This study examines whether children's decontextualized talk--talk about nonpresent events, explanations, or pretend--at 30 months predicts seventh-grade academic language proficiency (age 12). Academic language (AL) refers to the language of school texts. AL proficiency has been identified as an important predictor of adolescent text…

Both early childhood maternal language input and the quality of classroom instruction in elementary school have been shown to be important environmental supports in predicting children's literacy skill development. However, no studies have simultaneously examined these two environmental supports in relation to children's early language skills and…