From the Mouth of Babes - Assignment Example

From The Mouth of Babes…” The developing language of young children can be mesmerizing to study. They are naturally playful, that their use of language may be deemed very creative. Since they have limited language skills and vocabulary, it is tempting for adults to complete sentences for them, and sometimes, for lack of the appropriate words to use, the young child may simply nod in agreement even if that was not entirely what he meant. Sometimes, adult intervention in children’s communication may even hamper children’s creative use of language. I, myself, enjoy listening to children speak. Children say the funniest things without them being aware that they are amusing to adults. Their verbalizations have been narrated fondly, and its effect is similar to made-up jokes. Much as parents, teachers and other adults would enjoy children’s innocent witticisms, psychologists and linguists study its form and meaning to contribute to the widening interest in language development research. Children’s language development is a well-researched area and the more information is gained, the more knowledge is desired. There have been many theories conceptualized as to how language is acquired by human beings. Lindfors (1987) claims, “Virtually every child, without special training, exposed to surface structures of language in many interaction contexts, builds for himself – in a short period of time and at an early stage in his cognitive development – a deep-level, abstract, and highly complex system of linguistic structure and use. “( 90) This implies that every child is capable of learning language. The question is, how do they? For this assignment, I was fortunate enough to have been granted permission by a preschool directress to observe their children at play. This school has been considered a lab school due to students coming to study children in the early childhood stage. During outdoor play time, I unobtrusively walked around the playground to catch snippets of conversations between children and or between children and adults. Later on, I was able to talk to the teachers regarding the stage of language development of the children I have observed. The following are transcripts of the conversations I have overheard: Ali A little boy named Ali (aged 4) was talking to his teacher while playing in the sandbox: Ali: Teacher, what would you like to be when you grow up? Teacher: Oh… I’m already grown up… but when I was little, I wanted to be a teacher.. I already am! Ali: So you got your dream! Teacher: (laughs) Yes I did! But besides being a teacher, I am also a writer. Ali: (pauses from his play and looks up at teacher): “You don’t want to be a ‘lefter’? (and gave a wide grin to her) Isabelle Four year old Isabelle squatted by the doorway to the playground with her thumb in her mouth. Her eyes scanned the playground for her friends Leila and Venice, both five year olds. The two little girls were laughing and pretending to be fairies by the slide. Slowly, Isabelle stood up and walked towards them with a big smile. She did not say anything, but just showed she was amused with the fairy play. After a few minutes, she said to Venice, “Maybe your wings got stuck” when Venice kept flapping her arms while laughing and climbing up the slide. A few moments later, Leila assigned Isabelle to be the swing fairy, “ Ok, Isabelle, you be the swing fairy and watch over the kids from falling. Make sure they are safe, you got that?” Isabelle gladly obliged with a big smile and took her post in the swing area. Once in a while she would also “flap” her wings (arms). Vernice, Shirley and Jillian Venice, Shirley and Jillian were playing at the Dramatic Play Area with a toy kitchen. The were busy cooking at the play kitchen. An assistant teacher came by and intentionally ordered food, pretending to be a customer at a restaurant. Assistant Teacher: I’m so hungry! Do you have a menu? I want to order food. This got them interested and thinking of expanding their kitchen into a restaurant. Venice: Oh we will make a menu for you. Hold on…. The girls scrambled for some paper and colored pens that could be used for their Menu at their new “restaurant”. They got very excited and each of them contributed to the kind of food they will serve. Shirley: Put in there some eggs. Jillian: I make spaghetti. Venice: But they order burgers and fries! Shirley: Put that there too. (to teacher-customer) What you want to eat? Assistant Teacher: Hmmm… whatever you can make and please hurry! Shirley: Right away, sir! Similar kinds of observations of experimentation with language and play abound in preschool. It was like being with small people living their own world with their own rules to follow. With the first extract, Ali was like an interviewer, throwing some side comments as if he was an equal of his teacher, the person he was interviewing. It was obvious that he was listening well to his teacher, and even reading into deeper meanings of her words. When he said, “So you got your dream!”, it was so unlike a four-year old speaking, since it seems he followed through with his own line of thinking when he asked his first question of what his teacher wants to be when she grows up. He was aware that growing into something one wants when he or she was a child is equivalent to having a dream fulfilled. Another creative use of language in Ali’s extract was the play of words he used on “lefter”. It was apparent that as a four year old, he already appreciated humor in word play, as he knew his teacher meant “writer”, but he insinuated that she said “righter” and made a joke out of it. His wide grin was a sign that he was making a joke. In Isabelle’s extract, she first observed her peers and approached them to initiate interaction. She expressed her interest in joining their play by giving feedback and this was accepted by her friends, gaining her access in the group play. Walker (2009) states, “A modern view of the child acknowledges agency, that is, children’s capacity to understand and act upon their world. It acknowledges that children demonstrate extraordinary competence from birth” (p.98). Isabelle manifested this as she used her own strategy to acknowledge Venice’s imaginary play when she wittily commented that her “wings got stuck”. Socially, play coaxes a shy child like Isabelle outside her shell. Play fosters