Научная статья на тему 'YOUNG CHILDREN AND LANGUAGE'

YOUNG CHILDREN AND LANGUAGE Текст научной статьи по специальности «Языкознание и литературоведение»

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Ключевые слова
LEARNING LANGUAGE / LANGUAGE STRUCTURE / LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY / DEVELOPING LANGUAGE / FLUENCY IN LANGUAGE

Аннотация научной статьи по языкознанию и литературоведению, автор научной работы — Ahmad Khalid Rahmani

The goal of the article is to find out the ways and means of developing students’ communicative competence and sufficient fluency so that they would be able to use correct language outside the classroom. The article offers an in-depth discussion of language leaning. It elaborates upon learning language, language structure, sentence structure, sound systems, word systems, language signs, language and identity, developing language and fluency in language. Language, in a broader sense, is the method of communication that involves the use of - particular human - languages. Learning of a specific language even the mother tongue can be achieved by two different ways: formal and informal, of which formal learning rarely can be acquired in society and family. The starting point of informal learning is mostly considered among the families that mainly encompasses all the principles, which is being taught as an oral teaching of a language through the parents for their young children. Of course, appropriate familial support and access to effective educational resources is necessary. At the same time, there are enormous individual differences in children’s progression from playing with refrigerator letters to reading independently, and many paths and ways can be followed successfully. Ideally, the child comes to reading instruction with well-developed language abilities, a foundation for reading acquisition, and varied experiences with emergent literacy. The achievement of real reading requires knowledge of the phonological structures of language and how the written units are connect with the spoken units. Phonological sensitivity at the sub-word level is important in this achievement. Very early, children who turn out to be successful in learning to read use phonological connection to letters, including letter names, to establish context-dependent phonological connections, which allow productive reading. An important mechanism for this is phonological recording, which helps the child acquire high-quality word representations. Gains in fluency (automaticity) come with increased experience, as does increased lexical knowledge that supports word identification.

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Текст научной работы на тему «YOUNG CHILDREN AND LANGUAGE»

прежде, и предоставляет студентам беспрецедентные возможности для автономного обучения. Компьютерные технологии не только помогают учителям и ученикам преодолевать лингвистические, географические и временные барьеры, но и наводить мосты между двуязычными программами, программами ESL и иностранными языками. Использование новых технологий позволяет студентам участвовать в онлайнобщении и исследованиях, которые будут иметь первостепенное значение для успеха в их академической и профессиональной деятельности.

Ключевые слова: возможности, коммуникация, технология, производительность, компьютер, вклад, внешний.

DEVELOPING USES OF TECHNOLOGY IN LANGUAGE TEACHING AND LEARNING

In conclusion computer technology is not a panacea for language teaching; using it demands substantial commitments of time and money and brings no guaranteed results.

As seen from the above three case studies, appropriate use of new technologies allows for a more thorough integration of language, content, and culture than ever before and provides students with unprecedented opportunities for autonomous learning. Computer technologies not only help teachers and students to transcend linguistic, geographical, and time barriers but also to build bridges between bilingual, ESL, and foreign language programs. The use of new technologies allows students to engage in the types of online communication and research which will be paramountfor success in their academic andprofessionalpursuits.

Keywords: opportunities, communication, technology, performance, computer, contributions, external.

Сведение об авторе:

Ахмад Джавид Ширзад - Исламская Республика Афганистан, Министерство высшего образования, Университет Фарьяб, факультет литературы и гуманитарных наук, факультет английского языка. Мобильный: +93799477661. E-mail: shirzadjawid@yahoo.com

About the author:

Ahmad, J. Sh. - Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Ministry of Higher Education, Faryab University, Literature and Humanities Faculty, English Department. Mobile: +93799477661. Email: shirzadjawid@yahoo. com

YOUNG CHILDREN AND LANGUAGE

AhmadKh R

Faryab University Islamic Republic of Afghanistan

It is a predominant fact that both teachers and students confront many problems regarding correct usage of a language. Many researches recently have shown that acquisition of a language among young children is related to the issue of initial activities that is really and mostly considered the main purpose of every single human. It is concise and clear that studding of different subj ects and fields teach nothing for young children as being in a society can, and as a result ,we usually don not imagine our language as something that might wield power, fuel debate, or even cause conflict in truth , however, language can operate in all of these ways. Learning of a specific language even the mother tongue can be learned at two different ways: formal and informal of which formal learning rarely can be acquired in society and family but the starting point of informal learning is mostly considered among the families that mainly encompasses all the principles which is being taught as an oral teaching of a language through the parents for their young children.

