week 13

1. How does this topic fit into what I have learned already in this course?
This FINAL chapter builds on what we have already learned- it is a schematic book that I thought would never end. The main themes that were-addressed were 1, and 2; cognitive processes and active and remarkable efficient and accurate. In addition, speaking and the process it entails, employs top-down functioning- a concept we learned back in chapter 1. Interestingly enough, just as we fail to notice speech errors (ch. 2), this process is identified as slips of the ears- because we fail to notice many slips of the tongue. When learning about infants memory of language, ch. 6 principles of the spacing effect was reinforced to promote the idea that children acquire more language when it is spaced out over time rather than at all once.

2. What am I still not clear on in this week's reading(s)?
I saw this video, similar to the demonstration video in the text, where a child was watching a tv and then an adult would say big bird and they would look at big bird, they would say grover and the child would look at grover, etc. This child was about 1.5 years old- at the age where you don't produce systematic language yet. Based on this video, and the one with kids looking at happy vs sad faces to correspond to the emotion- I would like to know at what age do children start to recognize and relate things. Just because they can't say anything doesn't mean that they don't understand. If this is the case, would working with children to identify descriptives- ie pick up the yellow ball- improve their cognitive performance in the future?

3. Under what conditions would I apply this material to my own teaching/work?
The information about children's speech was relevant to my understanding that as teachers we often have to "clarify" or ask the students to give us more information (even if we do understand) to ensure that the whole class has common ground. Likewise, the text said that less effort is made to establish common ground if there are time constraints. I agree with this statement because as teachers, we are always pressed for time- so we are often limiting our examples to one or two rather than provide many for every new concept. Perhaps if a stronger common ground was established for each new idea (using more examples/ analogies/ etc.) children would better understand the information.