Language Teaching Concepts Quiz

Definitions

• Language: A system of communication using sounds, signs, or written symbols. It allows humans to convey complex thoughts, emotions, and ideas.
• Language Acquisition: The process by which humans acquire language, often unconsciously.
• Language Development: The changing abilities in language comprehension and production over time.
• Reading: The process of decoding written symbols to understand their meaning.

Key Elements of Teaching Language

• Communication: Encouraging interaction and dialogue.
• Vocabulary: Building a rich and diverse vocabulary.
• Grammar: Understanding and applying grammatical rules.
• Pronunciation: Developing clear and accurate pronunciation.
• Fluency: The ability to speak or write smoothly and effortlessly.
• Text types: Exposure to diverse types of texts like poems, stories, or instructions.
• Engagement: Creating an environment that encourages active participation and excitement about language.
• Cultural Context: Understanding how cultural norms influence language use.

Stages of Language Development

• Pre-linguistic stage (birth-12 months): Infants communicate primarily through crying, babbling, and gestures. Early vocalizations (cooing, babbling) prepare for later language acquisition.
• One-word stage (12-18 months): Children begin using single words to represent objects and actions. Understanding of words and phrases begins.
• Two-word stage (18-24 months): Children combine two words to express simple ideas. Sentence structures are very basic.
• Early multi-word stage (2-3 years): More complex sentences are formed, containing subjects, objects, and verbs. Question formation and story telling start to improve.
• Later multi-word stage (3+ years): Children's grammar improves and they use increasingly sophisticated language, including narratives and elaborative explanations. Vocabulary grows considerably.

Language Skill Icebergs

• The iceberg metaphor illustrates that the visible aspects of language skills like spoken words and written text represent only a small part of the underlying cognitive processes.
• Unseen skills and knowledge that underpin the visible skills include:
• Comprehension of complex sentence structures
• Knowledge of grammatical rules
• Memory for vocabulary, concepts and text
• Strategic reasoning and problem solving
• Fluency in reading, comprehension, writing, etc.

Views of Reading

• Decoding view: Emphasizes the importance of phonological awareness and phonemic skills in reading. Focuses on accurate word recognition and efficient sound-symbol relationships.
• Comprehension view: Highlights the importance of comprehension and understanding the meaning of the text, beyond just decoding.
• Interactive view: Recognizes both decoding and comprehension as necessary and intertwined components, suggesting that reading is a complex interplay between the reader's background knowledge, prior experiences, and the text's structure.

Scarborough's Rope

• Scarborough's rope model visualizes the complex interplay of language skills involved in reading as strands intertwined.
• Two primary strands of the rope include:
• Print knowledge: knowledge about letters, words, text structures, and functions.
• Language: includes vocabulary, phonological awareness, and syntactic skills (understanding grammar).
• Other strands include oral language, background knowledge, literacy knowledge, and motivation as critical components that contribute to reading comprehension.
• The model highlights that reading is not a sole skill but rather a complex combination of various interconnected language-related abilities.