the development of friendships. As children play with other children or adults, they get to know about how other people behave, think and feel. Isabelle’s tentative comment was key in her acceptance to an exclusive group play. Like Isabelle’s entrance into a group play, the assistant teacher in the third extract read into what the girls were doing and said something appropriate that caught their attention. Immediately, she was accepted as a team player as they took on her cue of being a hungry customer. The role-playing was so seamless that there was no hesitation on the girls to play it up. They immediately took on roles as servers in a mini-restaurant. They planned out loud as to what was to be included in the menu, perhaps culling from their past experience the foods that they usually eat. At first, they were brainstormed on the foods that should be served, then one girl suddenly remembered the “customer” and asked her what she wanted to eat. When she said she can eat anything that they can make and asked them to hurry, Shirley said “Right away, sir!”, as if it was automatic, not minding that the customer was a lady. It was all in a spirit of fun! Serious planning was not part of their agenda. The girls just went with the flow and used language to link it all up together. While observing the children in their play, I was aware that verbal art was apparent in their language. They were not even aware that they were using language in a creative way that when one stops to listen, they infuse a lyrical kind of language, such as Ali’s “So you got your dream!” to Isabelle’s “Maybe your wings got stuck!” (to an imaginary fairy being played by her playmate), to Shirley’s “Right away, sir!”, to a pretend customer who to her eyes, is a man, although in real life, is a lady. My observations of the children’s language use made me understand one bullet point from the course which says “Metaphor is not simply (or mainly) a literary device, but that it is an inherent feature of language and the human mind” (course notes). The children were indeed using metaphor without being aware of it, and it was serving them well, as if their companions were in the same wavelength in terms of understanding their literary language. Being interested in children’s language, and learning from the course that children are essentially creative from birth and that there are many forms and functions of children’s language play, I researched some more on this concept. I learned that a great deal of a child’s acquisition of linguistic structure occurs during the first five years of life. This is the period when he is most active in discerning a set of underlying organizational principles of language from the expression that surrounds him. It is amazing how at a very young age, he is capable of abstracting meaning from direct experience with other language users depending on his own context. Beaty (2009) explains that even at an infant stage, the baby’s early nonverbal communication helps in preparing her for the spoken and written language to follow and at 6 months, she has become a language specialist, based on the sounds she hears most frequently. At 20 months, she may possess a sizable vocabulary if she hears adults around her talk to one another and to her all the time. Of course good hearing and sensitive listening are paramount to language development. My readings have validated Julia Gillen’s arguments in the course that language play is indeed purposeful. Some functions were evident in the extracts such as developing ideas (as in Isabelle’s strategy to “interpret” other children’s play so she can join them) or helping with problem solving (as in the restaurant play of the three girls) or maintaining relations between speakers (as shown in all three extracts). Indeed, when listening to these preschoolers speak, they do seem to be rehearsing for language to be used in their adulthood. It is obvious that they are mimicking adult language in their play. Lindfors (1987) notes that the child’s language environment includes a set of specific sentences, however, it is not this set of sentences that he acquires, but deduces from these an underlying set of organizational principles and sound-meaning relationships. To illustrate, children as young as two do not talk by simply using the specific sentences they hear, but rather, they construct sentences according to their own early version of organized principles underlying the specific sentences they have heard. Perhaps due also limited language and motor skills, the child’s early linguistic system is different from the adult’s and results in telegraphic and grammatically erratic sentences like “He no want to sit me.”, “I not like it”, and “He gived it to me.” Over time, his language system will be revised in many different situations, and his sentences will become more adult-like. For his own purpose, he builds his own rule-governed constructions as he has deduced from his environment. (Lindfors, 1987) Adults play a huge role in the language development of children, as they need someone who uses simple language in correct form and is flexible enough adjust his language to suit the child’s (Clay, 1988). Parents and teachers should be good role models in the use of language, as what children learn from them while they are young will likely be carried out up to their adult years. Adults should encourage word play and creativity in children’s language and not always intervene and disrupt their creative language flow by completing their sentences for them. Children will continue to amuse adults around them with their innocent questions and speeches. Most people will find their thoughts refreshing and creative that due to the many changes to cope with life’s stressors, adults cannot rekindle on their own. On their way to “correctness” in language, let us enjoy their journey and remember that their language will never be the same only a few years from now. References Beaty, J.J. (2009), 50 Early childhood literacy strategies, Pearson Merrill Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, pp. 54-55. Clay, M. (1998), By Different Paths to Common Outcomes, Stenhouse Publishers, Maine Lindfors, J.W., (1987), Children’s Language and Learning, 2nd Ed. Prentice Hall, Inc., Walker, T.(2009) Chapt. 8: Modern Childhood. Reader 1.Working With Children In The Early Years, The Open University Read More