I have learned so much from the first couple of chapters of our readings for this week. The quote that stood out for me was from the Essential Linguistics text by Freeman. "Studies...show that children develop the rules of language quickly...and the do it without much correction. All this suggests that children must have a built-in capacity for language." (p15) The text talks about children and their interaction with adults. Adults seldom correct the way in which a child expresses themselves. One merely responds to it. While it is not extremely helpful to correct the way in which the child says his/her sentence, it is important to push and develop ideas and provide feedback to help develop oral meaning. I really like this because it is encouraging to a child or even an ESL student to receive that kind of specific, targeted feedback so they feel confident about communication ability.
This being said ,oral language acquisition and reading processing ability is a relationship that goes hand in hand. The Scaffolding Language text by Gibbons talks about the need to break down the learning for readers, or essentially, to meet them where they are by giving concrete feedback in a collaborative learning environment. In thinking about this relationship, I immediately thought about the excerpt in the book where the parents were speaking with the child and the child was talking about the zoo trip. The parents scaffolded their feedback in the conversation, which in turn enabled the child to expand his thinking and communication skills about the zoo experience. ESL students need that kind of targeted, scaffolded learning experience in order to be able to confidently communicate their thoughts and ideas. These two chapters helped me realize that I need to make sure I am providing these same opportunities for my students.
Terry,
ReplyDeleteRefelective Insight on the reading. Oral language is crucial to a child's literacy development and the reading process is how children learn to read; therefore your comment on oral language and the reading process do go hand in hand. In my opinion they work together and you can't have one without the other. Although the development of each my be different.
Latisha
Terry,
ReplyDeleteThat same quote had a big impact on me. It made me wonder when and if we should correct student's writing-- or should we just comment on the content? It brings up the question of whether the way we teach writing should follow how students obtain language. My sense is that more specific instruction needs to be given when teaching writing. Although the brain may be programmed to learn language, it may not be programmed to learn to read and write.
-Danielle