Language Skills
During communication, while highlighting receptive skills learners may require to make verbal or non-verbal responses. For assessment of these receptive skills, learners need to respond to a written or a spoken text. Formal and informal feedback can also be used to provide information about the learners. Different listening materials are utilized by scholars in the course-line of learning; some materials contain all aspects of real spoken language hence they are authentic.
Recorded tapes, poems and songs, are authentic texts that can be used during learning. One of the complete texts that can be used during the learning process is a story. Stories involve emotions, ideas and hopes that shape the human life. A pleasant story is "Getting to the Wedding." [footnoteRef:2] It is a story that involves a boy trying to get home after school so that he can make it to a wedding. After he gets home, they leave…...
mlaBibliography
Brinda, D. Patterns of the Story Teller. Mumbai: Pearson Education India, 2007.
Frey, O. Teaching and Learning L2 Grammar. London: GRIN Verlag, 2010.
Jack, C.,Hull, J.,Proctor, S. New Interchange;English For International Communication. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Spratt, M.,Pulveres, A., Williams, M. The TKT Course Modules 1,2,and 3. New York: Cambridge University, 2011.
Language Skills
Blanton, D.J., & Dagenais, P.A. (2007). Comparison of language skills of adjudicated and nonadjudicated adolescent males and females. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools. (38). 309-314.
The purpose of this study was to determine whether there were differences or similarities in cognitive and language skills of four groups of adolescent people. Specifically, the intention was to find whether there was a difference in these skills between males and females who were adjudicated and those who were nonadjudicated. Adjudicated adolescents in this experiment refer to youth who have been found responsible for negative actions by a judge in an official court of law.
Participants:
The four groups of adolescents were divided by gender and by whether or not they had been adjudicated. Involved in the experiment were 18 adjudicated females, 18 adjudicated males, 14 nonadjudicated females, and 14 nonadjudicated males. All of the participants had an IQ of at least 80…...
Music Improve Language Skills in Kids," argues that children exposed to music throughout their development have an increased ability to learn language. The premise is that because learning language uses certain regions and requires a multi-sensory process (es), i.e. reading, watching others, listening, etc., those children who have been exposed to music, an activity that uses those same brain regions that are involved in language apprehension and requires a similar multi-sensory process (es), will have a greater capacity to learn language. In short, being exposed to music helps a child learn language.
Explain one research finding described in this article.
The article mentions a study whereby patients wore electrodes on their scalp that measured brain wave activity while the patients listened to a cellist perform and a person speak. The study was comprised of non- musicians and musicians. The test showed that musicians had greater responses in their brains to both…...
mlaWorks Cited
Kovach, B. & Rosenstiel, T. (2007). The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople
Should Know and the Public Should Expect, Completely Updated and Revised. New York: Three Rivers Press.
Meyers, C. (2010). Journalsim Ethics: A Philosophical Approach. New York: Oxford
TESOL classroom? What is their function?
Materials are critical in regards to the TESOL classroom. In many instances, individuals are learning a language that can often be convoluted and confusing. Materials help classroom participants to synthesize the appropriate materials in a manner that is relevant to them. Materials also provide a tangible study aid for students. Materials in the TESOL classroom can be brought home for further study and practice. While at home, the student is not constrained by time. The student using the TESOL study materials can better focus on problem areas while at home and in the presence of family members.
Materials also provide aid to students who learn in a different manner than their more traditional counterparts. For example, some students are visual learners while other rely on thorough practice. Through the use of materials, students who learn in varying manners are better able to learn difficult concepts.
Finally,…...
Language and Language Practices
Language is the written and verbal method by which people communicate with one another. It employs sounds or written designs that are understood by others to create words, phrases, and sentences. Other species have language, as well, but it is not believed to be as complex as the language used by human beings (loomfield, 1914; Deacon, 1998). There are many facets to language, and there are nuances and subtleties that are often overlooked. This is especially true with people who are just learning a language, whether they are children first learning to speak or second-language learners being exposed to a new and different language for the first time. People who study languages are involved in what is called linguistics. They may study a particular language, but more often than not they study multiple languages and the construction of those languages. What they do is very different than…...
mlaBibliography
Bloomfield, Leonard. 1914. An introduction to the study of language. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
Deacon, Terrence William. 1998. The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain. New York W.W. Norton & Company.