Language definition

Language is a structured system of communication. Language, in a border sense, is the method of communication that involves the use of - particular human - languages, or the method of human communication, either spoken or written, consisting of the use of the words in a structured and conventional way.

How do children learn to talk?

Over the last forty years, at least researchers (psycholinguists this time and not educationalists) have approached this question from a variety of angles, leading to some quite famous 'fallings out' between them. We will try in this section to focus on those aspects that have a particular bearing on the j ob of primary teachers, especially in Key Stage 1, as they strive to build on what has already been achieved by the children so far.

The language acquisition device (LAD)

It is possible to see language learning as innate, part of a child's genetically transmitted inheritance, like walking upright or using the hands as tools. Chomsky emphasized this approach. He suggested that inside the brain of each one of us is something called a Language Acquisition Device or LAD for short, which predisposes us to learn and to use language. This is important to bear in mind if you have been inclined to take the view that children learn to speak by imitating adults. Of course, they do learn from the adults around them, but there is more to language learning than this. This is most obviously true when children say things that they have never heard an adult say. Examples might be: I ran all the way to school today.

Social aspects of language learning

Vygotsky and Brunei; outstanding among many other researchers, have emphasized that adults and older children have a vital role to play at all stages in the development of babies' language. Chomsky himself stressed that it is the experience of being in a language-using environment that triggers the innate 'language mechanisms' in children. However, even a stimulating environment is not enough. The image of children as being like plants, put into fertile soil, provided with an encouraging climate, and then left to grow as and how they will, has probably been harmful to some children's progress, and has possibly prevented many from reaching their full potential. Many so-called 'privileged' children have their own spaces to play in, and are provided with televisions, computers, video games and so on. Yet in terms of their language development these things are not necessarily of very much help to them. What young children need is first-hand language experience: as much interaction as they can get, with adults and with older children, one-to-one or in small groups, engaging in topics of shared interest and encouraging an ever-extending range of purposes for talk.

The earliest stages of language learning

Preschool children, though they can cope well with conversation given the kinds of supportive adults described above, frequently do not have the conversational sophistication to deal with talking to people outside their social circle. They have acquired their language knowledge in very specific contexts, in daily, repeated activities such as washing and dressing, eating and going for walks to the shops and to other familiar places. They are particularly fortunate if these daily contexts have included adults singing songs and reciting nursery rhymes with them, sharing books, especially stories, or playing pretend games, such as sailing away on the sofa to a treasure island, stiff with pirates. [Wilson, 2014, p. 20].

Development before kindergarten

The first five years

Learning to read and write begins long before the school years, one of the, as the biological, cognitive, and social precursors are put into place. One of the important preconditions for literacy is the integrity of a child's health and sensory organs, since the window for the establishment of such skills as language is relatively brief. The child's intelligence, as long as it is in the normal range, does not have much of an Impact on the ease of learning to read. The capacity to learn to read and write is related to children's age related developmental timetables, although there is no clear agreement on the precise chronological or mental age nor on a particular developmental level that children must reach before they are "ready" to learn to read and write.

Children who become successful readers tend to exhibit age-appropriate sensory, perceptual, cognitive, and social skills as they Progress through the preschool years. Through the interaction of maturation and experience, they become increasingly adept at mastering physical dexterity and locomotion, at categorizing and construction relationships between physical objects, at remembering facts and events over time, at engaging in imaginative play, at forming social relationships, and so forth.

