Children's Authors, How children are taught in school, Children making virtuous errors whilst speaking

1 The best authors for 0-5 year olds

-     Janet & Allan Ahlberg. Books- Each Peach Pear Plum, The Jolly Postman or Other         People’s Letters

-     Eric Hill. Books- Where’s Spot?

-     Eric Carle. Books- The Very Hungry Caterpillar

-     David Mckee. Books- Elmer

     Puffin – popular children’s books

   The best authors for 6-8 year olds

-     Roald Dahl. Books- The BFG, The Magic Finger, James and the Giant peach

-    Jeff Kinney. Books-Diary of a Wimpey Kid

-     Michael Bond. Books – A Bear called Paddington

   The best authors for 9-11 year olds

      Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake. Books- Matilda

    C S Lewis. Books- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

     J K Rowling. Books- Harry Potter

   Harper Collins- popular books

Books for early year’s children are interactional. Sometimes there are stickers included in the books. They sometimes pop out (3D). They may have different materials in the books for the children to feel (Elmer elephant) they have big colourful pictures and minimum of writing. The Hungry Caterpillar has local topics in them, such as food, which may be interesting for the children as they will recognise the foods. Some contains buttons to press for music. If the child is 0-1 years they will be at the Enactive stage, generally using actions and touching tangible things. If the child is at 1-6 years they are usually focussing on images as they will be at the Iconic stage. –James Bruner

Books for 6-8 year olds have more compound sentences in them. They are more complex than 0-5 year old books. They contain more text and include words such as adjectives/ adverbs to make the child imagine what is happening in the story. They still contain pictures and are not overloaded with too much text. They usually will not be as interactive as 0-5 year old books. The books usually contain an interesting, imaginative story.

Books for 9-11 years have minimal pictures and contain more complex sentences. There are many books that are written after films such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Roald Dahl.

When I was younger my favourite book was The Very Hungry Caterpillar. This was and still is a very popular book for early year’s children. It is a big book containing colourful pictures on each page. It has local topics such as food on the pages and is educational as it shows us that a Caterpillar turns into a Butterfly. There were minimal words on the book.

There are different approaches for teachers to teach reading in schools. The main strategy is Phonics. Phonics enables a child to learn to read quickly and skilfully. Whilst learning phonics they are educated to identify the sounds that letters make and recognise the sounds involving the combinations of letters. E.g. ‘sh’ or ‘oo’, they then merge these sounds together from left to right to make a word. After learning the basics, children can then apply their knowledge to new words that they see or hear. Applying what they have learnt, to new words is a significant way of helping them to improve their reading.

The reason why phonics are used to teach children in schools is due to research proving that it is the most effective method of teaching. Phonics is structured. Children start with the simple sounds and improve to the more complex sounds. Phonics helps children of ages 5-7, when they start learning to read in Primary school. ‘Look and say’ is another method used to teach reading; however the children are not as accurate when reading as children learning phonics. Phonics particularly helps children with Dyslexia.

Arguments for Phonics: the government introduced a phonics screening check for pupils in 2012. This tests pupils on their reading, asking them to read 40 words. The amount of students meeting the expected standard has increased from 58% to 74% in 2014.

Look and Say is also a method of teaching children how to read. Rather than breaking down the word, like phonics, the child will learn by reading words as whole units. This method is usually done using flashcards. Children are told the word repeatedly whilst being shown a flashcard with the word on it. Sometimes there are pictures included. This learning technique enables them to ‘sight-read’ and they will be able to identify the word through pattern recognition. After learning and remembering words, children will continue to learn more complex vocabulary and have a lot more of it. 

Pros- children need to identify whole words to read fluently. Children can usually recognise any word when learning with the ‘Look and say’ method. 

Cons- If a word is unknown to the child; they will find it hard to read it. The child would not have learnt every single word, so when it comes to reading books, the child may not be able to read everything.

