Approaches to Environmental Research - Essay Example

Running Head: Approaches to research Approaches to research of the of the Approaches to researchIntroduction All environments including the classroom have the ability to contribute to the process of development of adults and children. The process also helps in developing interaction between adults and children. One of the most important roles of the early year's specialist is providing this creative and stimulation within the classroom that children require, which encourages positive social interaction, active engagement in learning and self motivation to aid in the child's holistic development, making them active and experiential learners. This can be done through creating an environment, which is bright, colourful, interactive, kinaesthetically and aesthetically pleasing, using a wide range of interactive resources and displays. It is important not only to structure classrooms that are stimulating and encouraging, but to create competitive yet rewarding learning environments. The National Association of School Psychologists state 'that rewarding learning environments encourages motivational development'. The environments that a early years specialist provide the children to experience in their early years of life are responsible for creating their understanding of many concepts, giving them spatial awareness, educating their senses, nourishing their curiosity and encouraging their interaction. They promote the integration of learning experiences across the curriculum to help children make links between prior and new understandings. It should be mentioned beforehand that "second language learning" is not intended to contrast with foreign language learning. "Second language learning" is used here as a general term that embraces both untutored (or naturalistic) acquisition and tutored (or classroom) learning. Also, the term "children", in this paper, is used to address those under the age of twelve - the end of puberty; and "adults " are those at the age of eighteen or older. The transition period (teenage years), however, is not within the scope of this research. In the light of recent accomplishments in neurolinguistics, biology, as well as psychology, it can be said that the process of second language learning is, by nature, the process of the brain choosing to integrate certain language input into the inner language resources. This procedure involves the activation of many different components of the nervous system, comprising both peripheral nervous system (PNS) and the brain. According to Arnold (1999), language stimuli, perceived through the auditory and visual organs, are sent to the brain sensory cortex via thousands of neurons in the PNS. Some other cortices appraise the stimuli for their emotional relevance and motivational significance. A consequent state, a particular emotion, is then created in the body and communicated back to the brain to help the individual decide which mental or motor actions to take. Then, if assessed as relevant, the stimuli are sent to special areas in the brain for procession. Additional accompaniments such as smell, colour, context...clutch to the language input in the short-term memory to make it meaningful. Relevant language data stored in long-term memory are collected to be compared and to interact with the new data. Under suitable conditions, the products of this interaction will be stored (pp. 29-36). The result of this process is that the information net of the long-term memory is mutated, with the added mental images or the transmutation of the previous ones into new forms. It is also necessary to know that memory is made of millions of neural circuits, each of which encodes "information" in association with certain input. It is noted that "in early stages of learning, neural circuits are activated piecemeal, incompletely and weakly." (Genesse, 2000). In this way, the language is memorized for a short duration, and these circles are quite susceptible to modification. However, their inherence grows with time, after much exposure to the input. So, when the neural circles are deep-seated, the short-term memory turns into the long-term memory, and the circuits will become much more difficult to remove or change. On this ground, the neural mechanism of learning is the process of establishing new connections among neural networks and the newly-learned language is neural circuits and networks. Clearly enough, this neural process has valuable implications for the differences between adults and children. It can be logically deduced that the acquisition of a second language is generally dependent on three factors: firstly, the capability and the effectiveness of the brain to "process" the information and the proneness of the neural network to renewal and complementation (i.e. biological factors); secondly, the way how the language input is treated (i.e. cognitive factor); and thirdly, the degree of motivation involved (i.e. affective factor). These factors, if thoroughly considered, undergo gradual change with the maturation during childhood, resulting in the considerable ultimate ability differences as soon as a child goes beyond the puberty border into adulthood. Biological Factors Brain Consideration. If the brain has proved to be the "seat" of language, it is eligible to attribute the differences mainly to the cortical change over the years. Unquestionably, a newborn child is equipped with a whole brain mass; therefore, each part seems to have equal potential for language learning. However, during maturation, the brain soon forms divisive fissures dedicating different regions to different mental activities and assigning each hemisphere to different tasks. These processes are respectively known as localization and lateralization. For example, according to Sternberg (2000), the prefrontal cortex is used for problem solving, emotion and general thought while the auditory cortex is for detecting sound quality. The language processing has long been known as being taken over by the left hemisphere, in which the two most important language association cortices are situated: the Broca's area and the Wernicke's area. "The brain uses the Broca's area for speech production and articulation, and Wernicke's area for language comprehension."