The questions that interest me revolve around language learning in young children. My own background contributes to this as does my current situation. I'm from Canada which has 2 official languages, Engish and French. When I started school at age 4 my parents decided that I should learn in French even though we are an English-speaking family. So I did my schooling until grade 9 mostly in French. In university I chose to continue and majored in French immersion elementary education. Although I now rarely use my French, I know it has helped me to pick up enough Spanish to live for 2 years in the Dominican Republic. Having a second language also made it easier for me to become proficient in a third when I settled in the Netherlands. I now work in an international school where 9 out of 10 children don't speak any Engish or Dutch when they come to us. I am interested in how they learn so that I can better help them when they arrive. I want to find out what strategies work best. I also want to know what long term benefits can come from learning a second language early in life. I want to know why some children seem to have a much easier time than others. I know I won't be able to answer all these questions at once. The scope is too broad and must be narrowed to a manageable research question (Mac Naughton & Rolfe, 2010).
One tip that I got from the chapter on the research process this week was the recommendation to keep a detailed record of what articles and other resources you've used both for the literature review and other reasons (Mac Naughton & Rolfe, 2010). This seemed obvious once I'd read it but it is not something that I think of doing as I'm reading or listening to something.
References
Mac Naughton, G., Rolfe, S.A., & Siraj-Blatchford, I. (2010). Doing early childhood research: International perspectives on theory and practice (2nd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
One tip that I got from the chapter on the research process this week was the recommendation to keep a detailed record of what articles and other resources you've used both for the literature review and other reasons (Mac Naughton & Rolfe, 2010). This seemed obvious once I'd read it but it is not something that I think of doing as I'm reading or listening to something.
References
Mac Naughton, G., Rolfe, S.A., & Siraj-Blatchford, I. (2010). Doing early childhood research: International perspectives on theory and practice (2nd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Wow! I am impressed with your knowledge of languages! I look forward to reading more about your exploration of language in the next few weeks.
ReplyDeleteJennifer I enjoyed reading your posts. I think it is awesome that you know several languages. I too have noticed that when children start learning English they tend to loose their "native" dialect.
ReplyDeleteJennifer I enjoyed reading your post. I think it is great that you know several languages. I also agree that when children begin to learn English thy start to loose their native dialect.
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