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Learning to really learn (Click to select text)
Learning to Really Learn: Through Oral communication The skills of Oral communication are something of a phenomenon. In infants or in fantis, meaning not speaking, children begin the long process towards speech production and more advanced speech perception. Since birth forms of communication take place "Often parents and infants also vocalize in unison as they gaze at one another, and this mutual and simultaneous gazing and vocalizing create "Quite special moments" between them". (Lois Bloom, 1970) This is the first stage the child has that progresses into listening and speaking. These two physical activities of perceiving information and expressing thoughts, ideas, and attitudes through listening and speaking help to influence learning ability in children. In my discussion with Annette Depaul she conveyed her feelings about listening in the schools, at home, and in other aspects through a series of carefully devised questions and statements. It is her statement, which confirms that socially it is essential to feel comfort in ones surroundings and it is the role of the parent to be the first teacher of the child in sufficient speech production. There are many factors that can contribute to the quality comprehensive listening and speech production in the child depending what he/she may learn in his home environment. When school begins so does the self-consciousness of the child start to be affected; the child may not even know how to express him/her self effectively in an out of home setting. (Children and oral communication) This is why the teacher's role in child development is very tricky and from careful research by Strickland and Loban we now know the action needed to be taken by the schoolteachers. Testing to see if listening comprehension is going at a satisfying rate can also help the child along his path of effectively learning speech. Learning oral communication has a lot of benefits to our children. If we want them to excel their best we need to make the most out of the resources that will help them along. Before any form of communication is fostered by the child infants already have the means to perceive and produce speech.(Lois Bloom 1970) Although crying holds no arbitrary meaning to the child he/she still recognizes automatic responses from the parent. It is proven that infants who experience contingent and reciprocal vocal response to their words are more likely to vocalize again after the child takes a couple of seconds to perceive the sounds and accurately correct their own sounds to match the adults. Peter Marler observed an early "subsong" that he compared to an infant. A little infant sparrow can learn the song of his own species very quickly if he is taught during a "critical period" of his/her infancy. The sparrow corrects himself by trying to mimic the sounds of his adult individuals. (Lois Bloom 1970; Peter Marlow 1979) With the help of maturing sensory motors and muscles. If a child say's help in the first three months the subcortical sensory motor distinguishes between articulated sounds babies hear and the sounds babies can make. Developing of muscle control is needed to make that first babble of googoo gaagaa that happens in the first 6 to 9 months. Observation come natural to every human being and plays an important role in making words. Speech perceptions in children find its way through the meanings of words. Children perceive speech much the same way adults and animals do, in a category. In the first year a child may organize and reorganize elements from cries, coo, whines, and grunts into the conditional sounds of speech. Sounds of speech bring the receptive and expressive skills to work through listening and speaking words. The sender of a message transmits his her feelings, ideas, and attitudes and the receiver interpret the message according to his/her own experiences. Learning a word means many things that bear on social, cognitive, cultural and linguistic matters. Cognitively to Learn a word is to learn how to express a mental meaning, something the infant has in mind that is directed to object events and relations in the world. Socially learning a word is learning how persons in a society make public what is otherwise private and internal to themselves so as to influence the thoughts feelings and actions of one another. Culturally to learn a word is to learn something of the values that have evolved in a society for creating and sharing a worldview. Words are powerful resources in the human communication system since they help us to use and exercise the techniques we need in our education. (Doris Noelle, 1953) Sufficient evidence indicates possible directions towards improving children's listening and speaking abilities. If this knowledge is thoroughly disseminated and extended efforts were put forth to build home environments as well as building classroom programs around this knowledge. Then we would have a very effective learning system in all areas of interest. It is from this evidence that I have devised a series of questions to gain insight on how a parent responds to stimuli of what they hear and how she will perceive it. This is beneficial to the development of increased awareness about oral communication and how it can parents and the community build better social lives to say the very least. This time I have one subject, which I have questioned. Annette Louise Depaul, a nurse for 5 years and mother of two daughters one with a grandchild, gave complete useful information for my Research Paper. I questioned her whether school children became socially self aware when they first started school? Her reply was that in today's society kids are getting so violent and there is too much abuse between the children. Then I asked her if kids who knew how to articulate expressions verbally have a better chance of being less violent. This time she was very firm about saying that "Society Sucks" I asked another question, "Do you think infants have the ability to talk? Annette had the simple answer that if you get any thing of the same species together it can communicate including animals in her statement. Annette thinks animals are more intelligent babies than human babies are. "Children need to be around others since they learn from social interaction. Infants learn by observing. If you told a child how to take care of a dog and then showed another child to take care of a dog the one you showed will do a much better job" The next answers to my questions were greeted with mixed degrees of interest. I asked how important listening is to education. Nonchalantly I was replied "Very." Then I questioned "Does the child needs help in learning to speak? Annette replied, "yes" Everybody does even more nonchalantly. Reminding myself that this is the woman who would like to see more calm children in this world. I stated, "I think that through good expressive articulate gestures a person will not have to use violence as a way of releasing those pent up feelings." I asked her then if she would like to be taught to articulate her emotions more effectively. Her very quick and eager reply was "yes, I would feel more self-confident with my self" Is the radio and television good for a child? "Yes and no since it depends on what they are watching. Kids today spend all their time watching episodes with no educational value." I then said, "What if I said it is a proven fact that television enhances listening and speaking comprehension." However she was stuck on the general idea that TV is bad for a kid because he does not enjoy wholesome activity. Contrary to her belief, it has been proven that TV is mentally stimulating rather than physical activities that are more physical. Nursery schools are also a good place to interact with kids and copy them according to Annette. Then I read a couple of statements that I got from the some research done by other psychologists: 1. There is a higher relationship between speaking and listening than to any other variable. 