George Transcript

Young readers should be corrected whenever they make a mistake

Young readers usually make miscues; early readers make miscues such as whole word errors, letter confusion such as d and b, and blending errors. Miscues are mistakes that readers make; sometimes they use virtuous errors whilst attempting to read something.

When George is trying to read with his mother he pauses for 2 seconds after saying ‘with’, this shows that he may be struggling to read the word after, which is ‘sandbags’, a more complex word. His mum then uses the phonics strategy to help him out by saying ‘sound it out’. It is likely that George has been taught phonics in school so he may be able to do it after being told to use the strategy. George’s mum helping him supports Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal development theory, scaffolding. George is at the zone of proximal development, he is unable to read the word himself but with help from his mother he is capable of doing it. After having help from his mother he was able to have a go at sounding it out and eventually says the correct compound ‘sandbags’. When sounding it out he was unable to make the ‘d’ sound so his mother did it for him. She may have been aware that George may find that sound more complex due to letter confusion, d looking very similar to b. Rather than asking him to try and do the sound himself, she uses the scaffolding technique. This may give him confidence, he is in the process of learning to sound the word out so if he was pushed harder to try and make the ‘d’ sound he may of given up. Georges mum then goes on to say ‘well done’ which supports Skinner’s theory, operant conditioning, giving him positive reinforcement in order for his speech to develop further. Skinner believes that if speech isn’t given a response, it won’t develop any further. Positive reinforcement is giving the child praise or a response, negative reinforcement is punishment or getting ignored. He believes that children are like empty blood vessels in which language has to be put in to. George says ‘people (2.0) were taking the s (.) sandbags’ he has a false start as he has only just learnt how to say the word, and then when saying sandbags he makes a virtuous error by missing out the ‘d’ sound which shows he is still struggling with the word even though his mother had just helped him.

Imitation is used in this transcript which also supports Skinner’s theory. Skinner believes that children imitate people in order to learn language. When his mother was helping him out with saying ‘sand’ and ‘bags’ George repeated her, this shows that he can’t do it on his own but if he gets help from his mother he is able to do it. This also supports Vygotsky’s theory, when given guidance; the child is able to complete it. George imitating his mum does not support Chomsky’s Language Acquisition theory. Chomsky believes that children do not learn language through imitation as language adults use are usually ungrammatical and broken up, he believes children will usually notice if a sentence used is ungrammatical.

Throughout the transcript there is a pattern of George missing out the endings and making whole word errors due to this. His mother had picked up on this as he said ‘never’ instead of ‘need’, she told him to watch his endings. When George first said ‘we never’ his mother uses negative reinforcement ‘nooo’ which causes for George to then self-correct himself and repair the virtuous error he had made. This supports Skinner as he believes in operant conditioning, behaviour is influenced by its consequences. George realises he had gone wrong after getting negative reinforcement which caused for him to try again. His mother said ‘nooo’ instead of ‘no’, she is protecting his positive face needs, not trying to bring his confidence down by using a firm ‘no’, she softens the word instead which gives him the chance to have another go.

The transcript of George reading a book with his mum supports Bruner’s interaction theory. Bruner believes that interaction between the child and care giver is key to language development. When speaking to children, caregivers use child directed speech, they adjust their speech to interact with the child. Georges mum uses phonology, she asks him interrogatives in order for adjacency pairs to take place. ‘What do you think is happening’ she gives him an open interrogative; this may enable him to broaden his imagination and develop his speech whilst having to decide for himself. George uses a strategy to look at the pictures to work out the story. George replies with 'look at that flood (.) you'll have to get loads there and one there(.) and one there and one there' this shows that he is interacting with his mum, replying to her interrogative with a declarative and he may be pointing at the pictures whilst explaining it to his mum. Bruner's theory is supported here as interaction with his mum is enabling him to answer a question and give an explanation to his mum showing he can work things out independently.

