Final computer room lesson term 1

Morning all

As this is our last computer room lesson of the term this is a good time to get some revision and knowledge consolidation done. You need to ensure, as I mentioned last week, that you fully understand the CLA topic as we have now finished our study of this and will only return to it for revision (if we have time) at the end of the term before your exams. If there is anything you are unsure of, now is the time to revisit it and ensure that you understand it. Additionally, you need to ensure that you are working on your understanding and knowledge of terminology

Useful revision techniques:

• Make revision cards
• mind maps
• consolidate your knowledge by reading articles that I have posted, or find your own wider reading
• revisit the PPTs we've been through in class
• research the theorists
• tidy up your notes from class/on your blog
• re-read your essays you've done so far and read over my comments to decide what it is you need to work on

If you feel confident with CLA, then you can move on to do some research on to our next topic of study we will be covering after Christmas which is Language Change. If you don't get onto this today, this is the work you need to do over the Christmas break:

• Find a short section of text (fiction or non-fiction) from 1600ish and translate it into modern English. Then analyse differences using as much linguistic comment as you can e.g. syntax, semantic shift (what sorts?) etc.
• Research a word that has changed and any phrases, collocations or uses (previous or current uses) that illustrate the different meanings e.g. not quite ready vs quite tired. This is a good resource - the etymology dictionary - which you can use to map the change and development of a word or phrase.
• Find two articles that show differing attitudes to a 'language change' issue e.g. an article that criticises young people's language and one that objectively describes it or is positive about it (look at the links at the side of my blog as a starting point). Or one about the change in the word 'literally' or on the use of non-gendered pronouns etc. Analyse the language used to represent the change/issue, comparing the two texts.

This task is due Wednesday 3rd January 2018; post to your blogs.

Any problems, let me know.

Additional Theories & Revision

Morning all

For all intents and purposes we have essentially finished our study of CLA. You have one essay coming back to you on Wednesday and we will do one final essay on Thursday, but at this point all bases are covered and you need to now work on your revision of the topic and ensure you understand it.

With this in mind, linked below are two resources which may be useful. The first (click here) is an article outlining some different theorists to the ones we have covered. Essentially, this article proposes that all children regardless of factors such as ethnicity, culture and social class will go through the same stages when learning language and at approximately the same age (Flanagan, 1996). What others can you find in this text - record the concept, the theorist and the year in your notes.

Secondly here is an article regarding virtuous errors. 
This is less academic, but good wider reading all the same. Read the article and make notes for your revision.

When you have completed these tasks, you need to continue revising and ensuring you understand the topic. Additionally, here is the PowerPoint on Overextension and Underextension from Thurs.

10 Language Mistakes Kids Make That Are Actually Pretty Smart

BY ARIKA OKRENT

 

OCTOBER 16, 2015

Little kids make such cute mistakes when they talk. We know they're still learning the language, so we tolerate their errors and chuckle at how funny they sound. Behind that chuckle is the assumption that the kids are getting it wrong because they just don't know the rules yet. In fact, kids' mistakes show they know a lot more about the rules than we think. The mistakes are evidence of very smart hypotheses the kids are forming from the limited data they've been given so far. Here are 10 really smart language mistakes that kids make.

1. "Dop it!" instead of "stop it!"

It's not easy to start a word with a consonant cluster. Kids don't have the fine motor control they need to produce the 'st' in stop, but they don't just leave it out. They substitute a sound they can produce. 'D' is a very smart substitution for 'st' in "stop." If you take a careful look at the acoustics of 't' in adult versions of "stop" vs. "top," you see that the 't's in those words look different from each other. The vocal cords kick in sooner for the 't' in "stop." A 'd' is basically a 't' where the vocal cords kick in sooner, so when children substitute that sound, they show they've heard the difference between "stop" and "top" and hypothesized that it's important for the language. And they are right!

