Adults’ and children's language in different situational contexts in Italian Nursery and Infant School

The aim of the present study is to analyse, through direct observations, the communicative competence of children's caregivers and children's language development in different situational contexts in Italian nursery schools (for children aged between six and 36 months, i.e. creches) and infant schools (for children aged between 38 and 72 months, i.e. kindergartens). Children's and adults' language production (i.e. number of utterances, number of words, and mean length of utterances), interactive episodes (i.e. a string of sentences involving at least two interlocutors), and adults' conversational functions) were considered in three situational contexts in both nursery and infant schools (mealtime, storytime and free play for the former; circle time, direct questions, and free conversation for the latter). One hundred and nineteen preschool children and 21 adults (12 educators for the nurseries and nine teachers for the infant schools) from seven educational settings participated in the study. Data analysi...