7.10.12
Language Acquisition
The Linguistic Society of America
How do children acquire language? Do parents teach their children to talk?
No. Children acquire language quickly, easily, and without effort or formal teaching. It happens automatically, whether their parents try to teach them or not.
Although parents or other caretakers don't teach their children to speak, they do perform an important role
by talking to their children. Children who are never spoken to will not acquire language. And the language
must be used for interaction with the child; for example, a child who regularly hears language on the TV or
radio but nowhere else will not learn to talk.
Children acquire language through interaction — not only with their parents and other adults, but also with
other children. All normal children who grow up in normal households, surrounded by conversation, will
acquire the language that is being used around them.
And it is just as easy for a child to acquire two or more languages at the same time, as long as they are regularly interacting with speakers of those languages.
It's far easier for a child to acquire language as an infant and toddler than it will be for the same child to
learn, say, French in a college classroom 18 years later.
http://www.linguisticsociety.org/files/Language_Acquisition.pdf
Language environment in learning English
According to the most recent research, English Language Learners need ample opportunities to interact with those beyond their own level of proficiency, as well as to hear and participate in language and cognitive activities within (context).
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/articles/2012/10/04/20121004states-education-english-inadequate.html?nclick_check=1
死偏心
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/articles/2012/10/04/20121004states-education-english-inadequate.html?nclick_check=1
死偏心
6.10.12
Good start
The School Foundation fundraises for and helps support Florence 1, and director Debbie Hyler said early childhood education is one of the organization’s top priorities because there is such a need in the community and it yields better results for students down the road.
“When they start off behind, they stay behind and require remediation later,” Hyler said. “It is critical when you hear that children of poverty have heard 30 million fewer words by the time they’re 4 and that’s difficult to compensate for later on because that’s the time when brains develop and neurons are connecting.”
Exposure to loving chatter = explosion of language skills
Brain connections that begin to form in the first months of life are critical. Young children who are exposed to lots of loving chatter will experience an explosion of language skills as toddlers. Without early stimulation, the architecture of the young brain won’t develop in the same way and will provide a much poorer foundation for the future ability to learn.
Dr. Jack P. Shonkoff, director of Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child, met with Colorado policy makers on Thursday and spoke to children’s advocates at the annual luncheon for the Colorado Children’s Campaign.
His message was clear: intervene early; intervene now; and pool your resources.
Early childhood development
Early childhood development is a fragmented system in Australia and in need of an integrated approach, warns a Canadian academic.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-25/australia-urged-to-boost-child-development-efforts/4278874?section=sa
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-25/australia-urged-to-boost-child-development-efforts/4278874?section=sa
THEORY ON LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IN CHILDREN
In the half-century since Chomsky's theory was first proposed, debate about the origins of language has shifted away from an emphasis on innate capabilities and toward a greater awareness of the role of learning. Language acquisition is now perceived as a process more complex than binary choices that requires more cognition, or thinking.
http://www.livestrong.com/article/224250-chomskys-theory-on-language-development-in-children/
http://www.livestrong.com/article/224250-chomskys-theory-on-language-development-in-children/
2.10.12
Early experience affects brain development
October 1, 2012 |
Humans are born to a longer period of total
dependence than any other animal we know of, and we also know that mistreatment
or neglect during this time often leads to social, emotional, cognitive and
mental health problems in later life. It’s not hard to imagine how a lack of
proper stimulation in our earliest years – everything from rich sensory
experiences and language exposure to love and care – might adversely affect our
development, but scientists have only recently started to pull back the curtain
on the genetic, molecular and cellular mechanisms (which is strongly affected
by early experience) that might explain how these effects arise in the brain.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/10/01/the-story-of-a-lonely-brain/
1.10.12
Two articles on extensive reading
What is Extensive Reading?
http://erfoundation.org/wordpress/
Self-assessment tool in extensive reading programmes
http://blog.matbury.com/2012/09/24/using-the-c-test-generator-for-self-assessment-in-extensive-reading-programmes/
For young learners, join the highly interactive English program in Le Beaumont Language Centre, once or twice a week. Le Beaumont English program uses impromptu dialogue with participants to familiarize learners with important sentence patterns. The one hour conversation covers so many varieties of sentence patterns that it is like the spoken version of the extensive reading program. Children from English speaking families will benefit enormously from the focus drill in sentence patterns and usage.
http://erfoundation.org/wordpress/
Self-assessment tool in extensive reading programmes
http://blog.matbury.com/2012/09/24/using-the-c-test-generator-for-self-assessment-in-extensive-reading-programmes/
For young learners, join the highly interactive English program in Le Beaumont Language Centre, once or twice a week. Le Beaumont English program uses impromptu dialogue with participants to familiarize learners with important sentence patterns. The one hour conversation covers so many varieties of sentence patterns that it is like the spoken version of the extensive reading program. Children from English speaking families will benefit enormously from the focus drill in sentence patterns and usage.
Le Beaumont English program helps deepening knowledge of given forms in English
By Professor Richard Day, Chair and Co-founder of the Extensive Reading Foundation
Our course books concentrate on introducing new language items each appearing in new chapters, with new topics all the time. For example learners may been copula be and jobs in Unit 1, and in Unit2 the present simple tense and simple actions, in Unit 3 frequency adverbs and hobbies and are taught and so on. Each chapter has something new – new grammar, new vocabulary, new reading skills, new pronunciation points, and so on. Thus the structure of course books shows us that they are not concerned with deepening knowledge of a given form, only introducing it or giving minimal practice in it beyond a token review unit, or test. They do not concentrate on the amount of revisiting and revising necessary for acquisition. The assumption underlying most courses and course books is that our learners have ‘met’ or ‘done that now’ and we don’t need to go back to it, so we can move on. Adopting this view of language teaching (that ‘teaching equals learning’ implicit in these materials) is a massive mistake if that is all we do. We have seen we need to meet the language features a lot in order to learn them. We also must meet them under the right conditions.
