LING 2P99 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Alphabetic Principle, 6 Years, Letterlike Symbols
30 Jun 2018
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READING NOTES
● Schema is a mental structure in which we store and organize everything we know about
people, places, objects or activities
○ Schemas are a collection of information called features
■ Ex the schema for a book includes handheld, printed pages, readable,
has a cover etc
■ Features include whos, whats, hows and whys
■ All concepts/schemas are related to other schemas (i.e our schema for a
book relies on our schema for a page and cover and words)
■ Schema is influenced by personal experience
● For example the schema for book would be different for a graphic
novel reader vs an audiobook listener vs e-book reader etc
● Thinking involves recalling information from schemas and using that info to perform
mental actions like inferencing, generalizing, concluding etc
● Learning involves adding to or changing our schemas
○ Ex if we see somebody reading braille, we can change our schema for script to
include braille and our schema for read to include touch as well as sight
● Children’s lives begin with little or no concepts, their minds are a tabula rasa (blank
slate)
● Piaget suggested that children learn knowledge to make schemas because, while
although they may not have any concept schemas, they are born with action schemas
that tell them how to go about acquiring knowledge they want
○ Young people learn through action and they have schemas for actions on how to
behave and react in and to their world
■ These actions bring children in contact with reality which produces
knowledge of the world (more action = more knowledge)
● Thing they come in contact with change so schemas change (milk
spills so schema for milk includes the idea that it does not keep
shape cuz it is a liquid)
■ Action schemas themselves change when children develop more
effective strategies for learning
○ We can conclude for Piaget that children for and reform their own knowledge and
thus children views of the world can ve very different from one time to the next
and especially different from an adults
● Can children change their schemas without having words (language) for the new
knowledge they acquire about something? How important is lexicon in developing
schemas?
○ Vygotsky says its important to have somebody with the child when they
experience something to provide language for what was experienced
■ He says learning first takes place in a social context (feedback from
peers)
■ Children must be able to talk about a new concept to understand and use
it
■ The zone of proximal development, proposed by vygotsky, is an
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opportune area for growth but one in which children are dependant on
help from others
● When children work in this zone, the complete some parts of a
task and then elders do parts children cannot yet do alone
○ Scaffolding is what elders do to help a child do what they
can do with help but not alone
● Children learn from the language of others (not only do they learn actually knowledge
about topics but also about language itself)
● Spoken language involves four different linguistic systems
○ Pragmatics
■ Mechanics of conversation (i.e turn taking) and conversational styles (this
differs from person to person and from group to group)
■ Also deals with functional purpose of language
● Halliday’s 7 Functions of Spoken Language (also work as
functions for written language)
○ Instrumental
■ Satisfies needs and wants
● Ex “Gimmie that!” or writing out a wish list
○ Regulatory
■ Controls others
● Ex “Stop that!” or list of classroom rules
○ Interactional
■ Creates interaction with others
● Ex “Anybody want to paint?” or party
invitation
○ Personal
■ Expresses personal thoughts and opinions
● Ex “I like red” or journal entry
○ Heuristic
■ Seeks information
● Ex asking “why?” or survey
○ Imaginative
■ Creates imaginary worlds
● “This will be our airplane” or novel, movie
script etc
○ Informative
■ Communicates information
● “This is a rectangle” or reports, newsletter
etc
○ Semantics
■ Meaning involves more than capturing words, but interpreting them
● Because people have different experiences, meaning associated
to words change person to person
■ Acquire word meanings by developing schemas
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○ Syntax
■ Rules for creating and comprehending sentences
■ Children use subject-verb sentences (“Daddy come”), subject-object
sentences (“daddy juice”) and verb-object sentences (“give cookie”)
■ Their questions are declarative sentences with rising intonation
■ They typically use sentences of 6-8 words in length by the time they enter
school
■ Miscues are mistakes made while reading due to anticipating a different
word
○ Phonology
■ Phonemes are the smallest unit of sound that combine and contrast in a
language
● English has about 43
■ Phonological awareness is the ability to talk about what happens to
sounds in spoken language
● Children recognize patterns and groupings of sounds and can, for
example, clap out syllables or know if words rhyme
■ Phoneme awareness is the ability to attend to a particular sound, for
example to know if two words start with the same sound
● By the time they enter school, children can use the four linguistic system to
communicate with peers and adults
○ Written skills depend on the same four systems and require competence in
spoken language as it’s base
● Written language depends on the four systems of written language
○ Function
■ The goals of written language (Halliday’s 7 Functions of Spoken
Language)
■ Also, written language is used to express identity (i.e handwriting is one’s
own) and can make language and thinking permanent and portable (i.e
conveyed written information can be recorded and sent to people we’ve
never met)
○ Meaning
■ Children realize the written symbols they see having meaning (ex the sign
“Target” outside of the store Target says Target and refers to the place to
shop) before they even read or write
■ One difference between spoken and written language is that written
language makes more use of infrequent words in spoken language that
appear in newspapers etc and uses literary language (i.e once upon a
time) that is not found in spoken language
■ Meaning in spoken language is often assisted with gestures and facial
expressions, called contextualization clues, that written language doesn’t
have
● Conversations have context which aid in meaning even if the
meaning is prescribed in the actual words
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Schema is a mental structure in which we store and organize everything we know about people, places, objects or activities. Schemas are a collection of information called features. Ex the schema for a book includes handheld, printed pages, readable, has a cover etc. Features include whos, whats, hows and whys. All concepts/schemas are related to other schemas (i. e our schema for a book relies on our schema for a page and cover and words) For example the schema for book would be different for a graphic novel reader vs an audiobook listener vs e-book reader etc. Thinking involves recalling information from schemas and using that info to perform mental actions like inferencing, generalizing, concluding etc. Learning involves adding to or changing our schemas. Ex if we see somebody reading braille, we can change our schema for script to include braille and our schema for read to include touch as well as sight.
