The language play of kindergarten children

Play has long been hypothesized to serve important social, emotional and cognitive functions. Although the existence of language play has been documented, the types and functions of language play in naturalistic settings have received scant attention. In this study, children’s classroom language play and its relationship to measures of literacy and metalinguistic develop-ment were examined. Twenty kindergarten children were observed and audiotaped for one hour. Following the observation period, children were administered the Test of Early Reading Ability (TERA), a word definition task and a riddle explication task. Language play was found in more than 23 % of children’s utterances and was positively correlated with the riddle explication task. Children’s ability to explicate riddles correlated positively with their TERA scores. Young children’s language play represents an important aspect of their metalinguistic and literacy development. INTRODlIC’1’fON Despite thc pervasiveness and inherent appeal of childrcn’s language play, we still know very little about its occurrence in naturalistic settings (Horgan 1981, Pepicello & Weisberg 19h ~). Existing work describing spontaneous language ’ play is limited to case studie