Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
One of the most significant developments in recent work on child language has been the increasing number of studies which report the existence of individual differences: differences not only in rate of development but also in characteristic patterns of use and perhaps also in patterns of learning. Since the existence of such differences could have far-reaching implications for the design and use of language programmes in clinical and educational settings, and for policy decisions more generally in the fields of early child care and education, it is important carefully to examine the claims that have been made and, in particular, to evaluate their theoretical and methodological foundations. The first part of this chapter will therefore be devoted to a consideration of these issues, before going on to discuss the main areas in which research on variation has been carried out. Inevitably, no more than an overview can be presented here but, where appropriate, references will be made to books and articles in which specific issues are more fully discussed.
Types of variation
Let us imagine that we pick a group of children and attempt to describe them – their personalities, the sorts of homes they come from, their favourite activities, who they spend their time with, and so on. We shall quickly find that they are all different – different, probably with respect to each of the headings that we consider, and certainly different in the combined profiles that we might attempt to construct.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.