Language development

Children with intact neurological systems, raised by caring adults in a speech community, fairly effortlessly acquire the spoken language of that community, exhibiting abilities within the domains of phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and lexicon or vocabulary.

Knowing a language, however, does not require a conscious awareness of the various systems involved in that language, nor does it necessitate an ability to articulate the underlying principles or components of the systems. Metalinguistic insights about some language domains typically emerge in the preschool years.

Practically from birth, infants are able to distinguish all the sounds of any human language, and within a short time their perceptual abilities become tuned to their native language, even though their productive repertoire remains limited to non-speech sounds and babbling for much of the first year of life. Phonological development continues well beyond the first year and probably continues to be refined even in the early school years. [Griffin, 1998, p. 1516].

Language and identity

Each community, just like each individual, has its own language that expresses the ideas, values, and attitudes of its members. A particular group of language users who share the use of a specific language adapted to fit their needs is called a language community. Your language communities may be created by your interests, say a sports team or a school club you belong to, by your age group, by your gender, and so on.

Language communities are often identified by geographical region as well. In the southwestern United States, for example, in some towns along the Mexican border, Spanish is the dominant language, not English. In other towns in this region, English dominates.

Fluency in language

When you were a child, you might have had fun with your friends or family inventing a special language to be used just by your circle. Maybe, it was a code-signs or made-up words that you substituted for real words. Or maybe you created a made-up language by transposing sounds in some way: When you were a child, you no matter what the structure of your language, it probably took a lot of work for you to produce it, remembering those words or sounds that substituted for others and the special flourishes that made it unique.

Language signs

The most basic convention of any language community is the acceptance of a set of signs that convey meaning. These signs could be sounds or words or punctuation marks on a page or even silence in a conversation; any of these things is able to carry meaning. To be successful, signs work on two different levels. First, signs indicate the phonic or graphic or visual elements, the physical medium that gives a language form, and then on the second level the signs portray the message itself, which indicates a particular meaning. To give a quick illustration of this duality inherent in language signs, consider the word goose. The alphabet letters represent particular sounds within the American English language system. Then, for the second level, the letters work together to create the word goose, which represents the meaning the sign conveys, the concept of a certain kind of bird.

Word systems

Knowing a language means knowing its word structures and meanings.

Native speakers of English know the meanings of many words and know how to combine these words together. They also know how to coin new words in English. For instance, if someone gave you something and called it a krip, even though you might not know the word's meaning, you could ask for two of them by adding -s to krip, creating krips; in addition, you could also use the word in sentences: Do you have any krips today? Where are my krips? And so on.

Sentence structures

Native speakers also know how to construct sentences. And they intuitively know when a sentence sounds "wrong." Note that constructing sentences goes beyond just putting strings of words together. As one famous linguist pointed out with his example sentence, Colorless green ideas sleep furiously, a sentence may be grammatically correct, but that does not mean that it is well-formed, or meaningful. Sentences must conform to certain rules of language, including rules about meanings. Will explore in more detail sentence structures and their meanings.

Sound systems

Knowing a language means that speakers know how to produce sounds in their native languages and that they understand which sounds are meaningful and which are not. So, for instance, while guttural sounds made in the throat area are common to many languages, including French, Arabic, and German, American English speakers know they are not a part of the American English sound corpus. In addition to intuitively knowing the sounds that comprise their language, speakers also know the ways in which sounds can be combined. For example, words in English cannot begin with the consecutive sounds represented by the two letters ts, so native speakers of English would not expect these two sounds together at the beginning of words. [Ambery, 2014, p. 1-2].

Teaching your learners

First language and second language

Knowing how children learn their first language can help us teach them a second language.

All children can speak at least one language when they come to school. Think about how they learn this first language. Think about babies and young children. Most mothers talk a lot to their children.

Babies

- Hear voices from the time they are born

- Respond to the voices of their mother, father

- Listen to a sound

- Play with sounds and practice making sounds

- Begin to associate sounds with what they can see and understand

- Begin to use language to interacts with others and get what they want

Young children

- Say what they hear others saying

- Pick up the accent of those around them.

