need of intervention that supports language acquisition.
This article reports on a study conducted among mother-tongue speakers of Afrikaans in the Foundation Phase of schooling in South Africa. It investigated learners’ acquisition of the ability to comprehend and produce wh-questions, and specifically whether a learner’s socioeconomic background is related to their acquisition of wh-questions. The rationale for the study was based on the recognition that disparities in socioeconomic status (SES) have often been reported to be related to disparities in language development, which can, in turn, influence academic achievement and lifelong learning outcomes.
The study included two groups of participants in a cross-sectional research design: Grade R learners (5- to 6-year-olds, who were at the beginning of the Foundation Phase) and Grade 3 learners (8- to 9-year-olds, at the end of the Foundation Phase). All learners were from Afrikaans-speaking homes and, according to their teachers, were typically developing. Including Grade Rs and Grade 3s allowed for calculating the progress made in wh-question acquisition from the beginning to the end of the Foundation Phase. Of the 432 learners whose parents consented to their participation and who met the selection criteria of age, home language and developmental status, 299 were in Grade R and 133 in Grade 3. In terms of SES, 75 learners were from low-SES schools (National Quintile 1 to 3) (35 boys and 40 girls) and 357 from mid-SES schools (National Quintiles 4 and 5) (166 boys and 191 girls).
To assess the learners’ comprehension and production of wh-questions, two subtests of the Afrikaans version of the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation (DELV) were administered individually to each of the learners who participated in the study. The DELV is a child-friendly, picture-based, comprehensive child language assessment tool designed to assess a range of language skills in a linguistically and culturally fair manner. The two subtests were the Question Comprehension subtest in the Syntax domain (10 items) and the Question Asking subtest in the Pragmatics domain (9 items). Several question types are included: The Question Comprehension subtest assesses the child’s ability to provide the correct answer to (the Afrikaans equivalent of) verbal stimuli such as “Who is eating what?” or “What did the mom say she bought?”. The Question Asking subtest assesses the ability to ask a question based on stimuli such as “This boy is sad for a reason. Ask me the right question and I will show you the answer” while showing the child a picture of a crying boy standing next to a blanked-out object on the floor. Should the child ask, “Why is the boy sad?” or a similar question, the page is turned to show a picture of the same boy standing next to an ice cream cone dropped and melting on the floor.
The results indicated that SES is related to the acquisition of wh-questions among young mother-tongue speakers of Afrikaans. Whereas neither the low-SES nor the mid-SES group had achieved mastery levels in the comprehension or production of wh-questions by Grade 3 (with mastery defined as a score of 88% or higher), there was a statistically significant difference in performance between the two SES groups.
In Grade 3, learners in the mid-SES group demonstrated significantly higher overall scores compared with their peers in the low-SES group. This could indicate that learners from mid-SES backgrounds may have more exposure to rich linguistic environments both at home and in school, which can contribute to more advanced language development. These environments often provide children with more opportunities to engage in extended conversations, hear a greater variety of vocabulary items, and practise using language in diverse and meaningful ways, which can support the acquisition of later-developing syntactic structures such as wh-questions.
Despite the difference between the SES groups, an encouraging finding was that learners from the low-SES schools showed substantial improvement between Grade R and Grade 3. Specifically, the low-SES group demonstrated a 30% increase in wh-question comprehension and a 38% increase in their ability to produce such questions, compared with the mid-SES group, which showed increases of 11% and 17% in comprehension and production respectively. These results indicate that whereas learners from mid-SES backgrounds started at a higher baseline, the learners from low-SES backgrounds made greater relative gains over the course of the Foundation Phase.
Understanding how the comprehension and production of wh-question are acquired can inform the design of targeted language interventions for young learners. Teachers, speech-language therapists, and curriculum developers can use information such as that provided by this study to support learners who may be at risk of language delays.
In conclusion, this study provides information on the relationship between SES and the acquisition of wh-questions among mother-tongue speakers of Afrikaans in the Foundation Phase. Whereas learners from mid-SES backgrounds demonstrated better overall performance, both SES groups showed significant progress over the course of the Foundation Phase, with more progress made by the learners in the low-SES than in the high-SES group. This indicates that significant change in language skills still occurs during this phase of schooling, which should encourage the creation of linguistically rich Foundation Phase environments.
Keywords: child language acquisition; double exhaustive questions; Foundation Phase; Grade R; Grade 3; long-distance questions; socioeconomic status; wh-questions
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