Very often in language programs I see teachers using native materials with the intention of exposing the learner to ‘authentic’ texts. This is fine if, and this is a huge if, if the learner can deal with it. If not, then the text is noise and frustrational (for the teacher and learner) and not instructional but interfering with instruction.
Learners also must meet these items in real contexts to see how they work together, to see how they fit together. In other words learners must get a ‘sense’ or ‘feeling’ for how the language works. This can only be done by meeting the language items very often and by seeing them work together in actual language use (i.e. from their reading or listening). This depth of knowledge gives learners the depth of language awareness and confidence to feel comfortable with the language that will enable them to speak or write. Thus any program that does not allow learners to develop their comfort zone of language is denying them the chance to progress to productive language use.
This depth of knowledge of language must, and can only, be acquired through constant massive exposure.
[For older children, this massive task requires massive amounts of reading and listening. For younger children, or for slow starters, the best way is to join Le Beaumont's English program once or twice a week. We build up this depth of knowledge through focus use around topics of interest to children.]
Even after several years of English education, Japanese learners cannot make even simple sentences. Simply put, they did not meet enough language to make sense of what they were been taught in school. The endless drudgery emphasizing only abstract knowledge for tests, at the expense of language use, compounds this problem.
http://erfoundation.org/wordpress/
s.
Our course books concentrate on introducing new language items each appearing in new chapters, with new topics all the time. For example learners may been copula be and jobs in Unit 1, and in Unit2 the present simple tense and simple actions, in Unit 3 frequency adverbs and hobbies and are taught and so on. Each chapter has something new – new grammar, new vocabulary, new reading skills, new pronunciation points, and so on. Thus the structure of course books shows us that they are not concerned with deepening knowledge of a given form, only introducing it or giving minimal practice in it beyond a token review unit, or test. They do not concentrate on the amount of revisiting and revising necessary for acquisition. The assumption underlying most courses and course books is that our learners have ‘met’ or ‘done that now’ and we don’t need to go back to it, so we can move on. Adopting this view of language teaching (that ‘teaching equals learning’ implicit in these materials) is a massive mistake if that is all we do. We have seen we need to meet the language features a lot in order to learn them. We also must meet them under the right conditions.
Very often in language programs I see teachers using native materials with the intention of exposing the learner to ‘authentic’ texts. This is fine if, and this is a huge if, if the learner can deal with it. If not, then the text is noise and frustrational (for the teacher and learner) and not instructional but interfering with instruction.
Learners also must meet these items in real contexts to see how they work together, to see how they fit together. In other words learners must get a ‘sense’ or ‘feeling’ for how the language works. This can only be done by meeting the language items very often and by seeing them work together in actual language use (i.e. from their reading or listening). This depth of knowledge gives learners the depth of language awareness and confidence to feel comfortable with the language that will enable them to speak or write. Thus any program that does not allow learners to develop their comfort zone of language is denying them the chance to progress to productive language use.
This depth of knowledge of language must, and can only, be acquired through constant massive exposure.
[For older children, this massive task requires massive amounts of reading and listening. For younger children, or for slow starters, the best way is to join Le Beaumont's English program once or twice a week. We build up this depth of knowledge through focus use around topics of interest to children.]
Even after several years of English education, Japanese learners cannot make even simple sentences. Simply put, they did not meet enough language to make sense of what they were been taught in school. The endless drudgery emphasizing only abstract knowledge for tests, at the expense of language use, compounds this problem.
http://erfoundation.org/wordpress/
s.
Learning English, vocabulary
English is made up of a very few extremely common words that make up the bulk of the language we meet. In written text, we know that about 2000 word families (words including the inflections e.g. helped, helping, and common derivations e.g. helpless unhelpful) cover about 85-90% of general texts (Nation, 2001). However, vocabulary learning is more than just learning words. There are the shades of meaning, the nuances, the pronunciation to learn as well.
http://erfoundation.org/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/wp-youtube-lyte/lyte/play.png
Gestures are paramount
BY TOM RAGAN
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
The federal No Child Left Behind Act requires public schools to monitor limited English speaking students and show them making progress. It's a mammoth task in the Clark County School District, where roughly one-third of more than 300,000 students are identified as English language learners. Among district students, 157 languages from 147 countries are spoken.
Both schools and students struggle to meet the federal mandate requiring evidence of annual improvement.
It's the same diversity visible in the local workforce, said Norberta Anderson, director of the district's English Language Learner Program, or ELL. Almost 40 million visitors flock to Las Vegas annually, and their needs are met by an army of service industry workers bulked up by new immigrants who send their children to public schools.
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
The federal No Child Left Behind Act requires public schools to monitor limited English speaking students and show them making progress. It's a mammoth task in the Clark County School District, where roughly one-third of more than 300,000 students are identified as English language learners. Among district students, 157 languages from 147 countries are spoken.
Both schools and students struggle to meet the federal mandate requiring evidence of annual improvement.
It's the same diversity visible in the local workforce, said Norberta Anderson, director of the district's English Language Learner Program, or ELL. Almost 40 million visitors flock to Las Vegas annually, and their needs are met by an army of service industry workers bulked up by new immigrants who send their children to public schools.
One of the strategies passed on to regular teachers is that gestures are paramount in working with English language learners. Instruction often can morph into a game of charades, said Laurie Daly, an ELL teacher at Spring Valley High School.
"Think back when you took your first foreign language class," she says. "It's much of the same thing. We use flash cards, and we play all sorts of games. It's like starting from scratch."
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