Comparison of Children's writing

  

'Nature'. Kyra Hollingsworth: Year 4 student

'California' Denise Svoboda: Year 6 student

The year 4 student uses simple declarative's. The simple sentence's are repetitive,  they each begin with the pronoun 'This' which shows the child may not be very knowledgeable of vocabulary at this stage. There are no conjunctions used, at stage 2, the consolidation stage, the conjunction 'and' is usually used by the child. The child may not be familiar with using compound sentences. This stage is usually when the child is up to age 6. The child will be at the age 8-9. The child uses pictures, recognising the different bird types having different proper nouns. The child writes the words as they sound, which is also stage two. She writes 'magpiy' instead of 'magpie'. There are many spelling errors of the bird types, this may be due to the names being complex. She has invented her own names for the birds such as a 'signing', 'loh taltit' and 'tree otiepe'. The year 4 students is familiar of the bird 'Robin' this may be because it is a popular bird, and it is spelt how it sounds. 

Tom Transcript

Imitation and reinforcement are the most crucial tools for children’s language acquisition. Evaluate

The genre of this text is a spontaneous conversation. It has an informal register as there are paralinguistic features such as the child giggling. The audience of this transcript is Tom, his mother and his father. The mode of the transcript is spoken as it is an interpersonal and unplanned dialogue. The purpose of this transcript is to discuss the subject of Tom using his dad’s bike.

Imitation is when something is being copied; in this example speech is being copied. The child imitates his mother when she models a phrase that he has said. In one of Tom’s utterances, he says “the dad bike”. His mother then goes on to model him by saying “Dad’s bike” in order to provide him with the standard form. Tom then goes on to imitate “dad’s bike” however the first time he says, he says it the original way “the dad bike” and then repairs himself, eventually saying “dad’s bike” multiple times. He hears the standard form, he then uses the non – standard form however self corrects himself and uses the standard form with the suffix. Skinner is a theorist in which believed that imitation is key, like Bruner, he believes that when interacting with a child, the child will imitate you and that is how they learn to acquire language. Skinner believed that children are like ‘empty blood vessels’ in which language had to be put into, they learn language from the environment, people. Chomsky is a theorist which disagreed with Skinner. Chomsky suggested that a child has a built in LAD (language acquisition device) and learning language is a natural 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 said that imitation is not how children learn due to adult’s language sometimes being broken up and ungrammatical. Children will usually recognise if an adult uses an ungrammatical sentence. Tom imitating his mother in this transcript supports Skinner’s theory as he does learn the Standard English form from imitating his mother.

Operant conditioning is a theory that B.F Skinner came up with; it is based on whether behaviour is determined by its consequences. Positive and Negative reinforcements are used. Positive reinforcement is where praise or response is given, Negative reinforcement is where they are punished or ignored. Tom’s mother gives him positive reinforcement when he uses a non-standard form “Is dat your talker”. His mother replies with ‘My talker? Yeah (.) that’s a tape recorder”. She gives him positive reinforcement by repeating what the noun he says and replies with ‘yeah’ even though it isn’t the standard name. She is impressed with his recognition of the communication noun. Giving him positive reinforcement may give him confidence whilst speaking, and modelling him at the same time using the correct noun, ‘that’s a tape recorder’ may help him to learn more complex language in the future. Tom saying ‘talker’ supports Chomsky as he would not of imitated  this noun from anybody as his mum calls it a tape recorder.

She also gives him positive reinforcement when he is counting the chickens. He counts “one (.) two(.) three (.) four (.) one (.) two (.) three (.) four (.) five (.) six (.) seven (.) eight (.) nine (2.0)”. His mother counts “One (.) two(.) three (.) four (.) five”. His mother is helping him learn how to count by doing it the correct way; she may be using a strategy such as pointing at the chickens or counting from left to right in order to teach Tom a simpler way of doing it correctly. Tom may have counted the chickens twice as he may not have had a method to use, however he is at the Zone of Proximal Development, Vygotsky, where he may be able to do it with help from his mother.