Project to strengthen initial education teachers: Strategies for early language development

Abstract

It´s been amply proved that there is an early and determining relationship between the knowledge of academic, standard language, and a higher level of achievement at school. We also know that children belonging to lower socio-economic status face an early disadvantaged situation, which limits the maximum development of their potentialities; in these cases, it is common that, by the time they have enrolled in school, it is already too late to close the growing gap between them and more economically advantaged groups. The present university social responsibility project provided a group of public preschool teachers with scientific, evidence-based, information, regarding the relation between early vocabulary, literacy development, and its implications for good school achievement. We shared a specific intervention proposal with the teachers, for early vocabulary teaching, based on dialogic or shared reading and the use of certain word learning strategies, both explicit and implicit.