How can children express their language?

Language can be defined in many ways. In my view, the purpose of using language is that we want to communicate with others and express our feeling and thoughts. Likewise, young children also use language for expressing content.  Children’s language may be carried in oral and written language.

The oral language is the first expressive system and also a great way of communication for showing children’s thinking. Children’s language has meaning with “sounds and sound combination” or “words and word combination.” Children often may express their language with gestures facial expression, too. They learn language as they observe, notice, and copy their mothers, teachers, or other adults. When caregivers try to communicate with young children with language, they should pay attention to what they try to say because their oral language is unique.

In the written language part, as children are getting older, they a lot of time express the meaning that children want to carry. Children firstly start to write basic things, for example, their name, “mommy,” “daddy,” In our class, we read a textbook, “i already know how to read” by Martens and read about Sarah. She is a great example for the children’s written language. She all the time wrote sentences in her unique way and draw pictures.

            The most important thing in my reading even thought there are two ways for expressing children’s language, we should think about the connection between oral language and written language. In the classroom, teachers should practice some activities for connecting between talking and writing/drawing.  For example, children may be asked that they choose one of their happiest memories and re-tell the story. Then, they also write and draw based on their own story. 

Learning Language from Whole and Experiences

“When language is whole and used in context, children have multiple cues from which to draw in understanding how language works (Martens, p. 92).” For children’s literacy, we should consider that children learn languages as a whole. We do not write, speak, or listen languages with one word or sound. When the language has a meaningful harmony, it is easy to understand and learn for children. So in my opinion, teachers should try to help children to integrate their language with their own way.

“Every learner has a unique personal and social literacy history shaped by his or her personal and social literacy experiences (Martens, p. 93).” When I read this sentence, I absolutely agreed with the point. Experiences are really important and meaningful for children’s literacy. Everyday children’s lives have special meanings and they learn their language and literacy from their life experiences. Therefore, as an educator, providing experiences and opportunities will really help to develop children’s literacy. Teachers also have a responsibility for discovering and connecting their experiences to literacy. As well as that, when children have chances to read, write, and listen the literacy in their everyday lives, they can invent and expand their literacy with a valuable skill.

The Connection between Home Literacy and Nursery Literacy

In the article, it reminds us to think how much connecting between home literacy and school literacy is important to children. As children create a new world, “third space,” they relate and practice literacy at home and school.

Once they create the “third space,” they will engage in finding their own interest. For finding connection between family literacy and nursery literacy, children should share their differences, similarities, and experiences at nursery. I believe teachers have an important job for children. Teachers should give children to create an opportunities for using their cultural experiences and recourses.

Firstly, teachers should know what the history and background of the child and what s/he needs right now and what are some concerns about him or her. For finding those things, communicating with families may be really important. Home literacy and nursery literacy should not be separate because bilingual children can be confused.  

And then, teachers should introduce or present about cultural literacy to other children so other children can absolutely understand and learn about the other world. This way will provide an opportunity to children to understand about their classmates and meet new worlds.

Literaycy and Multiple Symbols for young children.

              Multiple symbols can be replaced to children’s literacy and languages. When children use sign systems such as art, music, drama, and mathematic are the great ways to express children’s thoughts and languages. As discussed in the article, “Drawings are likely to contain more information than their written texts (Graves, 1983).” (p. 301) For example, many children prefer to draw his/her father has red glasses and mother has curly brown hair with apron than they talk or write about their family. For another example, I saw a lot of children describe a train as chuchu train and it is much easier to remember for young children. When they play with a train, the children make a sound like “chu-chu.” This is another way to learn a language.

           When I read this part of the article, I thought I do not have to push them to learn language from writing or speaking. I can lead them to learn language with multiple symbols. I also thought family can help children to learn the language with family activity such as drawing something together or sing or make sounds about any subjects. This way will help children to have more information and develop their ideas.

             The important things for families are participating and paying attention to children's sign systems so the family members can catch up what their child really need and say now.