2. If a person scores higher in listening comprehension tests they usually form longer sentences. (Strickland 25) 3. The better quality of the child's language in school determines the social development he/she can attain as an individual. 4. This self-competence makes for fewer dropouts by adolescents. 5. Listening can be improved through teaching and practice. Direct training helps to improve a person's learning ability by 40% and this training can be obtained by teaching it as a integral part of all that is taught in the classroom. 6. Listening and speaking helps to build concept of others. 7. Listening is the most widely used communication activity from both adult and child. (Rankin, 1928) 8. Making kids more effective listeners will cause less inefficiency in learning. 9. The way a child reads is considerably influenced by the way the child speaks. 10. The oral achievers in kindergarten surpasses the under achiever in reading ability from 1st to 6th grades. 11. Oral language also helps the child write more efficiently if the child has opportunities to talk about what he/she is writing. (Loban,2) "What we say is what we write". She agreed with statement number five because when she took a class on listening and Reading comprehension she thought she showed considerable improvement at the time. Now that she is not in every day contact with stimulating observations and conversations she is not doing well. Yet she does not think we need to practice advanced oral communication everyday for the person in the normal life. This discussion helped me to evaluate and confirm ideas I have and noted psychologist have on developing oral communication that brings me to the topic of learning to learn. Learning to learn means that we need successfully test and learn what will work on the child during his most shifty years of development. It is these years the children is the quickest and genetically and biologically ready to learn all he can learn. To succeed in oral communication skills means to have an overall better productivity level in life, as noted above in one through 10. If a child is motivated to learn he can easily learn. As you can see from the example of Annette that parents need to be taught the essentials of academic linguistics. The motivation in the parent and society is there to want the younger generation to learn. Ignorance on the part of the parent however does not take the interest towards the areas it needs to go. Like TV, Annette thought that TV is not good for our children and in other aspects of psychology it really is not. Yet in a linguistic perspective observing some more advanced language outside of a child's native at home tongue proves to be beneficial to the child learning. Even Annette recognized the importance of parent child, and environment- child interaction with good reason. Children today possess a larger vocabulary and employ complex sentence structure that those of generations ago. This is because of the advent of the radio and television, and the rise of nurseries provide more language stimulation outside the home for the under privileged kids. Less contact with bilingual help who talk in broken English help the richer ones! Parents, more importantly, need to recognize themselves as the primary teacher of the child who does need love and affection. Their language patterns are largely set by the time they reach preschool age. (Noelle 16; Smith 23; Strickland 25; Loban 7; A child needs to know that his or her efforts are acknowledged and appreciated by his peer. Acceptance is a very important issue into establishing a social life outside of the home. Parent, member of the family, and neighbors by motivational comments increase the development of the child. Concepts are closely woven with family patterns and usage. The early exposure to language and their qualities taught in the home and neighborhood determine the extent and quality of all the child's subsequent language development. Children listen attentively and mimic the parent's way to express themselves before he/she gets to school. Another tip from Annette is to look straight in the eyes of the person you are talking to and let he/she know you are listening. Parents also need to be strong support systems that are well informed on their children language use growth. It helps to attend out of school activites that devolop listening and speaking skills. School allows teachers, supervisors and administrators, and Evaluations of students to help form the basic Grammar and usage principals. The teacher has the most important role of the school in the child's life. A study by Marie Hughes declares that every action of the teacher is a "function" that offers a wider range mental processes. Also functions that come from these functions offer a better perception of reality and feeling that the child is respected. The teachers role is to make the child feel that he is important and can make a contribution to the group regardless of his present language usage. The teacher must provide group and one on one interaction with peers as well as being sensitive and flexible enough to adjust schedule plans to each individual or group. Creative teachers will offer experiences such as reading, hands on, or action-type to catch the attention of children. Supervisors need to provide the parents and teachers with local community workshops to help promote the understanding of proper language usage and how it is obtained. Evaluating the students' progress will also help the school and parents know what our children need. Improved tests that deal with more testing in oral language such as reading comprehension will give a better aspect of what is important to teach. From the beginning we learn to express ourselves. Now it is time to learn how to build the self-confidence we need in learning by a better awareness of our speech. I would like to thank Annette Depaul for her contribution in this research paper. The books "The expressive infant" and "Children and Oral language a Review" both written without unfortunately any bibliography but mounds of information for the brain. Bloom, Lois; The transition from infancy to language acquiring the power of expression. LB1139.L3 B58; 1993 Mackintosh, Helen K. Children and oral language d1897- 1996 Association for Childhood Education International
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