How do teachers boost language development?

Tiffany Hogan: We're often told that language develops naturally. Word reading isn't natural. We need to teach it systematically and explicitly, but language develops naturally. This is true, but language also develops in environments and children are in schools and that's their environment for majority of the time. So we can stimulate language. Even though it's developing naturally, we need to give it a boost and it only develops what children are hearing. So research shows us that if teachers use complex language, children tend to mirror that complex language. So all children can benefit from systematic explicit instruction in language. That's how we kind of move that forward. Also, language is context specific. So the language you use in home might be different than the language used in schools. The language of books is different than the language we use in spoken language. So they need to have exposure to all types of language and vocabulary and grammar so that they can develop it for academic context and social context.