(Genesse, 2000). This specialization, genetically programmed as it is, takes place slowly and gradually. Lenneberg (1973) suggested that lateralization is a slow process that begins around the age of 2 and is completed around puberty. In short, the completion of zoning the brain for language sets up the distinction between adults and children. In detail, it must be the very accomplishments of lateralization that cost the brain plasticity, which helps achieving a native-like proficiency. Children, unlike adults, use both hemispheres for handling language information. Ellis (1996) stated that this copious brain capacity used for language facilitates the acquisition of new skills required for mastering a second language other than his mother tongue. Besides, since every region has equal potential to treat language as well as other kinds of input (such as space and image), second language acquisition in childhood happens in a more unconscious and natural way, which is especially conducive to natural articulation. However, thanks to this plasticity loss, adults have advantage over children in such fields that require highly-specialized language regions as semantic or grammatical relation. These areas "are more dependent on late adapted special brain areas", said Collins (2001). Neural Consideration. The maturation period sees the declination of the neural plasticity needed for second language mastery, in the sense that it will become more and more difficult to change the available language network. With longer exposure to the first language, adults possess much more complicated neural hierarchy representing their first language, with a larger number of neural circuits. Epstein and Flynn (1996) stated that "the adults' left hemisphere is full of neural connections encoding their mother tongue"(p.678). Moreover, the existing ones are already strongly imbedded and become resistant to physical change. As a result, it will take much more effort, if possible, for adults to reorganize this network in interaction with strange, new and, to some extent, "exotic" language data. The loss of neural plasticity leads to the adults' failure to reach the native-like proficiency. In most cases, their brain has to create the second, and of course less conspicuous, neural representation system for their second language (Epstein &Flynn, 1996). Their brain, consequently, will perceive the two languages as separate. Adversely, children use the same neural hierarchy for both languages and will achieve more or less the same competence in both, providing given enough exposure. Cognitive Factors Cognitively speaking, the high degree of maturation in adults, versus in children, suggests their dissimilarities to each other. First of all, if " a person grows up with the increasing dominating role of the left over the right hemisphere"(Viley, 1997, p.450), his analytic and intellectual aptness gradually replaces the emotion tendency found in early childhood .So, adults seem to be more critically and intellectually centred on the task of second language. Secondly, adults are capable of abstraction and formal thinking which transcends the concrete experiences and direct perception (Brown, 1980). And lastly, as the interaction of the first two factors, adults become more de-centred, that is, they tend to learn a new language, not in relation to themselves like children, but to the social contexts and the types of communicators they are dealing with. Due to these cognitive characteristics, adults and children alike have both advantages and disadvantages in learning a second language. Adults' comprehension language as a formal system enables them to learn about language by consciously studying linguistic rules, along with which the metalinguistic knowledge is developed. Cognitive awareness of the language helps adults think about the appropriateness of the language they and others say and segment language into units, which help them develop reading skills. Moreover, their ability to manipulate abstract linguistic categories and to formulise rules and concepts is the additional aid to the language acquisition (Twyford, 1997). Children, on the other hand, while not totally lacking in meta-awareness, are not so prone to respond to language as form (Ellis, 1999). In fact, children see language only as a tool for expressing meaning, so they tend to take only content into consideration. These are the prerequisites for automatic language acquisition .To weigh up the overall effects, the mature cognition helps adults overtake children in the early language exposure, but in the long run, thanks to natural language developing, it is the children who can achieve more competence. Also, children will apparently outdo adults when it comes to pronunciation, which is the least amenable to conscious manipulation of all skills. Affective Factors Of all the affective factors, motivation plays the most important part in the learning process. Motivation, in precise terms, is the realization of how the second language learning fits in with the needs and purposes of the learners (Arnold, 1999). This realization results in language-stimuli appraisals. Positive appraisals such as pleasantness and goal relevance enhance language learning and negative appraisals inhibit second language learning. The linkage between motivation and final success is built upon the role of appraisal, or affect, in the process of changing the learners' inner resources: "Affective data may call up from long term memory certain other kinds of data", and "the affective side of feedback influences the shaping and reshaping of the networks of long-term memory."