Where minds meet; Speech of children

And the key. 8 8 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0. Do you think the father will succeed in teaching his boy how to speak Arnie. Well I'm sure the boy will learn John but I doubt that what we just heard will have had much to do with it where our minds meet a series of explorations in human communication conducted by professors John Prine and Arnold Nelson of the Department of English Western Michigan University where minds meet is produced and recorded by WMU K.. Under a grant from the National Association of educational broadcasters in a shrinking world where minds meet in words or not at all man's speech is his most decisive act. These discussions explore this world of speech a topic or today is baby talk. The speech of children.

Here now are professors primed and Nelson. This is John freind. This is Donald Nelson. Arnie you seem to disapprove of that father's attempt to teach a little boy the ABC. I'm not really John. I know that father and I'm sure that the boys language learning is in good hands. What I meant was that deliberate drill in speech for a three year old ordinarily has nothing to do with the Child Development in language and speech. But what can parents do to teach their children how to talk. When your children learn John how did you teach them. Oh that's an embarrassing question to ask a person who earns his living teaching English. I don't remember doing anything very deliberately or systematically. I suppose I did pretty much what came naturally as most parents do. Well what comes naturally. Well that's mainly what our program today is about what comes naturally or at least without much planning in the development of the speech of children. And now answer my own question about what parents can do to teach the children how to talk. First they can learn what they can about the process of language development so they can better enjoy observing

what is surely one of the most interesting things that happens to a human being. And second they can try to provide the child with a healthful psychological climate to grow up in. There's nothing in the child more sensitive to psychological pressures than his speech. Well perhaps we can make some contribution to the first of these things today John. It's a strange irony isn't it the millions of dollars are spent every year in our schools to teach students a second language and that this professional service is only moderately successful but the crucial matter of teaching children their first language is handled with amazing success by an unpaid amateurs. Amazing success when you consider what a complex achievement speech is. But maybe the child learns in spite of his teachers. One thing we can be sure of is that there's a tremendous variety in the way parents do their teaching. Yet children seem to pass through certain stages of development in much the same way. Yes in our culture they're born with a meaningless wail and by about age sex they're normally ready to tackle reading and writing. I see about five stages in the child's speech growth up to the point where he is truly using

language and I think we can illustrate them today with our recordings of a number of children. The first stage I go on communication the baby has all the necessary organs for speech. But in the beginning they're being used for their more basic purposes. My breathing and sucking song yes. During his first few weeks the baby is no more able to send and receive any messages from the outside world than baby bird. The second stage is the beginning of communication. The development of the meaningful cry or cries. Some mothers claim their babies have different cries depending upon what they want food or dry pants. I don't doubt that at all. I suspect that we underestimate the baby's skill both in sending and receiving the contrasting signals that are necessary for communication. OK what's the third stage. I say babbling. That starts fairly early and builds up until about the eighth month when the baby amuses himself for fairly long periods with the sound of his own voice babbling communicates something state of well-being maybe contentment yes primarily it's plain but isn't he also getting some practice in making the sounds of the language in a way.

But he also practices a lot of sounds that he won't be able to use in his language. These he will have to get rid of. Well during the babbling stage not the baby also begins to understand the structure of the language as others speak to him. Yes I call that the fourth stage. He recognizes certain words phrases intonation patterns and tones of voice and he responds to them. Finally at the end of the first year he enters the fifth stage language meaningful sentences. What he wants is phenomenal. One of these stages overlap a great deal of the babbling for instance doesn't stop as soon as the baby's able to say if you were let's listen to some of this baby talk now so that we can see how the baby performs in these stages. The youngest speaker we have is Scott at two months. He's lying in his crib and his mother is asking him some hard questions. Communicating.

Are you OK. Yes. Do you know. Yeah. Yes I understand. I don't suppose much information is passing between Scott and his mother. His has as to the question seem irrelevant. I don't think Scott is even listening to interrupts. It sounds funny to apply such lofty standards to a two month old baby but really it won't be long before he will listen and will give relevant answers. That is he will be able to enter into a kind of oral give and take you get the idea at least of

communication as some kind of a shared experience. Now he's pretty much isolated. Now there's a great difference between Scott and Jinx. Jinx is eight months and she makes fairly interesting conversation with her mother. Do you. Kick. You notice that the mother leaves the conversation. She provides a stimulus and then Jinx responds when there's another snatch of that dialogue word Jinx initiates everything. And the mother can only try to follow along through. Really.

You do. Yeah. What do you mean by big. Like a. Kid. With that kind of training. Jinks will soon learn that almost anything she does can serve to start a verbal response in another person. Yes she's learning what it means to be human being nothing that talk is important. If she

coughs somebody says some words she spits more words if she sticks out her tongue again more words she's finding out that the world she's a part of is put together with words. Well here's a little more of that conversation. You can hear Jinx makes some almost intelligible answers here. What do you think. Right. Well. The line that divides babbling from real words is a fine one. I'm sure she said that's blood there. I hope that's not what started her crying. You mentioned before John that the Babbler ranges widely among possible speech sounds. I have a sample of some of those songs from Michelle at 10 months. Here's a series of very short excerpts from a 15 minute period when she was experimenting with her voice. Oh.

