Language and thinking skills

..and so I learned not from who taught, but from those who talked with me. St Augustine, Confessions

Language and thinking skills

Language , the universe of discourse, is often said to involve the four modes of listening, talking, reading and writing. These are all aspects of the linguistic intelligence that is the powerhouse of a childs intellectual, speakers. Children will think more effectively the more skilled they become as listeners, speakers, readers and writers.

Growth in linguistic skills entails much practice. Children are embarked on a long apprenticeship in developing thinking skills in the four modes of language. A fifth mode of language which is often overlooked, can play a vital role in developing language skills. This fifth mode is inner speech, which can help as much as outer speech when a child needs to decentre and elaborate his thinking.

Inner speech When Im stuck I can tell myself what to do, and it helps

 Inner speech is the talking to ourselves that we do sometimes when confronted with a problem. It is a human capacity that develops slowly and at variable rates in children. This inner talking is not simply the idle chatter of the mind. Inner speech plays a vital role in controlling and influencing our behaviour. What we say to ourselves affects our attitudes and actions.

 It also affects our understanding of the world. To describe some thing differently to oneself is to understand it differently. Psychotherapists have used the inner speech of patients to help modify ways of understanding and responding to the world. Religious leaders have used inner speech in the form of prayer and meditation to heighten spiritual awareness. Psychologists have used it to maximise human performance in a wide range of sporting activities.

Impulsive children often lack the patterns of inner speech that would help them to focus on matters in hand. Working on ways of talking through what they are doing can help them to achieve a more careful, deliberate and thoughtful approach. We have all had experience of talking ourselves out of, or of being confident in tackling problems.

They can also talk themselves into and through the challenges they face, monitoring and marshalling their knowledge and skills to tackle a task in hand. Inner speech is of course no substitute for particular knowledge and skills but it can help to mobilise what the child knows and link it to what the child can do

Struggling for direction, going back to beginnings, reviewing strategies, recognising new problems that arise, facing frustration, overcoming setbacks, starting along false trails, hesitating over choices and expressing that swirl of hope and doubt are the characteristic responses of the true learner.

Some children gain by working in pairs or groups and thinking aloud while trying to solve shared problems. There are two reasons why this can be valuable: By listening to classmates solving problems the child may learn about other peoples approach to problem solving

By expressing their thoughts to themselves and others, the childs own approach to the problem can be checked and analysed.

The teacher can divide the class into pairs and have one member think aloud while the other is the response partner playing the role of listener/ enquirer. In practice, children may find it difficult to keep to these rules and are likely to prefer to discuss problems on an equal footing.

However, it can be useful to show thinking aloud can be a shared activity and eavesdropping on the process will provide a teacher with valuable and perhaps surprising insights into a childs thinking. It also shows the importance of audience, the need to listen, how to ask questions and the benefits of working together.

Evidence suggests that getting children to talk about what they are doing, before, during and after working on a task, enhances their ability to think about it. Talking about thinking, using inner or outer speech, encourages more thinking.

Talking and listening

We often think that if children are having trouble in learning they need more time at it. Research studies seem to back up this view. They show that there is a relationship between the time the teacher devotes to having children engaged in learning activities and achievement in tests on the content of that learning.

Talking and listening

But it is not simply the time spent that is crucial but the engagement of childrens minds in the learning that enhances achievement. As Piaget said, all knowledge arises from interaction between learners and the learning environment.

The message for teachers is that classrooms should be organised in ways

that encourage active involvement in learning rather than passive response. Some children learn best individually, some in groups. But they learn well when their minds are engaged and their thinking is supported and stimulated.

One way to encourage childrens efforts in constructing understanding is to question their thinking. The child will often try make sense of a question no matter how bizarre it seems. Asking children to respond to bizarre questions can produce interesting results.

To the question, One day there were two flies crawling up a wall, which got to the top first? Fiveyear-old Meeta replied, The one on the left. when asked why, she explained, Because hes the biggest. To the same question, Mohit (aged 4 years 11 months) replied The first one. When asked why that fly got the top first, he responded Because he started first, silly.

When asked other questions that were intended to be unanswerable, such as Is milk bigger than water? and Is red heavier than yellow? children almost invariably provided answers. Children are ingenious in trying to make sense of situation presented to them and in creating their own frameworks of understanding.

They take the fragments of meanings they find in the questions and transform them into something identifiable and coherent. When it was explained that the questions he had been answering were really unanswerable, 6-year-old Rahul replied, theyre not! Ive just answered them!

In Finland they have a proverb, When a fool talks to a wise man, who benefits the most? Similarly, it is difficult to know who benefits most from the interaction between child and adult. Through talking and listening the adult learns much about what and how the child thinks and given the fresh perspective of the childs-eye view of the world.

The child also learns how to shape thoughts in words and how to communicate his understanding of the world. Ways to encourage the child to extend his thinking through talking include the following:

PUSHING allow the child think time during questions-and-answer or discussion. Waiting for an answer demonstrates a trust in the childs ability to answer, an expectation of thoughtfulness even if the silence sometimes seems to be interminably long!

Acceptingdo not rush to judgement on a childs response; give the child time and give yourself time to reply in a thoughtful way. Ways of accepting a childs idea are to restate it, to apply it, to recognise it, compare it to another idea or simply to acknowledge her view.

Clarifying indicates that the teacher does not understand fully what the child is trying to say. Instead of rushing in to explain to the child what he is trying to say, the adult requests more information and invites the child to elaborate on his idea. Can you explain what you mean by.? Tell me again, I couldnt quite understand.

Facilitating means sustaining talking and thinking through feedback and response. The teacher needs to provide opportunities for the child to check her ideas to see if they are correct. Are you sure? Lets check it and see.

Challenging

Challengingto be understood by others is part of the stimulus a child need but children also need challenge and should be encouraged to challenge each other and adults. Do you agree with WHAT /another child says? Can you see any problems? What do you think?