Continuum of Informational Discourse Skills

Abstract

The Universe of Discourse

SLPs and teachers must understand the continuum of discourse development to support children’s acquisition of informational/expository skills. From very early on, information is incorporated into conversations parents have with young children. Moffett (1968) delineated a number of discourse-based genres that first occur in home contexts and then become more academically based. Referred to as a “universe of discourse,” Moffett proposed that children develop a variety of genres that serve different functions. These genres can be viewed along a developmental continuum from causal conversation to argumentation (see Table 1).

Table 1.

Universe of Discourse.

Discourse	Characteristics
Conversations with descriptions or recordings	• Record or describe what is happening • Dialogue • Talk about familiar topics • Commenting on immediate context/events
Reports or accounts of past events	• Narrating, relating what happened • Talk of past events that may be less familiar and more decontextualize • Serves as a bridge to more unfamiliar/abstract discourse
Informational discourse	• Involves a generalization about objects, persons, events; generally what happens
Theoretical/argumentative discourse	• Relates what may, will, or could happen • Theoretical uses information from expository texts to generate or support hypotheses • Argumentative uses information to persuade

Conversations With Descriptions or Recordings

In conversations, persons engage in dialogue, talking about topics familiar to the speakers and frequently asking about and commenting on immediate contexts and events. In a somewhat more structured conversation they “record” or describe what is happening. When engaged in recording, a speaker has long stretches of monologues that tend to require longer phrases and sentences and more explicit vocabulary.

Reports or Accounts of Past Events

Reporting, also referred to as narrating by Moffett, involves relating what happened. It typically involves talking about and giving accounts of past events, which may be less familiar to participants and more decontextualized than conversations within an immediate context. Typically, one narrates about a particular object, person, or event. In terms of content and structure, the process of reporting has been viewed as a bridge between conversation talk and expository discourse because its linguistic characteristics and cognitive demands are midway between conversation and exposition and contain elements of both (Westby, 1994).

Informational/Expository Discourse

Informational/expository discourse deals with conveying information. This genre involves a generalization about objects, persons, or events; it conveys “generally what happens” (Moffett, 1968). For example, rather than a story or personal experience about a specific duck, an informational text describes ducks in general.

Theoretical/Argumentative Discourse

Theoretical/argumentative discourse relates what may, will, or could happen. The theoretical focus uses information from expository texts to generate and support hypotheses, whereas discourse with an argumentative slant uses information to persuade. The theoretical/argumentative genre requires knowledge of a subject and may be used to make a point, delineate a position, view a topic from more than one perspective, or encourage adoption of a particular stance. For example, students might be asked to argue why it is important for scientists to investigate why frogs are disappearing.

Interactional Processes That Facilitate Informational Discourse Skills

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) put considerable emphasis on reading and writing informational discourse. Educators have typically considered that comprehension and production of informational discourse/expository text is a relatively late development compared with conversation and narrative skills. Yet the foundations for informational discourse are laid down in the preschool years. Much of children’s early exposure to informational discourse occurs in conversations (Bova, 2011; Orsolini, 1993; Snow & Beals, 2006). Within conversational contexts, parents often engage in processes that support the development of early informational discourse. Certain types of adult–child interactions are strongly associated with improvements in children’s language scores and better academic performance in school. For example, the number of conversational turns is more highly correlated with children’s performance on a language test than the number of adult words they hear (Zimmerman et al., 2009). In addition to number of conversational turns, other aspects of parent interactional processes facilitate higher level language skills in children. The processes, presented below along a quasi-developmental continuum, begin with explaining immediate events and end with arguing and persuading. These processes, initially used by parents, can be helpful for SLPs and educators in guiding decisions about early intervention practices with young children that can promote the foundations for comprehension and production of informational discourse.

Explain and Problem Solve in Immediate Situation

Children begin to acquire informational discourse skills when engaged in explanations about what’s immediately happening (Bova, 2011; Frazier, Gelman, & Wellman, 2009). As children are interacting with parents in everyday situations, opportunities arise for explanations and problem solving. Parents explain why they behave in certain ways and how to accomplish desired tasks, and why certain situations or phenomena occur, starting with events that are immediately occurring.