Kandel, ER; Schwartz, JH; Jessell, TM. 2000. Principles of Neural Science (fourth ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Katzner, K. 1999. The Languages of the World. New York: Routledge.
Language and Thinking
Language is the one aspect, which distinguishes human beings from lower species of life (Faccone et al. 2000). Sternberg (1999 as qtd in Faccone et al.) lists its properties as including communication, arbitrary symbolism, regular structure, structure at multiple levels, generation and production and dynamism. Sternberg assumes that language is most likely acquired naturally from the environment where a person is raised as an infant. The stages seem universal. The first is the cooing stage at two to four months. At this initial stage, an infant seems able to produce and possible phonemes or basic speech sounds. An infant's need to distinguish between phonemes of different languages gradually disappears around 8 months. This is when he recognizes the relationship between sound and meaning in his native language. This is how language begins to have importance to him. The findings of Sternberg's study reveal that human beings are born…...
mlaBIBLIOGRAPHY
Faccone, Claudia et al. The Effct of Language on Thought. The Psychology 20 Course:
University of Carolina, 2000. Retrieved on November 29, 2013 from http://www.unc.edu/~jdumas/projects/languagethought.htm
Hampton, James. A. Language's Role in Enabling Abstract, Logical Thought.
Commentary/Peter Carruthers. Psychology Department: University of London, 2002.
Consider the fact that the Iroquois are said not to have had a strong word for the singular "I," and that they subsequently developed what was arguably the longest lasting communal representative democracy the world has ever known. The Inuit, whose culture revolves around the arctic world, have dozens of words for snow - this sort of technical knowledge allows quick and accurate transmission of conditions and training in survival.
In Western terms, one remembers that Jesus Christ was said to be "The Word," yet in the original Greek this indicates not only a spoken word but also the Logos - the root term for intellectual reason, for Meaning within context (be that the context of a sentence, a life, a history, or a universe); logos was rational order. The difference between saying that a religious figure is the Word (which at its most profound seem to indicate a kind…...
mlaBibliography
Atkins, J.D.C. (1887). Report of the commissioner of Indian affairs. House Exec. Doc. No. 1, Pt. 5, 50th Cong., 1st Sess. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Boston Language Institute. "TEFL FAQ http://teflcertificate.com/faq.html
Ethnologue. "English http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=eng
Macha, Freddy. "Tanzanian Independence Day Abroad. http://www.unclesamofafrica.com/TanzaniaGuardian.htm
These activities help children to learn the difference between contextualized and decontextualized language. "hen we write, read, and have conversations, we often use decontextualized language. This is language that is not tied to the immediate context. It may reflect past events, future events, or fictitious events. For example, decontextualized language is used in everyday dinnertime conversation, when adults tell stories of their childhood, or when children tell about their school day" (Cartwright, 1994).
By definition, reading print is decontextualized language, because children must use their developing mental abilities to represent ideas of things that are not present before their eyes. Thus positive and edifying spoken interactions with parents, teachers, and older children are essential for children to become good readers later in life.
orks Cited
Cartwright, Kelly. (1 Nov 1994). "Reading Development Beings at Birth."
Self-Help. Retrieved 2 Dec 2007 at http://www.self-helpmagazine.com/articles/parenting/literacy.html...
mlaWorks Cited
Cartwright, Kelly. (1 Nov 1994). "Reading Development Beings at Birth."
Self-Help. Retrieved 2 Dec 2007 at http://www.self-helpmagazine.com/articles/parenting/literacy.html
Language Diversity and Education by Carlos J. Ovando, the author makes the point that the language diversity present in the United States has significant implications for all teachers and all students. He emphasizes the importance of both a person's first language and the dominant language in a culture. He notes the complexity of learning a second language: in addition to the cognitive mastery of vocabulary and grammar involved, fluency in a language involves discourse (structure of paragraphs and larger chunks of written language); appropriateness (adjusting language to the social setting); paralinguistics (body language, gestures, volume, pitch, etc.); and pragmatics (cultural norms involving language, subtle conversation skills). Even though ESL students may seem to be learning English rapidly, those language skills may be largely social and inadequate t the cognitive demands made on it in a classroom.
Ovando gave examples of true dialects in the United States -- creoles, or combinations of…...
