Joelle Goforth
4/15/2010
Essay #
This was an interesting assignment. The words that where in the sentence made absolutely no sense and without a words bank it was up to our imagination and sense of grammar to figure it out. Once we realized the made up words didn’t even start with the letter of the potential word we began guessing and checking. I found that everyone had a describing word they thought was best, so we tried them all out and decided on one. As I look at my paper I see that I changed words a few times to better fit the sentence. When we were given the correct words we could see that we had our mind in the right place but not the correct word. For example , we had “ Justin’s feet were bigger then Hannah’s” , while the answer was that they were smaller. We still used a describing word for size but not the right one. I still think it should be bigger since Justin is a boy and boys, typically have larger feet then girls (Hannah).
I think what helps preschool children learn language is knowing what words belong in what context. Its almost like playing mad-libs, you are given a sentence and you choose a word that best fits the surrounding words. Having word association with objects really helps broaden the child’s vocabulary. When we talk to our children and ask questions in regards to our surroundings or an event that took place, it makes them recount where they have seen an object/event and tell you about it in the correct context. Children are sponges and we need to make sure that we are filling that sponge with correct information as to not confuse them and teach them the wrong way.