(Arnold, 1999, p.55). Language motivation comes out in different shapes and degrees between adults and children, resulting in the different level of language that each group of people wants to achieve. Children have "integrative motivation", in the sense that they want to become a part of second language community, or to get more contact with their peers; while adults see language as a means to have some rewards (grade, employment, admiration): they have " instrumental motivation". So, it is highly probable that children feel more pressed to handle native-like second language skills instead of being satisfied with the basic mastery of pronunciation and grammatical rules like adults. Adults' lower motivation to gain the native-like proficiency also stems from the persistence with their own language ego, their self-identities in reference to the first language. "The child's ego is dynamic and growing and flexible" (Brown, 1980, p.54), thus a second language at this stage does not pose a substantial "threat" and inhibition to the ego and an adaptation to a new language is highly encouraged. However, through the physical, emotional, and cognitive changes throughout the years, "the adults' language ego becomes more protective and defensive"(Stephen, 1997, p.182), hence holds back their willingness to accept an "imported" ego coming along with a second language. In conclusion, biological, cognitive and affective conditions setting differently in adults and children have different impacts on their second language capacity. The unequal degree of brain and neural plasticity, of cognition maturity as well as of motivation irrefutably favour adults in some first lapses of the second language acquisition process, with their concession to children in the long run to achieve native-like proficiency. However, be that as it may, it is quite obvious that the younger are not necessary better than the older. Truly speaking, they are just different. So, what is the virtue of consuming efforts "weighing the pros and cons" of adults and children It would be more rewarding to examine some teaching methods specially serving for each group of people. Conclusion The role of adults in assisting children's development is crucial and is required. This has been particularly emphasised by two psychologists, Vygotsky and Bruner. The thoughts and research of these psychologists go in contrast and differ with those of Piaget who explains about children's independent learning and what they can do on their own. Vygotsky argued that the adult has a key role in helping children learn. He advanced the idea of the zone of proximal development. The idea is that the child may have developed a certain level of competency in a skill, which can be performed independently and unaided. Vygotsky called this 'the actual development level.' However if assisted by an adult, this ability can be stretched slightly so that something more challenging can be attempted, however not too far where the child would get lost and not understand but too a certain level which Vygotsky called the 'level of potential development'. A similar concept known as scaffolding advanced by Bruner was developed. A scaffold is a structure used to help gradually construct a building from its foundations; the scaffolding grows as the building gets higher, eventually the scaffolding can be taken away. Here the construction of the building is an analogy for the development of the child's abilities and the scaffolding is an analogy of how the adult can support this. Particular aspects of scaffolding may be directing children's attention to relevant aspects of the situation and helping children break a task down and guide them on what they should do. 'Scaffolding enables reflective thinking to become a disposition'. With the supports of adults, children have the ability to make appropriate instructional decisions, and reflective thinking becomes more automatic. For young children, play is a tool for learning and developing manipulative skills and growthing discovery and learning. It is therefore vital for practitioners to acknowledge and appreciate this and through provision, interaction and intervention in children's play ensure progression differentiation and relevance in the curriculum, using play as a central approach to creating learning opportunities. Although the amount of play involved in the curriculum is limited, it is the teachers responsibility to use play to enforce others areas of the curriculum. References Arnold, J. (Ed.). (1999). Affected in language learning. UK: Cambridge University Press. Brown, H.D. (1980). Principles of language learning and teaching. USA: Prentice Hall Collins, H. (2001). Exploring language. New York : Holt, Rinchart and Winston. Ellis, R. (1999). The study of second language acquisition. Hongkong: Oxford University Press. Epstein, S. D. & Flynn, S. (1996). Behavioral and brain science. USA: Havard University Press. Genesse, F. (2000). Brain research: implications for second language learning. Retrived Lenneberg, E. H. (1973). The genesis of language. The United States of America: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lightbrown, P. & Spana, N. (1999). How language are learned. Hongkong: Oxford University press. Piaget (1959). Play dreams and childhood in education; London, Heinemann Stephen, K. (1997). Principle and practice in second language acquisition. UK: Oxford University Press. Sternberg, R. J. (2000). Pathway to psychology. Retrieved November, 3, 2001 from the World Wide Web: http://www.dawson.cc.mt.us/faculty/Korpi/understanding.html Twyford, C. W. (1998). Language theory and mental development. UK: Oxford University Press. Viley, J. (1997). Cognition and the development of language. USA: Prentice Hall Regents, Prentice Hall Inc. Read More