2. Calls the dog "baby."

When children start using words, they haven't figured out all the situations in which they apply. They form hypotheses about word meaning and apply them on their own. The child might call all the kids and pets in the family "baby," but not the parents, revealing a hypothesis that "baby" means "family member who other people have to get food for." She may call everyone she meets "baby," extending the hypothesis to "living creatures." Like any good scientist, she can only confirm her hypothesis by testing it. Eventually, she will get enough data to settle on the right one.

3. Points to something and says "thank you" when he wants it.

This mistake shows complex knowledge of pragmatics, or the meaning of words in contexts. He knows that "thank you" is not the name of a thing in the world, but is rather something we say in a specific context. "Thank you" occurs in the context of a transfer of possession. He's saying, "Let's do that thing where 'thank you' gets said." Very clever way to try to bring about a transfer of possession!

4. "Baby drink. Milk all-gone!"

At about 18 months, children start putting two words together in phrases. But these phrases aren't just words haphazardly thrown in next to each other—they are mini sentences that express the relationships that full sentences do. "Baby drink" refers to the relation "actor performs an action." The words come in the same order they would in a grammatical sentence: subject verb. "Milk all-gone" expresses "object has some quality," and those words also come in the correct order: noun (is) adjective. The child has figured out that word order matters a lot in English for making those relations clear.

5. "I goed fast!"

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Most children go through a phase where they treat irregular verbs like they are regular. The interesting thing is that they do this after they have already learned the irregular versions. They may say "went fast" for a while, when "went" is just a word they've heard a few times. Later they notice the larger pattern—words take –ed in the past tense. Only when they've noticed that pattern, do they start making these overregularization errors. "I goed fast" is a sign that the child is not just saying words, but figuring out the larger important patterns that relate words to each other.

6. "I can't will go today."

Auxiliary verbs are hard! Can, will, do, would, should, might—there are so many little words that change the meaning of a clause. They pile up on top of each other, sometimes contracting into smaller versions, and who knows what order you're supposed to put them in? When kids pile these up, even if they don't do it correctly, they are making an amazing attempt to fit a lot of meanings together in one clause. "I can't will go today" includes information about permission status (can), negation (n't), and future tense (will) in one sentence. Trying these kinds of constructions out is a major step toward serious grammatical complexity.

7. "Ha ha. I won you."

This is not a bad guess. English has tons of verbs that can be intransitive (I watched, I pushed, I drew) or transitive (I watched you; I pushed you; I drew you.) Typically, situations where one person takes an action that affects another person will have a transitive verb associated with them. For a competitive kid of a certain age, what situation could be more stereotypically "one person affecting another" than when somebody wins?

8. "What are you eating it?"

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Questions are complicated. When you ask a question like "what are you eating," you have a situation—"you are eating it"—that you want to know something about—"you are eating what?" The child has to figure out that to ask this question in English you have to move the object of inquiry, the "what," to the beginning of the sentence, and then switch the places of "you" and "are." In "what are you eating it?" the child has correctly switched "you" and "are" and moved the "what" to the beginning. But perhaps she then felt this movement left an empty space where there shouldn't be one, and so she sticks the "it" in to fill the hole. She is making extra sure the sentence is complete.

9. "Mommy, you're a grown up. I'm a grown down."

This shows that not only has the child learned that "up" is the opposite of "down," but that that sense of oppositeness can be applied to the relationship between "adult" and "kid" in a meaningful way. Just the kind of analogy-making that came in handy when learning the difference between "good guy" and "bad guy" or "backyard" and "front yard."

10. "Unless I will get a lollipop, if I won't will get dressed fast."

So much going on here. Clausal connectors like "unless" and "if" are some of the last words that children master. In fact, when used in tests of logical reasoning, many adults have problems with them too. The child here is combining two statements: 1. Unless I get a lollipop, I won't get dressed fast. 2. I will get a lollipop if I get dressed fast. He stipulates his conditions for getting dressed fast and lays out the anticipated consequences of his getting dressed fast all in one extremely complex blend. Before we can say he's mastered English, he needs to simplify this construction down to a level that even adults can understand.