Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Talking seriously with children is good for their language proficiency

sciencedaily.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 40 posts

Re: Talking seriously with children is good for their language proficiency

#31

Post by run4yourlives »

pixelbath wrote: post #15
pchristensen wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe too optimistic but the right idea. The tricks I've found with giving my 4 year old autonomy and responsibility are a) make it abundantly clear that sometimes, what Daddy says, goes, and b) realizing that kids behavior fluctuates up and down with their energy level and environment. Trying to rationalize with a kid who didn't eat lunch, or who's wasted at the end of the day is a lost cause and you just have to st…

Agreed. I've tried trading one punishment for another, and the only thing it seems to teach is that punishment is malleable, and that they can start "gaming" the punishments for less harsh ones, even if the situation calls. I promised myself when I was a child that I would never tell my children, "because I said so." You know, sometimes it really is "you just have to put up with it and do what I say...because I'm Dad…

Because I said so works, but you aren't actually thinking this in your own head, so why not just take the time once everyone is back in listening mode to give them the long version?

Dad: Go to bed, please.

Kid: Why?

Dad: Because I said so.

post hysterics...

Dad: Why do you think Dad was telling you to go to sleep?

Kid: I don't know.

Dad: Well, what are you doing today?

Kid: Going to school.

Dad: And if you don't sleep before you go to school, what happens... etc etc.

Of course this is variable on the child, the issue and the level of understanding. I've done this though and while it doesn't solve the immediate concern, it sure as hell helps with any possible recurrence.

Re: Talking seriously with children is good for their language proficiency

#32

Post by thribbler »

impeachgod wrote: post #5

Hey, I do remember as a kid being frustrated when people would dumb down when talking to you. Also, when they refused to talk to me about things because "I was too young to be concerned about these things." Pissed me right off. I always liked the adults who took me seriously.

Taking children seriously is good.

http://www.takingchildrenseriously.com/

Re: Talking seriously with children is good for their language proficiency

#33

Post by pmccool »

Groxx wrote: post #12

I feel like this deserves a "well, duh". If you speak gobbledygook or fluff around them, that's all they'll learn. How can you expect otherwise? This does propose an interesting experiment: any of you lawyers out there, read laws to the kids as bed-time stories! Maybe we'll finally have someone who can translate between Legalese and English. Maybe they'll come up with a pidgin / creole the rest of us can learn.

I've been known to read law textbooks to my kids. No, really. It works better when they're really really little and don't much care what you're reading. Time will tell what harm or good it's done.

The lesson I take from this is that it's not that people can't read legalese, but that from a young age they quite reasonably would rather do something interesting instead.

Re: Talking seriously with children is good for their language proficiency

#34

Post by nwinter »

sketerpot wrote: post #28
philwelch wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem with learning English (my native language) from books rather than people was knowing tons of words but not how to pronounce them.

Occasionally I'll use an unusual word without even thinking about it, and then later realize that I've never uttered that word aloud before. Ever. It's a pretty weird feeling.

We play a game where you think of words you've never said before and try use them in a sentence. (So if you don't know roughly what it means, it doesn't count.) It's fun because you try unsuccessfully to search for words with the weakest indices before eventually finding profitable seams by thinking of the crazy stuff you've read.

Re: Talking seriously with children is good for their language proficiency

#35

Post by foldr »

lmkg wrote: post #8

Kids learn not just the language, but the dialect(s) that they're exposed to. At that age, being talked to is the only way they have of acquiring language, so they're going acquire exactly what they're exposed to. The idea of dialects is absolutely critical, but a lot of people aren't aware of them[1]. A kid isn't going to learn proper English unless they're raised hearing and talking it, no amount of grammar instruc…

> if language influences thought patterns, "baby talk" is a pretty crippled language and you shouldn't cripple your kid's expressive or reasoning abilities.

Kids are actually pretty insensitive to the precise form of linguistic input they get. It doesn't matter much if it's baby talk directed at the kid, or the ambient speech of other adults. Any regular exposure to a language/dialect is sufficient for a kid to acquire it perfectly. (Bearing in mind that perfect acquisition of a non-standard dialect may be viewed by the linguistically ignorant as imperfect acquisition of the standard dialect.) There's certainly no evidence for "baby talk" crippling kids reasoning abilities.

