2202. When our babies start to communicate. Some implications



Krashen wrote about the “silent period”, when learners of a second or foreign language listen a lot, much before they start to speak in English or any other language. 

Lately I’ve been with babies of my family. They imitate adults: they listen a lot and subsequently try to repeat their expressions. 

Mom and Dad and other relatives tend to repeat expressions to those babies, and the seed of language is being planted so. / Photo from: Baby’s-Good-Health www pinterest com

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

1930. The necessity of compromise

Image
We have freedom, tentatively, and by principle. First premise.  However if I skip any compromise, I can't use my freedom.  If I compromise with someone about something I must fulfill it, right?  Albeit some people think that getting married for example doesn't entail to live with your spouse for the rest of your life, I'd say that compromise is for all the lifetime of one of the spouses however. I do know many marriages that have lived together until death of one of the spouses. / Photo from: compromise-settling-our-differences-in-agreement-thumb. howtodateinlv wordpress com
Read more

1347. Assigning meaningful homework

Image
Teacher A said to teacher B, “Homework ought to be something meaningful for the student, say for example, not a drill which says nothing to the student at that moment.  The purpose of that drill is to train the student to be able to express his ideas while describing a picture from a magazine.  Also you can assign as homework a zillion different things, like working on a text, which is meaningful for them, like history, current news, their graded reader, something about the plot of it, or about some characters – some characters who some students can identify with.” / Photo from: www versionoriginalbcn com. 4 extensive spanish course students discussing . centro de lenguas modernas   universidad de granada   
Read more

985. For contacting me

Image
If you want to contact me, leave a comment on one of the blog posts. All comments await for moderation before they get published - if the case. So it's only me who will read it - they don't appear publicly. / Photo from: waiting for a train.    travelindiasmart com
Read more

3634. Learning a Language through Reading and Becoming an Autonomous Learner

  I wrote a few days ago the following.  One more year has begun. And today I’m going to let you know about something I lately do when lesson planning, in case it may help you out.  I teach English to adults. And when I start to plan a new lesson, I wonder, Okay, what should I do to really help my students learn that language? Because each and every class should be one step forward in their learning and acquiring English.  Secondly I also could wonder, Okay, what can I do next class to make my students become autonomous learners? For those autonomous learners are the ones that actually accomplish to learn English.  Thus we have two points for when we have to plan a lesson.  Now I’m trying to give you some examples of those two points, which we can bear in mind to improve our lesson planning. Well, they have to be brief, each one could take few minutes to think about.  Some examples, I was saying. Let me think. Even I’m trying to give an example that co...
Read more

1164. Learn from children

Image
From my paper on H. D. Brown.  Children can teach you a lesson on how to go about learning a foreign language. They tend to move directly into a foreign language. They don’t worry about what the native language equivalents are. They don’t mentally translate things as they’re listening or speaking. Your best bet would be to try being a little more childlike . (Page 53)  The reference of this book has already been mentioned in this blog. / Photo from: 
Read more