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Language Learning Begins At Birth

CHAUTAUQUA – When this columnist was a newspaper reporter, he did a 22-part series letting teachers of all sorts share their thoughts on, and approaches to, the profession.

It was fun just to let teachers open up. In their own ways, they all did.

A local reading teacher advised reading to children every day.

Starting at birth.

Yes, birth.

Fast forward to this summer at Chautauqua Institution.

The Chautauqua Women’s Club introduced Dr. Barbara Foorman as a professor at the Florida Center for Reading Research at Florida State University in Tallahassee.

She was the club’s guest speaker at a tent talk on July 13.

For tent talks, which the club holds frequently over the course of the nine-week summer season, speakers and their audiences gather under a tent on the front lawn of the women’s club, on South Lake Drive in Chautauqua Institution.

Educators who focus on reading tend to be passionate about their subject. If they weren’t passionate, they wouldn’t be as good at their work as they otherwise are.

Foorman’s passion for the subject reveals that she loves what she does.

The professor’s advice is similar to the reading teacher’s.

Flood children with language from birth, especially on topics of interest to them, Foorman said. Share dinner-table conversations with them, and take them to interesting places, such as museums. Then read books with them about what they’ve seen.

She encourages playing rhyming games with young children. Or having them think of words beginning with a particular letter or a particular sound.

As for screen media, Foorman recommends avoiding them until children are 18 months old. Even for two- to five-year-olds, screen media should be limited to an hour per day of high-quality screen media.

In other words, the television, the computer, or the fancy cellular telephone don’t need to be on for hours and hours at a time.

Certainly not day after day, week after week, month after month.

And please notice the “high-quality” in “high-quality screen media.”

One factor in teaching language to children is whether the language is transparent or deep, she said. A language is transparent to the extent that a combination of letters always make the same sounds. Deep is then the opposite of transparent.

She calls English somewhat deep, though not as deep as some languages.

Imagine that you’re a child whose first language is English.

Or imagine that you’re whatever age and your first language is something other than English.

Imagine further that you’re taught to sound out words.

You learn the sounds that each letter makes in English.

Let’s take as an example the letters o, u, g, and h.

The vowels o and u can be short or long. The g can be hard or soft, as in garage. And you know what sound h usually makes.

With that knowledge alone, what sound or sounds would you first think o-u-g-h makes?

Go ahead.

Try.

As would most people, you’d probably be wrong.

Notice how o-u-g-h makes different sounds in:

¯ Bough.

¯ Cough.

¯ Tough.

¯ Though, and

¯ Through.

Five different words. Five different sounds.

And it’s not like there’s a rule to consult.

A rule determines whether when forming – say, a gerund – one doubles the last letter.

Following the rule, the gerund of begin is beginning, and the gerund of end is ending.

The n in begin is doubled. The d in end is not.

But there’s no rule on pronouncing bough, cough, tough, though, and through.

You just have to know.

Just something to think about, especially when children are out of school for their summer vacations.

They may be out of school, yet they don’t have to be out of learning.

Nor do adults.

Randy Elf is a former foreign-language teacher.

COPYRIGHT ç 2021 BY RANDY ELF.

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