Language and Association of Knowledge Concepts in Early Childhood

In the early stage of knowledge development, children do not only acquire inputs from adults but actively develop their own interpretations of their surroundings.

What are the relationships between play and learning development?

• reflect development with prior learning
• reinforce development with current learning
• result in development with future learning

The three branches; namely prior, current and future learning somehow have strong connections with children's cognition on stages that they develop throughout childhood. 'Circular effect' is a term that explains how children learn and associate knowledge in a more advanced stage of learning once they established a grasp of concepts in an earlier stage.

Concepts are any one of the knowledge disciplines children learn about through formal and non-formal inputs. Jean Piaget proposed three branches of concepts learned during childhood that are:

• physical knowledge
• logico-mathematical knowledge
• social knowledge

But wait, what have these concepts to do with language? Well language is one essential matter that makes learning possible.

How is language utilised in embedding concepts?

Physical knowledge:

Describing objects in the surrounding with its attributes.

Logico-mathematical knowledge:

Counting and using numerical figures to measure dimensions of objects.

Social knowledge:

The notion of self-identity and others', interacting with encounters, addressing people of different hierarchy (for example parents from siblings, teachers from friends).

In childhood learning, language is not restricted to verbal or written texts. Language can be extended to a limitless of means, namely body language and voice expressions that are meaningful. In this sense, teaching must be as dynamic as possible to meet pupils' diverse needs of literacy acquisition through language use. While body language is another matter of which I am not an expert to discuss, here I place great focus on how language learning is important and that teaching language is not only in school but at home. It is the first ever learned concept in a person's life.

Teaching language in early childhood must be endorsed with visual, aural, verbal and sensory aids, for language is used in expressive sense of a child's cognition. Without aids, teaching language is just another raw input that would take a long while to be recognised by a developing mind.

Language evolves with mankind, and as such, is unbound to any limit of use. It provides man with multitudes of ways to communicate, serves multitudes of purposes, and therefore needs multitudes of effort and support in teaching and learning.

If you're a parent or a teacher teaching young children language, all you need to do is let them out to do whatever they love to do-let them tell stories, draw on sand, play pretend, just anything-while you support with some aids or props and watch the magic as they learn to communicate in many adorable ways! :)

How To Develop Speaking Skills And Vocabulary Simultanoeusly

Normally teachers always resort to formal exercises in books when it comes to teaching grammar and other aspects of English language. Well that is good, I won't say it's wrong. However, from my point of view, there are two obvious disadvantages about this kind of exercises. One: it is boring and tiring, second: this type of exercises doesn't develop speaking skills.

I have an idea in mind, so bear with me for a few minutes and let's see if it's good to use. Hopefully it can help attract students to participate enthusiastically in the activity and improve themselves.

First, I'll explain to them what nouns, verbs and adjectives are. It they are already taught in the previous lesson, recap and write some examples for all three categories on the whiteboard for students to refer. Then proceed with the activity.

The activity is:

I'll write a sentence, with a blank in it, on the whiteboard and then ask students to complete the sentence with appropriate nouns, verbs or adjectives (I'll decide which one to use at a time).

The procedures will be:

1. Teacher writes the sentence on the whiteboard. For example, "I'm ......... today". For this sentence, students need to come up with an appropriate adjective to complete it. Students can sit in pairs, or groups, or do it individually, and the only way to play this activity is by saying it out loud; which means students need to speak in order to give their answers. Please be reminded that teacher should provide one good example for the activity before asking the students to produce one of their own. For instance, "I'm SAD today".

2. Then after a number of students have given their answers, teacher changes the sentence as well as the component involved in it. This time teacher can either focus on verbs or nouns. Examples of sentences are; for verbs, "I don't want to ........... them" (love/hate/hurt/help/punish) and for nouns; "I always want to buy a .......... for my mother" (car/beg/house/computer/radio). Just make sure that students come up with with their own answers and produce them orally. This can help build their confidence in speaking up their minds.

This is my personal opinion which I would like to share with all of you. Be happy to use it or develop a new activity based on it. Good luck!

Giving Exercises Is Not The Only Way

When I was 14 years old, I used to score badly for English subject. I would only manage to get a D or once in a blue moon, an 'outstanding' achievement, a C. I never wanted to improve because I thought as long as I could pass the subject, the rest did not matter.

I always loved to play video games and watch a lot of movies. I would debate and argue with many people who were saying that those things gave a negative influence on students’ academic performance. I would say, “do you see any negative influence on me?” Well, they did not reply, but at that time, I knew that I was not doing that great either.

But a year later, I started to improve. I started to get B and even A for the subject. The best part was, I could even speak English and people understood what I was saying! So a lot of people had been asking me about how I could improve and reach that level in just a single year. That included my English teacher, who told me that I was quite a good writer and she was impressed with my development. Since then, English had been one of my ‘A’ subjects.

Honestly, that was the moment when I first realized that my English had experienced a tremendous improvement not by doing exercises from the book. I am not saying those exercises the teachers have been giving their students are insignificant. What I am trying to suggest is that the exercises might only help our students understand the rules, but they might not be able to help them apply those rules in speaking and writing. Therefore, I suggest that we should give them a different approach in order to ascend to the next level.

I improved my English by reading the dialogues involved in those video games I played, and by listening to those conversations in the movies I watched. If provided, I would switch on the English subtitles so that I could see the spelling of each word pronounced by the characters. So, I am suggesting that teachers and parents should provide more opportunities for students to expose themselves to video games and movies, with proper guidance of course. For video games, in my opinion, role playing games (RPG) are the best choice. They have a lot of conversations with subtitles, and hardly involve vulgar words.

A few years back, I graduated with a bachelor’s degree of education Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL). In my term paper titled “Favourite Television Series as an Influence in Learning to Write Narratives in Upper Secondary School Students”, I found out that the series involved did provide them a positive influence in a sense of vocabulary choice and characterization. These are indeed vital in developing our students’ English proficiency, and a further proof of the possible encouraging outcome they can get from television.

That is why I am begging every single educator that exists in our country to expand their teaching methods and try to infuse some unconventional approaches in them. Learning English is not limited by only completing the exercises given. Just ask ourselves, “what would make the students learn better? Is it by giving them work and making sure they complete it, or is it by giving them chances to do what they enjoy doing and letting them learn from it at the same time?” If you ask me, I would say that when the students are happy, they learn better.