Chapter 10 & 13
Language Production
1. How does this topic fit into what I have learned already in this course?
Language involves all or our cognitive processes. Once again everything seems to come together to allow the formation and flow of language. Speakers need to read signals from listeners to check for understanding. They also need to be cautious of ambiguous language. When writing, our working memory is hard at work along with long term memory. Over active top-down processing can affect our language and writing abilities. All themes of the text are supported in this chapter.
2. What am I still not clear on in this week's reading(s)?
I found the information in chapter 10 to be pretty basic and easy to understand. What I found interesting was reading about the studies performed with infants. It seems amazing that babies can so easily distinguish between sound patterns and types of words. It seems logical though given the fact that when we talk to babies we change our tone based on the words we want to emphasize. This information seems to reinforce what many teachers already know. Home life, including language exposure, makes a huge difference in how a child learns to read.
3. Under what conditions would I apply this material to my own teaching/work?
For the most part, I feel as if the information is material that most teachers already apply and use in their classroom. I was hoping for some light to be shed on writing. It is one of the hardest subjects to teach in my opinion. I am always trying to find material to help me help my students. It seems like students have such a difficult time expressing their thoughts with words. I agree with the text in regards to overconfidence being an issue and that you can proofread someone else’s writing easier than your own. The most important information that I plan on taking into my classroom is the benefit of using writing to help deal with life experiences. I have several students in my classroom with “baggage.” In fact, I am more than likely going to be making a call this week to DCFS. I have a student that came back to school this week acting strangely. He was instructed not to talk about it so now I am going to ask my administrator about how to incorporate a writing assignment in my class.
I absolutely love writing and enjoy teaching it. As an 8th grade language arts teacher, I feel that middle schoolers need to write every day, so I have a them write each day for 5-10 minutes in their journals when they first come into the classroom. Sometimes I give them a prompt on the board, but most of the time they can write about anything that is on their mind. We keep the journals in the classroom and if students want to talk about anything, I give volunteers a minute to share with the class. This is really helpful with speaking as well. I try to get people to come out of their shell, but I do not require everyone to speak. Good luck with your student. I think you'll find that having him write will be helpful.
ReplyDeleteIn a linguistics class I took, I learned about the different ways that mothers talked to their children, or don't talk, in some cultures. While in America we use motherese- changing tone, emotion, baby words, other cultures have different approaches. In one culture in Africa, they talk to their baby as if it were an adult- no simplifications. In another, they don't talk to their child until they have said the words "breast" which is the linguistic initiation into the culture. In any event, the children all acquire the same level of language (mastery-proficient), regardless of how the mother talks to the child.
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