Who are the most popular children's authors for early years, infants and juniors?
For children aged 0 - 5 years authors such as Janet & Allan Ahlberg, Eric Carle who produced the well known classic "The Very Hungry Caterpillar", Raymond Briggs who published "The snowman" and Rod Campbell are just a few of the most popular.
For children aged 6 - 8 years authors such as Roald Dahl who produced the classic range of books such as "The BFG", Enid Blyton well known for the famous book "Five on a Treasure Island" and Dick King-Smith are just a few examples of the most popular authors.
For children aged 9 - 11 years authors such as Michael Morpurgo who produced the well know "Private Peaceful", Jacqueline Wilson and the famous book "The Story of Tracy Beaker", JK Rowling and her book "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" and Roald Dahl again and a few of the most popular authors.
What are the elements of these books that are successful?
- Using interesting, fun illustrations and artwork
- An enthusiastic story line
- Teaching simple concepts such as numbers, letters or colors or even teaching diversity, love, manners, and acceptance.
- Using interesting language such as alliterations and poetry as well as incorporating advanced vocabulary
Which books for young children do you remember/love? Why do you remember them?
The books I loved and remember as a child are "The Very Hungry Caterpillar", "Elmer", "Dear Zoo" and "Spot The Dog" collection. These books were full of fun and excited pictures and illustrations. They all had very interesting and different story lines which is why i loved them and kept reading them over and over again.
How are children taught to read in schools?
What are the arguments for and against current approaches? synthetic phonics and reading schemes.
What sorts of 'miscues' do young readers make and how are caregivers encouraged to deal with them ?
Bibliography
http://www.booktrust.org.uk/news-and-blogs/news/222/
http://publishingperspectives.com/2012/06/what-makes-a-childrens-book-great-we-have-some-answers/
http://thewritepractice.com/childrens-book/
Imitation and reinforcement are the most crucial tools for children's language acquisition. Evaluate (30 marks)
1) Discuss the terms 'imitation and reinforcement' and acknowledge that they are important but not the most important
2) Explore patterns of language use and evaluate their relevance to theories and the question
3) Establish other theories and evaluate if they are important/more important with reference to care studies and data
The idea of learning and developing language through both imitation and reinforcement is a part of Skinner's operant conditioning theory as part of using both negative and positive reinforcement; as well as punishment. Imitation is the process of which a child learns language through the copying and echoing of how their caregiver speaks to and around them and reinforcement is when the language used by a child is encouraged making it more likely for them to repeat it. Positive reinforcement is when the child's language has been rewarded, encouraging them to use it again and repeat in the future as its what they are being rewarded for such as praise, echoing and reformulation. Negative reinforcement is when the praise or the reward is removed and not given. By the caregiver modelling the correct use of language to the child without them receiving a reward for the language they used, they will focus on correcting it and preventing the same mistakes that have been made. Skinner believed that children learn language through the environment as well as the consequences of their actions which is where he developed the ideas of positive and negative reinforcement. He also believed that learning would always take place as long as the speech imitation from the child was rewarded consistently. Intimation and reinforcement can be seen as very significant to learning language, although, they may not be the most crucial tools for children language acquisition suggested by the contrasting theories that other theorists believe to be more crucial to the learning and development of language. For example; Piaget's theory, Bruner and Vygotsky.
Both imitation and reinforcement can be found in the first transcript, text A, which is a conversation that took place whilst Tom was mending bikes with his parents. At the beginning of the transcript, Tom says "the bike (.) the dad bike". Tom is aged 2 years and 7 months and is currently in the telegraphic stage meaning that he is able to put together a utterance of three or more words, although Tom seems to get muddled and confused with the order of his words. His mother then responds and corrects him by reformulating the phrase to the correct term, "dad's bike". This is an example of negative reinforcement as his mother has converted the utterance to standard English to be the appropriate way as it should be spoken. Tom then goes on to imitate and repeat his mothers response when he says, "yeah (.) the dad (.) dad's bike (.) dads bike mum (.) dads bike". Although he has clearly made several false starts, he has recognized that he isn't repeating his mothers response correctly and so he keeps trying until "dad's bike"
has been modeled and has been successfully imitated. This could also be seen has an example of embedded learning. Further on in the transcript Tom applies his knowledge of the use of correct standard English again when he says, "I need to fix dad's bike (.) go (.) on (.) oh (.) I need to fix dad's bike again". With Tom continuing to apply what he has learnt and using the language he has develop throughout the transcript it proves Skinner's idea that once negative reinforcement has been reinforced the language is unlikely to repeat the same mistakes that have been made previously. This suggests that Skinner's theory has worked as Tom has learnt language through his mothers imitation and her use of negative reinforcement. Another example of positive reinforcement provided his mother is when Tom says, "it make noises" with his mothers response being "it makes noises". By her doing this and correcting Tom's elision and inflection of the missing plural 's' on the end of "makes" she is providing scaffolding. Scaffolding is the support that care givers provide to help children with the process of learning language, this is a part of Vgotsky's theory. Vgotsky's Zone of Proximal Development is the distance between what a child can already do independently and what they can achieve with scaffolding from the caregiver. Piaget's has criticized this theory and process of learning as he believes that children cannot advance their language unless they successfully go through the 4 stages at a certain age.
The second transcript, text B, is a conversation between Tom and his mother whilst he is completing a jigsaw puzzle. Although, noticeably many examples of both imitation and reinforcement can be found throughout the transcript, the majority of them are to reinforce and scaffold Tom's behavior instead of his language. Whilst Tom completes a jigsaw puzzle with his mother, she praises him using positive reinforcement by saying "fantastic" and "well done". Tom clearly understands that he is being rewarded when he puts a piece of the puzzle together currently and so he repeats his twice to gain more positive reinforcement from his mother to encourage him to continue doing what he is already doing. Unlike the imitation and reinforcement given above to Tom's behavior, after tom says "I (.) I killed it (.)
I (.) killed the sh (.) sheep (.) mum (.) yeah" she models his language appropriately as to what he should of said being he "squashed it". Tom then goes on to confirm his mothers response by saying "yeah (.) I squashed it" which shows that he has successfully imitated his mothers language and has understood the appropriate terms he should of used. This is an example of negative reinforcement and also suggests that Skinner's theory has work has Tom has successfully imitated his mothers language and very quickly.
There are other theories that theorists believe to be the most crucial tools for children's language acquisition than both imitation and reinforcement. One theory would be Piaget's theory, who said and believed that children cannot advance their language unless they successfully go through the 4 stages at a certain age ; sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational. Tom is currently in the preoperational stage (2-7) as he is of 2 years and 7 months of age. This could explain as to why Tom couldn't correctly count the number of chickens he could see, he says "one (.) two (.) three (.) four (.)" and then repeats the same four numbers as before as he has not yet gone through the concrete operational (7-11) which Piaget said was to be the stage in children gain the ability of numbers. This supports Piaget's theory being that children must go through the four stages before advancing their language. Another theorist is Bruner, who believed and developed the idea that children go though three stages; enactive stage (0-1), the iconic stage (1-6) and the symbolic stage (7 years and older).
In conclusion, imitation and reinforcement can both be important tools for the way in which children learn language by giving them the foundations to develop it further and to use the correct standard English, they may not be the most crucial part for the development and process for children's language acquisition. Therefore, other theorists such as Piaget and Bruner who have their own ideas and theory's could equally be seen as a crucial tools for children's language acquisitions with evidence and cases to support this. I think that different aspects of many theory's can be put together and can all be relevant to the way in which children learn and adapt language.
