The document describes the author's experiences with language development from early childhood through school. Some of the author's first words were "daddy" and they had difficulty pronouncing words like "music" until age 4. Taking ballet lessons exposed them to French and Italian terms. The author enjoyed being read books by their parents from a young age and developed an interest in reading independently around ages 7-8. They performed well in reading assessments in primary school and enjoyed creative writing assignments. The author's experiences support theories by Kroll and Chall regarding adapting writing for different situations as a teen and stages of reading development from pleasure reading to critical analysis.

1. My Own Language Development Story
First word: Daddy
The first word I learnt to say was ‘daddy’. It developed from d-a-d-d-a to d-a-
d-d-y when I was around 1 years old. When I was around two/three years
old I had difficulty saying the word ‘music’. According to my dad I
pronounced it as m-o-o-s-k-i-c and then eventually learned to pronounce it
when I was about four due to taking up dance lessons and hearing those
around me repeat the word correctly. I also had difficulty saying
‘Metropolitan’ and ‘Piccadilly’ due to the length of the words, which in time
I learned to say by sounding out each syllable. Also, to this day, I still have
difficulty saying the word ‘economy’ without having to say it multiple times
in order to get the pronunciation correct.
When I was three years old I took up ballet lessons. Many of the positions
and moves are in French or Italian so as I grew up I learned preposition
terms and other general words in French and Italian. This helped me when
I began French lessons in year 4 in primary school. I also began to learn the
piano when I was about seven years old and many of the French/Italian
terms were also included when I learned to read music.
Examples:
Allégro - al – LAY – groh – meaning brisk or lively. (an Italian term)
Jeté – meaning ‘thrown’ - ballet leap in which the weight of the dancer is
transferred from one foot to the other. The dancer “throws” one leg to the
front, side, or back and holds the other leg in any desired position upon
landing. (a French term)
This developed my interest in learning other languages which I was able to
continue to explore in high school where I started to learn German and
Spanish.
Favourite books when I was growing up:
The Peter Rabbit collection by Beatrix Potter - (mum read this to me until I
was three years old – I enjoyed looking at the picture)
Rainbow Magic books by Daisy Meadows
My Secret Unicorn collection by Linda Chapman
(I read these collections after my mums friend bought them for me when I
was seven/eight years old)

2. Books by Jacqueline Wilson eg The Illustrated Mum, The Suitcase Kid, Bad
Girls, Vicky Angel, Girls in Tears and The Worry Website
Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot
(I started reading these books when I was in year 5 – nine/ten years of age
– upon finding them in library myself)
Chronicles of Narnia by C.S Lewis
Anne of Green Gables by L.M Montgomery
(These books were recommended to me personally by my year 6 teacher
when I was about eleven years old. I really enjoyed reading Anne of Green
Gables)
Who did you read with?
My mum and dad read to me every day up until I was able to read on my
own. My mum usually read to be during the day, and both of my parents
would alternately read to me before bed. My mum took me to our local
library when I was a toddler where the librarian would read a story to a
group of kids and then we would do a creative activity based on the book
we just read. Because I went to the library often as a child, I always
participated in reading challenges which was encouraged by my mum. I
preferred reading by myself in a quiet place but also read aloud to the class
in English lessons in primary school.
What are your early memories of reading or speaking?
My parents always tell me that I carried a book everywhere I went when I
was younger. When I couldn’t read, I’d make up a story based on the
pictures I could see in the book. In old home videos, when I was a toddler I
liked to talk a lot but none of what I said made any sense, I just liked the
idea of ‘saying things’. When I learned a new word I’d constantly repeat it
for days and I’d normally babble to myself. To stop me babbling to myself,
my parents would always talk to me and ask me questions to allow me to
talk properly. I remember my parents carrying around a little cassette with
all my favourite nursery rhymes and they would play it whenever we were
in the car. I’d learn the words to the rhymes and singing them over and
over again. I remember my favourites being ‘Twinkle Twinkle’, ‘Humpty
Dumpty’ and ‘Goosey Goosey Gander’.

3. What do you remember of reading or speaking in early school
years?
In terms of reading and writing, I remember taking spelling tests very
seriously in primary school. I always enjoyed learning the meaning of new
words and finding ways of using them in my sentences. I also remember
have to do creative writing where we had to write about our weekend in
little log books in year 1. This allowed us to work on our grammar,
sentence structure and spelling and develop our writing skills.
In terms of speaking, when I was three years old, I used to question
absolutely everything. My favourite word was ‘why?’ which really annoyed
my parents. In school we sang a lot of hymns and songs in assembly from a
young age, which also helped our reading as we read the lyrics off a screen.
With regards to reading, in school we did a lot of reading in groups. I was in
the top group for reading so I believe we read slightly more advanced
books compared to the rest of the class, in terms of the length of the book
and the grammar and vocabulary. To consolidate what we learnt from the
book we did a lot of comprehension which helped our writing skills as well.
Do any of the theorists we have looked at so far have any
relevance with the story of your own development?
I believe that my own language development can be associated with Kroll and
Chall’s stages. I definitely think that as I became a teenager I developed my
own style of writing as a result of having to write essays in high school and
reading different genres of books and newspapers. This supports Kroll’s stages
as he proposed that when during their teenage years, children are able to
adapt their writing confidently to different situations. I have found that I
learned to do this at the beginning of high school and my ability to do this has
improved and developed through the range of subjects I have chosen to do
over the years. Looking at Chall’s stages of reading, I can relate to the fact I did
learn to read fluently when I was around seven years old, but I only read fiction
and it was for pleasure. As Chall proposed, I was able to obtain new
information when I read and used reading as a way of acquiring new
knowledge when I was around nine/ten years old. It was at this age that I was
introduced to non-fiction. In addition, Chall proposed that children are able to
think critically about what they read with a deeper understanding of the

4. information. I support this idea because I began to do this in high school when
we analysed and had to write essays on different books such as ‘Stone Cold’,
‘Of Mice and Men’, ‘Pig Heart Boy’ and ‘Martyn Pig’. Although our essays were
based on the linguistics of the stories we also had to talk about the context of
the book which demonstrated our understanding of the book and give our own
opinions of the novel we had read highlighting the development of our
viewpoints.