Donaldson (1986) documented the development of different types of explanations in children, beginning in the preschool years. Children and adults explain the purpose for objects, machines, or actions (why we need to go to the store; why we look both ways before crossing the street), procedures while making and doing things (how to make cookies; how to build a snowman; how to put a toy together when we’ve lost the directions), and causes and effects of actions (why you can’t take something you want in a store; why school was canceled because of the storm). Even 3- and 4-year-old children engage in causal explanations required for tasks involving physical, psychological, or logical relations, and they generally use the connectives because and so correctly. These early explanations, as they relate to events that are very familiar or immediately happening, lay the cognitive and linguistic foundations for cause–effect and problem-solution informational texts.

Elaborate and Explain Information in Storybooks

Children acquire some informational discourse skills during book reading (Price, van Kleek, & Huberty, 2009). Within shared book reading, children experience adults commenting on and explaining ideas and relating story ideas to real life information. Explanations occur as parents tell what would happen in real life or why certain typical cause/effect relationships operate. In addition, comparisons are often associated with book reading as the adult compares the events in the story with the experiences of the child. Thus, rather than just labeling and describing objects and events in books, adults explain, elaborate, and evaluate (Reese, Cox, Harte, & McAnally, 2003; Sigel, Stinson, & Flaugher, 1991).

Co-Construct and Reflect on Past Events

Opportunities to relate information removed from time and space, including personal experiences that happened in the past, support higher level language (Fivush, 2011; Reese et al., 2003). Children who participate in interactions that use decontextualized references to nonimmediate content in the preschool years do better academically in later years (Sigel et al., 1991).

In addition to supporting decontextualized language skills, mothers who scaffold and elaborate children’s contributions to the reporting of past events help them develop strategies for remembering and evaluating experiences (Fivush & Fromhoff, 1988; Hudson, 1990; Peterson & McCabe, 1994). If the child does not recall a detail or a piece of information, a mother can provide the next piece of the event or explanation, integrating details already recalled, combining both of their contributions into a coherent account of what occurred. Such parents also ask many open-ended questions that both provide some information for the child and encourage the child to recall additional information (e.g., “What did we do in the zoo today?”). They integrate their children’s responses into the ongoing narrative to weave together a story that includes multiple components such as the who, what, when, and where of the event (e.g., “That’s right, we watched the trainers feeding the seals. Who else was with us?”). In reminiscing interactions, children tend to be exposed to abstract concepts and rare words that correlate to later vocabulary scores (Snow & Beals, 2006), complex syntactic patterns that code temporal and causal relationships, and communicative functions that relate to critical thinking (Orsolini, 1993; Sigel et al., 1991). In the process, children learn to produce explicit, monologue discourse essential in school contexts. Mothers who do a lot of elaborative reminiscing when engaged in conversations about past events set the stage for children’s development of explicit decontextualized language.

In addition to learning how to give accounts of past experiences and develop decontextualized language in the process, recounting and reminiscing about personal experiences serves to support evaluating and generalizing—critical processes for learning in school. Mothers who do a lot of elaborative reminiscing when engaged in conversations about past events model strategies for evaluating experiences (Fivush, 2011; Fivush & Fromhoff, 1988, Hudson, 1990; Peterson & McCabe, 1994). When reminiscing, these parents talk about the nonimmediate and, as a consequence, their language begins to take on the characteristics of academic talk. They explain and evaluate (“I think the monkeys screamed because they were frightened when the lions roared. I was frightened too. Were you?”). Also in the process of elaborating past experiences, parents relate specific events to general knowledge or information. They make generalizations (e.g., “Frogs eat insects. Some brightly colored frogs are poisonous.”).

Negotiate, Persuade, and Argue

Although argumentative or persuasive informational discourse is frequently considered the most complex type, its elements develop out of negotiations children and adults engage in to make a point, assert a right, or negotiate for possessions. Children learn to persuade and argue when told “no” or when they seek something adults do not permit (Weiss & Sachs, 1991). By 3 years of age, children understand and generate the principal components of an argument, either in face-to-face interaction or individual interviews. The ability to construct detailed, coherent rationales in defense of a favored position improves with age, but even young children show some competence in producing arguments in support of a claim (why I should get to stay up longer; why I should get a puppy for my birthday; Clark & Delia, 1976; Eisenberg & Garvey, 1981; Orsolini, 1993; Stein & Miller, 1993; Weiss & Sachs, 1991) and in understanding the structure of an argument (Chambliss & Murphy, 2002).

In sum, the scaffolding that occurs as parents interact with their children to achieve certain functions serves as the basis for the development of informational discourse skills in young children. Those same processes can be applied to intervention to teach informational discourse skills to children with language deficits in school. In turn, the early developing informational skills can lay the foundation for teaching more complex expository text skills involved in comprehending and producing written expository texts.

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