My Own Language Development Story

 As a child my first words were 'mummy' and 'daddy' and I also used to use shorter nicknames for my younger brother. There were no concious decisions behind my own language development however my parents did read to me when I was younger and my favourite books were Disney ones I had as a child, including 'The Little Mermaid' and 'Snow White'. My earliest memories of reading was when my parents used to read to me before bed or when I had to read to them, nearly every day, using books supplied from primary school. I believe that Chall's reading stages have some relevance towards my own language development as I started reading short stories around 7 however this was to improve my own ability to read, not to gain any new information.

Vygotsky's Theory

According to Vygotsky, until children learn to use mental tools, their learning is largely controlled by the environment; they attend only to the things that are brightest or loudest, and they can remember something only if has been repeated many times. AFTER children master mental tools, they become in charge of their own learning, by attending and remembering in an intentional and purposeful way. In the same way that using certain mental tools can transform children’s cognitive behaviours, using other mental tools can transform their physical, social, and emotional behaviours. From being “slaves to the environment,” children become “masters of their own behaviour.” As children are taught and practice an increasing number of mental tools, they transform not only their external behaviours, but also their minds, leading to the emergence of higher mental functions.

Some major themes in the social development theory:
1. Social interaction plays a fundamental role in cognitive development. He felt social learning precedes (comes before) development. He said every function in the child's cultural development appears twice. First on a social level (between people) and then on an individual level for the child.
2. The more knowledgeable other (MKO) - means the person with a better understanding or higher ability than the learner/child. It could be teachers, adults or even peers and computes.
3. The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). This is the distance between a student's ability to perform a task under adult guidance/ or with a peer compared to doing it independently. Learning occurs in this zone.

Media Text Do's & Dont's

Media text from amymyersmedia

Chall's Reading Stages

-         Stage 0: Prereading – birth age 6

o        children master many prerequisites for reading at this stage:

o       Identifies a few letters of the alphabet, prints name, read a few words, has knowledge about books

-         Stage 1: Initial reading – age 6-7

o       Children acquire phonological recoding skill – ability to translate letters into sounds and to blend the sounds together to form words - /m/-/a/-/t/ = mat

o       Finish learning letters and sounds, begin reading simple texts

-         Stage 2: Confirmation Fluency  - age 7-8

o       Begin to read fluently, focus is on identifying individual words more quickly, become automatic in reading familiar texts

o       Reading is not focused on gaining new information or learning from reading, but is used to gain control of reading – read fluently and quickly decode words

-         Stage 3: Reading to Learning New Information– age 8-14

o       Reads to learn - children become capable of obtaining new information from print -  use reading as a tool to acquire new knowledge

o       Growing importance of word meaning, prior knowledge, and strategic knowledge

o       Children have a singular viewpoint when reading

o       Example: child goes to the zoo and sees a Siberian Tiger

-         Stage 4: Multiple Viewpoints – age 14-18

o       Reads material from multiple viewpoints

o       Improve their ability to think critically about what they read with a deeper understanding of the information

o       Example: understanding subjects such as history or politics

-         Stage 5: Construction and Reconstruction – age 18+

o       Forms knowledge from reading on a higher level of abstraction

o       Able to construct their own viewpoint of what they have read and critically analyze the viewpoints of others

o       Example: able to read information on the development of object permanence and construct their own views on this subject

English Presentation Video

Kroll's Stages

Preparatory stage

ages 0-6
the child masters the physical skills needed for writing and have an understanding of the basic principles

 

Consolidation stage

ages 6-8
writing reflects spoken language and contains colloquialisms. Sentences are short, declarative, grammatically incomplete, or simple conjunctions (eg. and, so, then) used to link longer sentences

 

Differentiation stage

ages 8-mid teens
There's an awareness of the differences between writing and speech. Children have confidence in grammatical structures and sentences become more complex, with sophisticated connectives used

 

Integration stage

mid teens onwards
A 'personal voice' is developed and a writing style is adopted confidently.

Piaget

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was a biologist who originally studied molluscs (publishing twenty scientific papers on them by the time he was 21) but moved into the study of the development of children's understanding, through observing them and talking and listening to them while they worked on exercises he set.

His view of how children's minds work and develop has been enormously influential, particularly in educational theory. His particular insight was the role of maturation (simply growing up) in children's increasing capacity to understand their world: they cannot undertake certain tasks until they are psychologically mature enough to do so. His research has spawned a great deal more, much of which has undermined the detail of his own, but like many other original investigators, his importance comes from his overall vision.

He proposed that children's thinking does not develop entirely smoothly: instead, there are certain points at which it "takes off" and moves into completely new areas and capabilities. He saw these transitions as taking place at about 18 months, 7 years and 11 or 12 years. This has been taken to mean that before these ages children are not capable (no matter how bright) of understanding things in certain ways, and has been used as the basis for scheduling the school curriculum. Whether or not should be the case is a different matter.