l anguage - learning and teaching processes and young children (chapter 6) miss. mona al-kahtani
TRANSCRIPT
CHILDREN LEARNING STRATEGIES
Although there are many variation in the way
children learn the language, there are
underlying strategies that are used by most
of the children. Those strategies differ with
the langue level of a child.
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ona A
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TODDLER LANGUAGE-LEARNING STRATEGIES
Receptive Strategies: When is a word a
word??
Before children can recognize words, they
must gain a sense of how sounds go together to
form syllables of the native language.
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Infants may use lexical, syntactic, phonological
and stress-pattern cues in combination to break
the speech down and aid interpretation.
(e.g. Clusters n English and Korean)
As a result, children will be able to locate word
boundaries and hence speech can be recognized
as a series of distinct units, but still meaningless
words. ( around 11 months old)
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ona A
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IT IS NOT ENOUGH!! HOW CHILDREN LEARN WORDS ????
Linguistics do not really know but they tried
to infer from the language behaviors of
toddlers that certain lexical principles or
assumptions are being used.
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Three fundamental assumptions for toddlers:
1) People use words to refer to entities. (i.e.
Reference Principle)
- People refer to entities. Words do not just “go
with” but “stand for” entities to which they refer.
- As a result, a toddler must be able to
determine the speaker’s intention to refer, the
linguistic patterns used, and the entities.
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a subprinciple is the mutual exclusivity
assumption.
It guides initial word learning by
presupposing that each referent has a unique
symbol.
For example, a reference can not be both a
“cup” and a “spoon”
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ona A
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2) Words are extendable. (i.e. Extendability Principle)
toddlers assumes that there is some
similarity, such as shared perceptual
attributes that enable use of one symbol for
more than one referent.
For example,
A “cup” will refer to the child’s cup and those
other cups for other children.
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ona A
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3) A given word refers to the whole entity, not its parts. ( i.e. Whole-object Principle)
A word refer to a whole entity rather than to a
part or attribute. In fact parts are rare in toddler
lexicon.
For example,
“doggie” refer to the dog not his fur, leg or color.
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ona A
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Three additional assumption may be needed for
the toddler to form hypothetical definitions
quickly and to use syntactic information.
4) Categorical Assumption.
(18 months old) infants extend a word to related
entities.
They classify those entities based on the perceptual
attributes, function, and communication
characteristics such as shortness and length.
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Unlike the Extendibility Principle, the
Categorical Assumption goes beyond the
basic-level referents of the same kind to
categories of entities.
For example, a “cup” might be extended to all
the objects that hold liquid.
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ona A
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5) Novel Name-nameless Assumption.
Infants will link a symbol and referent after
only a few exposures.
In other words, a child assumes tat a novel
(new) word is linked to a previously unnamed
referent.
Patents aid this by pointing to, holding, etc.
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The Conventionality Assumption.
Infants expect meanings to be expressed by
others in consistent conventional forms.
in other words, adults do not change the
symbol with each use. As a result, a ‘car’ will
be called car all the time.
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Evocative utterance
It is a toddler learning strategy in which the
child name entities.
After the child did that, the adult should either
confirm or negate the child’s selection of words.
As a result, the child either maintain or modify
her speech.
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ona A
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Hypothesis-testing
It is a toddler language learning strategy in
which a child seeks confirmation of the name
of the entity by naming it with raising
intonation, then posing a yes/no question.
A responding adult may confirm or deny the
hypothesis.
For example,
“Doggie “
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ona A
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Interrogative testing
It is a toddler learning strategy in which a child
attempts to learn the name of an entity by
asking “What? That? Wassat?”
Those requests for confirmation are often
found in the pointing and vocalizing
behavior of infants prior to first words.
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ona A
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Selective Imitation
Why selective??Because children do not imitate
indiscriminately.
For example;
Adult: Daddy home.Child: Daddy home.===Adult: The doggie is sick.Child: Doggie sick
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ona A
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Role of the selective imitation
It is a toddler learning strategy in which a child
repeat part or a whole utterance of another
speaker.
Imitation is used to acquire morphemes, words,
syntactic-semantic structures.
Usually, imitation is more mature than production
capacities of children and this why it is used as a
learning strategy.
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The role of imitation as an aid in acquisition
of language is very complex.
Why?
Imitation of other is important for vocabulary
growth.
Self-imitation is important for the transition
from single-word utterance to multiple-word
language production.
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After age 2, the amount of imitation
decreases.
At the single-word level, selective imitation is
important for vocabulary growth.
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Imitation may also serve as a conversational
role, enabling the child to relate his/her
utterance to those of more mature language
users.
For example;
Adult: See Johnny ride his bike?
Child: Ride bike. Bike fall.
Adult: No. He won’t fall.
Child: No Fall. No go boom.
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The child uses two strategies of revision:
focus operation and substitution operation.
Focus Operation: When a child focuses on
one or more words and repeat them
- requires minimal linguistics skills.
- predominate till age 3
Substitution Operation: when the child
repeats only a portion of the utterance and
replaces words.
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Formulas: memorized verbal routine or
unanalyzed chunk of language often used in
everyday conversation.
For example;
When the child ends all his conversation
in :See yea, bye!”
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Both selective imitation and formulas provide
“scaffolding” for a child and reduce the
langue process load because they aid
linguistic analysis.
Evocative, interrogative hypothesis testing
enable the child to further participate in
conversation and to explore and test new
words and utterances.
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ona A
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