Some caregivers will model a word. If the child is struggling with pronouncing a word, and they pronounce it wrong, the caregiver may say it in the correct form. This may then help them improve for the next time round. Modelling certain words that a child finds hard may also help them to understand how to read other complex words. The caregiver may also echo the child, meaning repeating their non – standard use of the word. This may give the child confidence if they are not a very good reader, it will also help to not confuse the child if they have only recently started learning to read.

Jerome Bruner - Interaction

Jerome Bruner's theory is based on how language is acquired through interaction between a child and the care giver.

Child directed speech (CDS) - caregivers use it. Adults change their speech whilst speaking to children.

LAD- language acquisition device- Chomsky

-Bruner says that interaction is the key element

Limitations- In some cultures children are ignored and are not acknowledged. Other parents interact with their children

Child directed speech-

- Phonology

- Pragmatics

- Grammar

- Lexis

Adults when speaking to children. CDS-

Phonology- higher pitched voice, questioning for a response, slower speech, exaggeration

Lexis- Simplified, fewer syllables, concrete nouns, local topics, diminutives (kitty, doggy)

Grammar- simpler constructions, frequent use of imperatives and interrogatives, repetition, simple sentence, personal names instead of pronouns (mummy instead of me), repeated sentence frames e.g. 'that's a', no past tenses

Pragmatics- Lots of gesture and warm body language. 

Bruner says that using the child's name is essential, they will concentrate on what you are saying

CLD- child led discourse- pursuing the child's area of interest, letting them set the discourse

Example that supports Bruner- 

'Interaction' case study: Jim's death parents-

-Little boy growing up with death parents and he tried to learn language from the TV.

-He used non standard syntax e.g. i saw that she a cookie ate   -what he said

He attended language therapy sessions which helped him improve his language and he came to a similar level as other children.

Bruner has three stages of representations:

-Enactive- 0-1 years (movement) e.g. shaking a rattle, sniffing things

-Iconic- 1-6 years (images)

-Symbolic- 7+ years (symbols or codes)

Chomsky's Language Acquisition Device

Chomsky – language acquisition 1960’s

Chomsky believes that every child has a language acquisition device. Noam Chomsky believes that the LAD (language acquisition device) concept enables a child to acquire and produce language because it is a natural mental ability. He believes LAD converts the major principles of a language and its grammatical structures into the child’s brain. Children then learn different/new vocabulary and relate the syntactic structures from the LAD to form different sentences. Chomsky discusses that an infant cannot learn language through imitating people because the language people use around the child is very irregular. Adult’s speech is sometimes broken up and can be ungrammatical. His theory applies to all languages as they all contain verbs, consonants, vowels and nouns and children seem to be ‘hard-wired’ to acquire the grammar. He is adamant that children are born with an inherited ability to learn any human language. Chomsky suggests that certain linguistic structures which children can precisely use must already be imprinted on to the infants mind. All children, regardless of their intellectual ability, become fluent in their native language within five or six years.

Evidence to support Chomsky’s theory 

   -Children learning to speak do not usually make grammatical errors such as getting their subjects, verbs and objects in the wrong order.

-   -If an adult said a grammatically incorrect sentence on purpose, the child would generally recognise it

-  -Children often say things that are ungrammatical such as ‘mama ball’, which they could not of learnt from someone else

-    -Mistakes such as ‘I drawed’ instead of ‘I drew’ show they are not learning through imitation alone

      Chomsky used the sentence ‘colourless green ideas sleep furiously’. This does not make sense but it is a grammatical sentence. To prove his theory: he believed that it shows sentences can be grammatical without having any meaning. We can recognise the difference between a grammatical and an ungrammatical sentence even if we have never heard of it before.  This shows that we can create and understand new sentences that have not been said before.

Evidence against Chomsky’s theory

People who do not believe in Chomsky’s theory say that although it is obvious that children do not learn language from just imitating people, this doesn’t prove that they have an LAD. Language learning could simply be through general learning and understanding abilities and interactions with other people.

https://aggslanguage.wordpress.com/chomsky/