Language and Literacy
Jeanne S. Chall was born in Poland on January 1, 1921. She moved to New York at a tender age of seven with her family. Jeanne S. Chall was one of the chief educators and researchers in the field of literacy during the past century. The Harvard Reading/Literacy Lab has recently been renamed in accolade of Dr. Chall.
hat follows is an account of Dr. Chall's life and work. Chall grew up in New York City, taught there, and received her bachelor's degree from City College in 1941. Due to a dearth of teaching posts open during the early 1940's, Chall took an assistantship at Teacher's College, Columbia University, subordinate to Irving Lorge, an intelligence-test researcher. It was there at Teacher's College that Chall first advanced a fascination and liking for educational research.
Chall then went on to seek her master's and doctoral degrees at Ohio State University under the…...
mlaWorks Cited
AboutTheAuthor
THE ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT CHALLENGE: WHAT REALLY WORKS IN THE CLASSROOM?
The Guilford Press, March 2000
Language and culture are inextricably linked. The ways in which one's culture is directly attributed to language development are well documented in the academic literature, though there seems to be little consensus on the processes involved in language acquisition and the ways that culture is manifested in both socialization and language development. One assertion, however, seems widely accepted; culture is a learned attribute that language helps convey to others. Because people use language to impart cultural beliefs and societal mores, the nexus between language and culture is an important consideration in the field of education and communication, especially concerning the varied pedagogical theories of child development. Much of what has been studied in the field of both communications and education concerning the connection between language and culture is attributed to a ussian born educator named Lev Vygotsky.
Lev Vygotsky
Vygotsky believed that children developed and acquired knowledge through the assistance of competent…...
mlaReferences:
Kyratzis, A. (2005). Language and Culture: Socialization through Personal Story-Telling Practice. Human Development, 48(3), 146-150.
Miller, P.J., Hengst, J. Alexander, K., & Sperry L.L. (2000). Versions of personal storytelling/versions of experience: Genres as tools for creating alternate realities. In K. Rosengren, C. Johnson & P. Harris (eds.), Imagining the impossible: The development of magical, scientific, and religious thinking in contemporary society (pp. 212 -- 246). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Miller, P.J., & Mehler, R. (1994). Personal story-telling, socialization, and self-construction at home and in kindergarten. In A. Haas Dyson & C. Genishi (eds.), The need for story: Cultural diversity in classroom and community. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
Vygotsky, L. (1978). Problems of Method (pp. 52-75). In Mind in Society. (Trans. M. Cole). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Initiating joint attention related to activity in the frontal-cortical system, especially the left hemisphere and responding to joint attention to the parietal lobes. Heimann et al. (2006) found that that deferred imitation and joint attention both influence the development of language and communication skills in infancy. Deferred imitation at nine months was the strongest of the predictors of nonverbal communication at 14 months, but the predictive power increased significantly in situations when deferred imitation and joint attention were used together.
ecently studies have been conducted with other areas of cognitive behavior. For example, de Villiers (2007) has been looking at the association of language and what he calls Theory of Mind. Theory of Mind refers to the folk psychological theory humans use to predict and explain others' behavior on the basis of their internal workings: feelings, intentions, desires, attitudes, beliefs, knowledge and point-of-view. In other words, people have to create…...
mlaReferences
Bowerman, M., & Levinson, S. C (2001). Introduction. In M. Bowerman & S.C. Levinson (Eds.), Language acquisition and conceptual development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Delgado, C.E.F., Mundy, P., Crowson, M., Markus, J., & Schwartz, H. (2002). Responding to joint attention and language development: A comparison to target location. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 45, 715-719.
A de Villiers, J. (2007) Interface of language and theory of mind. Lingua 117 1858-1878
Doherty, M.J., 2006. The development of mentalistic gaze understanding. Infant and Child Development 15, 179-186.
Sometimes students have obstacles to contend with as they enter school. One such barrier can be language. The student I worked with is a Chinese first year student who is attempting to assimilate to AP class schedules. He is a 14-year old interested in learning the English language and is having problems not only learning the language but balancing out the needs of his identity versus the American culture. English Language Learners often must contend with several influences and deal with a new culture that may seem dauting and stressful[footnoteRef:1]. His name is Bo. [1: Larry Ferlazzo, English Language Learners: Teaching Strategies That Work (Santa Barbara, Calif: Linworth, 2010)] Bo recently immigrated to the United States with his family two years ago. While Bo has learned conversational English and some grammar, he still has problems writing in English. The way to write simplified Chinese is different than English and so he…...