There are even cultures where parents don't talk to their kids until the kids can talk back, but the kids don't grow up with any kind of linguistic deficit.

Of course, there may be sociological benefits to having your kid acquire something close to standard English as their native dialect. But if schools could get over prescriptivism and do a better job of teaching standard English, I doubt this would be so much of an issue.

Re: Talking seriously with children is good for their language proficiency

#36

Post by basugasubaku »

impeachgod wrote: post #5

Hey, I do remember as a kid being frustrated when people would dumb down when talking to you. Also, when they refused to talk to me about things because "I was too young to be concerned about these things." Pissed me right off. I always liked the adults who took me seriously.

As a kid I was surprised that adults seemed to have forgotten how mentally capable they were at my age. I made a distinct mental note to my future self that kids are smarter than I would evidently grow up to think.

Of course I also now look back at the downright stupid things I did as a kid and realize I was not nearly as smart as I thought...

Re: Talking seriously with children is good for their language proficiency

#37

Post by Groxx »

run4yourlives wrote: post #29
Groxx wrote: post #12

I feel like this deserves a "well, duh". If you speak gobbledygook or fluff around them, that's all they'll learn. How can you expect otherwise? This does propose an interesting experiment: any of you lawyers out there, read laws to the kids as bed-time stories! Maybe we'll finally have someone who can translate between Legalese and English. Maybe they'll come up with a pidgin / creole the rest of us can learn.

There's no real secret to legalese. It's just an attempt to say as little as possible in as many ways as possible in order to avoid any interpretation being applied. The problem isn't the language, it's that the human brain doesn't function that way.

"The problem isn't the language, it's that the human brain doesn't function that way."

Yes, but this sort of implies that we have a genetic predisposition to not understand Legalese. Attempting to get a kid to learn it as a "native" language would effectively show that it is possible to learn, it just may be a radical departure from all other forms of language. If it's not possible, it could be that we're genetically prevented from learning it... I wonder if that would be an argument that Evolution has decided Legalese is counter to our best interest as a species.

Maybe someone fully understanding Legalese could help us communicate with aliens. While I doubt they would speak Legalese, and may attempt to destroy us if they heard it directed towards them as a first-contact language, having a second fundamentally different language model may shed light on understanding other, more radically different ones.

Unless of course Legalese is on one extrema and the rest of Human languages is on another. Which would imply aliens speak some form of language we can understand...

Hmmmm.....

Re: Talking seriously with children is good for their language proficiency

#38

Post by leftnode »

impeachgod wrote: post #5

Hey, I do remember as a kid being frustrated when people would dumb down when talking to you. Also, when they refused to talk to me about things because "I was too young to be concerned about these things." Pissed me right off. I always liked the adults who took me seriously.

Exactly. My son was just born, and I fully plan on talking to him like an adult when possible, and not shying away from things like sex and politics just because he's young. That doesn't mean I'd describe graphic sexual acts to him, but talking frankly with honest language I think will be best.

I cringe when I see parents get upset when they have to explain something slightly embarrassing to their children.

Re: Talking seriously with children is good for their language proficiency

#39

Post by kurtosis »

brc wrote: post #23

We use this approach with our two-year-old. He has never had baby talk, we use the proper words for everything, and he gets multiple reading sessions per day - which he enjoys. Health professoinals have told us that he speaks with the proficiency of a 3-4 year old, and he is noticeably more advanced than his peers. To me this is plain common sense and doesn't need a scientific paper.

are you serious about this common sense business? There are a lot of plausible reasons why "baby talk" could actually be essential for linguistic or emotional development. While it does seem dumbed down to an adult, in some ways it simplifies language and conversational protocols. How would you know who is right without a scientific study?

Re: Talking seriously with children is good for their language proficiency

#40

Post by mukyu »

lmkg wrote: post #8

Kids learn not just the language, but the dialect(s) that they're exposed to. At that age, being talked to is the only way they have of acquiring language, so they're going acquire exactly what they're exposed to. The idea of dialects is absolutely critical, but a lot of people aren't aware of them[1]. A kid isn't going to learn proper English unless they're raised hearing and talking it, no amount of grammar instruc…

Are you saying that middle-class American white guys do not change the way they speak depending on the situation? Even a white guy 'in power' is going to speak differently to co-workers, when giving a presentation in front senior executives, talking with their wife, or with their friends at a bar.
Post reply on HN