Children as language learners

Although pronouns emerge gradually over the early years of childhood, most children have sorted out the personal pronoun system of their L1by the age of three, and by the time they reach school age, "confusions between different personal pronouns rarely occur" (Chiat 1986). Indeed, persistent errors with third person singular pronouns are an indication of L1 language impairment (Moore 2001). Furthermore, the use of pronouns to achieve discourse cohesion, as in oral narrative, is well established by middle childhood, ages 8-9 (for discussion. As the acquisition of pronouns is implicit, and because these forms are not problematic, children are not taught a rule of thumb for determining the gender of third person possessive pronouns. However, they do learn the meta language they need to talk about aspects of their L1 that are difficult to say or write correctly. [Philp, Oliver, 2008, p. 193].

Putting the children's needs first

In the EFL classroom there is a lot of pressure on the teacher to produce immediate, tangible results, teachers worry about their own performance; parents want to hear their children speak English; administrators need concrete evidence of progress. Teachers therefore feel responsible if specific new structures and new words are not learned and produced every lesson. This is potentially a very harmful state of affairs since silence does not mean that the

children are ignorant or not learning. Indeed, there are evidences that, in a total immersion situation, for example, many children go through a silent period during which they are processing their language environment. Moreover, if teachers insist on accurate production as evidence of achievement from children, they will encourage a considerable percentage of children to fail. Children who have tried their best and failed to produce the result the teacher wants will often lose confidence and interest. They will feel, quite wrongly, that English is too difficult for them - and stop trying. Children should therefore be allowed to learn at their own pace, and language learning targets should not be forced upon them because of an external and non-flexible language syllabus.

Children as learners need

- To hear clear pronunciation and intonation

- To feel successful when using English

- Plenty of opportunities to communicate

- To enj oy their efforts at speaking in English

- To know they have achieved something worthwhile.

You as the teacher can

> Speak a lot of English and repeat children's words or phrases when you are answering them

> React to the meaning of what they are trying to say

> Encourage them by showing that what they are saying is more important than your correction

> Wait until they finish speaking before you repeat and rephrase

> Show your approval for all your pupils' speaking - however short it may be

> Provide activities that are fun are fun and that have a purpose or a goal, and that have an end product that they can feel proud of. [Willis, 2014, p.10-11]

Errors and correction

The long-term aim of teaching English is for the pupils to speak English confidently, correctly and fluently however, it is neither reasonable nor desirable to have this expectation at the beginning of a language program. Young learners may have ten or more years of language study ahead of them. In the early stages of a language course for children, it is important to establish priorities for the child as a learner. These include:

> Building confidence;

> Providing the motivation to learn English:

> Encouraging ownership of language;

> Encouraging children to communicate with whatever language they have at their disposal (mime, gesture, key word, drawings, etc.);

> Encouraging children to treat English as a communication tool, not as an end product;

> Showing children that English is fun;

> Establishing a trusting relationship with the children, and encouraging them to do the same with their classmates;

> Giving children an experience of a wide range of English language in a non- threatening environment.

Moreover, the correction of errors in the early stages of a language course may foster the following negative

aspects:

> Children lose confidence from fear of making mistakes:

> Children become reluctant to take risks; they only say what they natural language text, created and owned by the children themselves. The teacher can then go on to exploit and practice selected aspects of this language text. [Vale, 1995, P.10-12, 32-34].

REFERENCES

1. Ambery, Julie. American English History Structure and Usage. USA. (2014) P. 1-2.

2. Griffin, Editors. Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. USA. (1998). P. 15-16.

3. Philp, Jenefer. & Oliver, Rhonda. Second Language Acquisition and the Younger Learner. USA. (2008). P.

193.