Essay Topic Examples
The Evolution of Language: Tracing the Roots and Development
Explore the historical progression of human language from its origins. Examine various hypotheses about how language might have first emerged and outline the major milestones in its evolution, including the transition from oral to written forms and the development of different linguistic families.
Comparative Linguistics: Unravelling Language Structures and Family Trees
Delve into the study of similarities and differences in the structure, history, and culture of languages across the world. Analyze how comparative linguistics contributes to our understanding of language relationships, language families, and the reconstruction of proto-languages.
Sociolinguistics: The Intersection of Language, Culture, and Society
Investigate how language usage varies among different social groups and settings. Discuss the role…...
mlaPrimary Sources
Chomsky, Noam. Syntactic Structures. 2nd ed., De Gruyter Mouton, 2002.
Saussure, Ferdinand de. Course in General Linguistics. Translated by Wade Baskin, Columbia University Press, 2011.Labov, William. \"The Social Stratification of English in New York City.\" Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington, D.C., 1966.Austin, J. L. How to Do Things with Words. 2nd ed., Harvard University Press, 1975.Sapir, Edward. \"The Status of Linguistics as a Science.\" Language, vol. 5, no. 4, 1929, pp. 207-214. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/409588.
Seamless Bridge
As language may be viewed as a vehicle by which a student can better achieve academic success (Gottlieb, 2006), language proficiency assessments are ways in which the teacher can review whether or not the student is developing language proficiency rather than just content understanding. Thus the idea that students who are learning an additional or second language will seamlessly bridge into grade-level content once they reach the highest level of proficiency is a simple extension of the reality that language affords the user: it is the means by which understanding and success in a culture wherein that language is used can be obtained. Thus, if an ELL develops a true understanding and grasp of the language, the grade-level content that the student should be able to grasp is made available to him: it opens up because the language proficiency acts as the key what would otherwise be a door…...
mlaReferences
AdLit. (n.d.). Building Trust with Families. Retrieved from http://www.adlit.org/media/mediatopics/ells/
Gottlieb, M. (2006). Assessing English language learners: Bridges from language proficiency to academic achievement. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Language development refers to the process by which infants develop their language skills. Understanding how speech and language develop, as well as understanding speech milestones, can help people assess whether a person’s language development is on-time or is experiencing delays.
Language Development Essay Topics / Essay Titles
1. Analyzing the use of figurative language in WIDA language assessments
2. Exploring the role of syntax and sentence structure in WIDA writing prompts
3. Investigating the inclusion of literary devices in WIDA reading passages
4. Discussing the importance of vocabulary acquisition in WIDA language development
5. Examining the integration of cultural elements in WIDA language arts tasks
6. Evaluating the effectiveness of incorporating multimedia resources in WIDA language assessments
7. Comparing the language skills developed through WIDA assessments with traditional language arts instruction
8. Exploring the connection between WIDA language proficiency levels and academic achievement in language arts
9. Investigating the impact of language arts instruction on....
Certainly! Here are some ideas for essay topics related to language development:
1. The role of parental language input in early language acquisition
2. The impact of bilingualism on language development in children
3. Language development in children with speech and language disorders
4. The effects of technology on language development in young children
5. The relationship between socio-economic status and language development
6. The benefits of early intervention and speech therapy for children with language delays
7. The development of pragmatics and social communication skills in children
8. The influence of culture on language development
9. The role of play in language acquisition and....
Essay Topic 1: The Role of Immersion in Second Language Acquisition: Exploring the Benefits and Challenges of Studying English in the United States
Introduction:
Begin with a hook that highlights the importance of immersion in learning a second language.
State the thesis statement: The United States provides an immersive environment that facilitates English language acquisition, but also presents unique challenges.
Body Paragraph 1: Benefits of Immersion
Discuss the advantages of interacting with native speakers in everyday situations.
Explain how exposure to authentic language promotes fluency, pronunciation, and cultural understanding.
Cite research or anecdotal evidence to support the benefits of immersion.
Body Paragraph 2:....
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