Oral language in the early years of schooling Oral language plays a vital role in the learning and lives

of all students, but particularly early childhood students. These students learn to adjust their home language in order to use and understand the language of schooling. Michael Halliday lists seven functions of oral language which relate to the different ways young children use language to achieve particular purposes within particular contexts. These functions are:

Instrumental I want Regulatory Do as I tell you Interactional Me and you Personal Here I come Heuristic Tell me why Imaginative Lets pretend Representational Ive got something to tell you
(Halliday, The Language of Early Childhood, 2003)

According to Halliday these functions are the foundation of adult language and provide an apprenticeship into the notion of genre. As children develop an understanding of the predictable language patterns of common genres they begin to realise the potential of language. The functions are not hierarchical, although Instrumental is usually observed first, and Representational is usually the last to develop. For very young children each utterance begins as only one function. The functions begin to shade into each other, and eventually evolve into abstract functional components of the adult grammatical system. Halliday states that the two functions crucial to success in school are Personal and Heuristic. The ability to operate effectively in these functions is something that has to be learnt; it does not follow automatically from the acquisition on the grammar and vocabulary of the mother tongue. (Halliday, The Language of Early Childhood, 2003) In order to support students to become competent in all language functions, strategic decisions need to be made in order to plan the teacher talk and choose the most appropriate teaching and learning strategy. The following teaching and learning strategies are excerpts from the Prep and Years 1 to 3 literacy Professional Development programs.

Hallidays function Instrumental: I want Regulatory: Do as I tell you Interactional: Me and you Personal: Here I come Heuristic: Tell me why Imaginative: Lets pretend Representational: Ive got something to tell you

Description getting things done satisfying material needs influencing the behaviour, feelings or attitudes of others includes the language of rules and instructions getting along with others to include or exclude expressing individuality and personal feelings making public his/her own individuality seeking and learning using language to explore his/her environment a way of learning about things creating stories, games and new worlds linguistic play including poems, rhymes and riddles not necessarily about anything at all communicating information conveying a message with specific reference to the processes, persons, objects, abstractions, qualities, states and relations of the real world around him/her

Example I want a banana! Excuse me Mrs H, can you help me with the computer? You mustnt take things that dont belong to you. First I you need a rake and you have to build over the rake. Can I please have a go after you? Do you like cricket too Henry? I know that song cause we sang it at Kindergarten. And Ive got a dog!

We could make a water thing to tell how much rain we got. Why?

Does this hurt when I bend it? You have fractured your leg really bad girl! Alice the camel has one hump, one hump, one hump.

I made these earrings with pink and purple beads! It is raining really heavy and heavy all day.

Adapted from Halliday, M. A. K. 1969, Relevant models of Language, in 2003, The Language of Early Childhood, Continuum, London.