We know that "why" questions are not learned early in the language development process. I have been watching Hannah as I ask her why questions in Spanish and in English. For sure, up until today, she could not answer why questions. As for Por que, Why in Spanish, at first she was able to answer the question, though with a lot of support from me. Eventually, she answered the question without too much prompting from me. She would say: por que... porque.... and then the sentence.
Today, Hannah had a playdate with her good friend Rebekah. As we were driving home, I asked her a why question: Why can't you do something...? And she said Because I have to eat lunch! I immediately gave her a high five and I think Hannah did not quite understand why I was so excited!
So one more milestone! I will keep watching my why questions!
I remember that in an undregrad course I read about a case of children who were asked to listen in class. Students knew that they were suppose to listen, but they didn't know why. The reason is that children need to listen during certain periods of the classroom in order to learn. Students' lack of understanding why they had to listen in school was only realized after investigation. So, as teachers of children we are encouraged to tell students or scaffold finding the answer to questions. I encounter this with many young children.
ReplyDeleteI am the oldest and youngest child at home, thus I have never had a chance to obeserve children learning a language. At school, I taught high school kids. My question is, is it possible to conduct a scientific self-study while studying a new language? How does the reseacher control the threat of being bias and so on? I was thinking of taking spanish classes and conduct a longitudinal study of myself.
ReplyDeleteKetu, if you study Spanish, you will definitely need a Spanish-speaking conversation partner.
ReplyDeleteKetu, self-studies of langauge learners were very popular in the 1980s. I would highly recommend doing this kind of work since it will open up windows for you! See the work by Kathi Bailey.
ReplyDelete