4. Vale, David. Teaching Children English. UK: Cambridge University. (1995). P.P. 10-12, 32-34.

5. Willis, Jane. English for Primary Teachers. China. (2014). P. 10-11.

6. Wilson, Angela. Language Knowledge for Primary Teachers. USA. (1998). P. 20.

ДЕТИ И ЯЗЫК

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Цель статьи - выявить пути и средства развития коммуникативной компетенции и достаточной беглости речи учащихся, чтобы они могли использовать правильный язык вне класса. В статье подробно рассматривается языковая склонность. Он подробно описывает язык обучения, языковую структуру, структуру предложений, звуковые системы, системы слов, языковые знаки, язык и идентичность, развитие языка и беглость в языке.

Язык, в широком смысле, - это способ коммуникации, который предполагает использование определенных человеческих языков. Изучение конкретного языка даже родного языка может быть

получено двумя различными способами: формальным и неформальным, из которых формальное обучение редко может быть приобретено в обществе и семье, но отправная точка неформального обучения в основном рассматривается среди семей, которые в основном охватывают все принципы, которые преподаются как устное обучение языку через родителей для своих маленьких детей. Конечно, соответствующая семейная поддержка и доступ к эффективным образовательным ресурсам. В то же время существуют огромные индивидуальные различия в развитии детей от игры с буквами холодильника к самостоятельному чтению, и многие пути могут быть успешно пройдены.

В идеале ребенок приходит к обучению чтению с хорошо развитыми языковыми способностями, основой для овладения чтением и разнообразным опытом развивающейся грамотности. Достижение реального чтения требует знания фонологических структур языка и того, как письменные единицы соединяются с устными единицами. В этом достижении важна фонологическая чувствительность на уровне меньше чем слова. Очень рано дети, которые успешно учатся читать, используют фонологическую связь с буквами, включая названия букв, чтобы установить контекстно-зависимые фонологические связи, которые позволяют продуктивно читать. Важным механизмом для этого является Фонологическая запись, которая помогает ребенку приобрести качественные словесные репрезентации. Увеличение беглости речи (автоматизм) приходит с увеличением опыта, как и увеличение лексических знаний, которые поддерживают идентификацию слов.

Ключевые слова: язык обучения, структура языка, язык и идентичность, развивающий язык, свободное владение языком.

YOUNG CHILDREN AND LANGUAGE

The goal of the article is to find out the ways and means of developing students' communicative competence and sufficient fluency so that they would be able to use correct language outside the classroom.

The article offers an in-depth discussion of language leaning. It elaborates upon learning language, language structure, sentence structure, sound systems, word systems, language signs, language and identity, developing language and fluency in language.

Language, in a broader sense, is the method of communication that involves the use of- particular human -languages. Learning of a specific language even the mother tongue can be achieved by two different ways: formal and informal, ofwhich formal learning rarely can be acquired in society andfamily. The starting point of informal learning is mostly considered among the families that mainly encompasses all the principles, which is being taught as an oral teaching of a language through the parents for their young children. Of course, appropriate familial support and access to effective educational resources is necessary. At the same time, there are enormous individual differences in children's progressionfrom playing with refrigerator letters to reading independently, and manypaths and ways can be followed successfully.

Ideally, the child comes to reading instruction with well-developed language abilities, afoundation for reading acquisition, and varied experiences with emergent literacy. The achievement of real reading requires knowledge of the phonological structures of language and how the written units are connect with the spoken units. Phonological sensitivity at the sub-word level is important in this achievement. Very early, children who turn out to be successful in learning to read use phonological connection to letters, including letter names, to establish context-dependent phonological connections, which allow productive reading. An important mechanism for this is phonological recording, which helps the child acquire high-quality word representations. Gains in fluency (automaticity) come with increased experience, as does increased lexical knowledge that supports word identification.

Key words: learning language, language structure, language and identity, developing language, fluency in language.

Сведения об авторе:

Ахмад Холид Рахмони - Афганистан - область Фарьяба, Университет Фарьяб, факультет литературы и гуманитарных наук, член английского отделения, E-mail: akhalid.rahmani@gmail.com Тел: +93799463453

About the author:

Ahmad Khalid Rahmani - Afghanistan - Faryab province. Faryab University, Literature and Humanities Faculty, English Department member, Email: akhalid.rahmani@gmail.com Tel: +93799463453

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