Robert Harrell shares:
Here’s a link to an interesting article by Dr. Stephen Camarata. His PhD is in Audio and Speech Science with undergraduate and MA work in Speech Pathology and Audio.
www.salon.com/2015/08/15/this_is_how_your_kid_learns_the_amazing_new_neuroscience_of_brain_plasticity_and_how_to_make_your_child_smarter/
The article contains some strong arguments for presenting children with whole language in context and not designing drills. For example, speech discrimination games and activities for children are marketed as engaging neural plasticity. However, children who were never exposed to these games and activities still develop a perfectly organized and facile auditory cortex arising from natural speech input from parents and others. “They learn to talk,l to read, and to think very well indeed.” Furthermore, unnatural auditory input (e.g. isolated auditory signals) does not result in the proper integration and “wiring” of the input with other brain regions, such as the language centers, that are necessary to distinguish and use speech in the real world.
The brain learns what it is taught. So, if the brain is taught to distinguish little bits of language (e.g. sound bits), then that and only that is what it will learn. and the brain will not generalize this to understand speech and reading. Here’s the take-away:
“If you want the brain to become wired for spoken language and for reading, then the input has to be real, functional, spoken language and dialogic reading. … And if you want the spoken language to serve as a tool for social communication with other human beings, the input has to occur in the context of human social interaction, which involves even more areas of the brain than the area dedicated to speech discrimination.”
Here is the final paragraph of the article:
“It is not surprising that simply teaching discrimination between “h” and “b” using flashcards or a computer program cannot possibly convey the information the child will need to comprehend the difference between “hat” and “bat” in the real world. Intuitive parenting automatically teaches all these elements simultaneously; it is automatically a multisensory approach. Touching, seeing, speaking, and listening are all providing context—in a safe, nurturing environment—and multiple brain areas are activated and integrated via neural plasticity.”
Adapted from “The Intuitive Parent: Why the Best Thing for Your Child Is You” by Stephen Camarata, PhD with permission of Current, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © Stephen Camarata, 2015.
I think we can see the parallels and application to Second Language Acquisition and classroom teaching of a foreign language.