That sounds like deliberate drill of running through some exercises a few consonants than a few Vols mostly in bursts of two and three while the Babbler is interested in rhyme and rhythm repeating the same song with variations maybe this is where poetry begins to come from you know. Well the babbling goes on even after the baby is talking I suppose because even the 2 year old finds pleasure in that kind of poetry. Here's Joe at 19 months playing alone in his crib. This nonsense has considerable style to it. Well Joy has a whole cabin area ordinary words he used one at the end there

but he's still inventing some beauties of his own. I'm fascinated by his attempt to make a sentence approximating the intonation of adult sentence structure. The single word c is a sentence of course as it stands. It's obviously a question sentence. Talk much more meaningful this time. He wants to know if he can get out of his crib. It. Oh. Bye bye. That's pretty clear communication. But make sure the message gets through by resorting to the meaningful crime. Yes it's three straight stages there babbling and talking point to be made from that.

Well I guess the point is that you shouldn't stretch the child's patience for the sake of getting a recording of his voice. His parents would have picked him up before he cried but they wanted as much recording as possible for us. The child's speech ought to be rewarded whenever possible by an immediate and appropriate response. Well we'll have to take the blame for that lapse in Dell's training responding appropriately to the child's words is a little tricky. He ought to be rewarded for coming close. But how going to tell when there are so many borderline cases. Here's Joe for instance and possibly talking in this I hear very clearly I'm going bicycle. Do you. Very clear yet. Joe's father insisted all talk about going is bye bye and that means a ride in the car except when it means you want to get out of the crim

as a baby is not saying something. But in my experience with when I first recorded him he hadn't started to talk. He did a great deal of babbling. But he wasn't saying anything. This is the kind of thing is. It.

Wasn't that twinkle little star. Yes it was good to be keeping his ideas entirely to himself. Not a word out of him but a recording of his early morning babbling and singing. I thought I heard something. Listen to this. The first time I heard that I didn't make anything out of it either. But it seems pretty obvious now he's chanting something about little old lady on that one John once. Talking about when I played it back for Powell's parents they were astounded but they felt the

call wasn't really saying anything meaningful. But you had suggested that the phrase might have come from the story of the gingerbread boy who was chased by the little man and the little old lady. When I asked about that the whole thing became clear. Paul had been listening to that story but his parents had been listening to him. I think Paul's case exposes a common error in the parents might paying too little attention to his so-called jibberish which often contains the intonation patterns of real sentences and phrases. That's right. What you're saying is that language learning doesn't start with the first word long before that as we've seen the baby is learning to listen to the tune of speech. I think Paul's a little old lady was the end product of a great deal of attention he had been paying to language what we heard was no accident. Several minutes later in that recording Paul said little lady again listen. I don't doubt that some of his other remarks were sensible too if only we could hear accurately.

How did Paul develop after about five months later I got another recording of Paul's early morning monologue. There's not so much UNINTELLIGIBLE talk now. What he says in this little passage is clear enough. When his mother responded to his words she found him holding his damn pajamas in his hand. I. Yeah. I interviewed Paul at two and a half. I don't play a little of our conversation to indicate what Paul will have to work on next. Relating himself to others through his speech. We said that Scott at two months made sounds that were completely unrelated to his mother's part of the dialogue. Well Paul's conversation resembles that a little. He's responding to my questions but his answers

are mostly related to himself rather than to me. We were sitting at my desk and he was looking at a blue stone. The color of your pants. Again. Shirt. There. He'd rather type and talk. I want to touch that he said. And he really say what's important to him than what I wanted him to say when I asked him what color his pants where he answered me. Then he said something as translated from me as not Mikey. He wanted me to know that his pants were he is not handing down from his older brother Mark as most of his other

clothes were. It was parents are on the beam I suppose. They respond to him and Paul against the necessary feedback to tell him that he's been successful right. Well I watched this fascinating process with Judd and his mother. They were looking at a picture book and Judd was initiating all the commentary. I didn't understand John's words but his mother translated not for my benefit but for jobs. John was about two and one of the mother realize it or not it was an excellent tutoring session. Yeah. Yeah. You. All are trying. Really hard to get the truck you. Know. Oh yeah. Translation of that last phrase with perfectly literal. Did you ever find out what Joe saying.

Oh it's still a mystery. I know that babies bomb boom is a statement not a question and Judge intonation markers are quite clear. Although he helped his mother make the translations if instruction a second language could be carried on as directly and efficiently as that foreign language teaching would achieve a real breakthrough. Or any other teaching the learner like John is highly motivated. He's instructed only in what he wants to know at the moment and he is rewarded instantly by the attention and encouragement of the teacher. Well here's another excerpt from that lesson. OK. Yeah yeah he did yeah. Mark not ready yet. That last exchange is especially interesting to me as an example of the child's learning English grammar when ready yet. Yes his ready yet sounded like a statement. Now we normally say he's not ready yet. All we ask is he ready yet but we don't say he's ready yet.

On his mother's what's not ready yet helps him learn that grammatical rule one of the multitude of the grammatical rules that we learn painlessly at our mother's knee and never have to think about again. Well in that recording session with John I collected a few more examples of grammatical matters from John's older sisters Jody was approaching form. Jill was almost 5 at that age will carry growth is very fast and children often make errors and putting sounds in the correct order. Here are two examples from Jodi in the first one salt shaker. She caught the mistake herself and corrected it in the second one. Old King Cole where she reversed home in Seoul. Her mother helped her out. OK. So you care for. Your own King Cole. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah.

Yeah. Yeah yeah. I have two more of Jodi's interesting errors in the first one she produces an ungrammatical question because the words fall in the wrong order. And in the second she makes a wrong inference about the conjugation of English verbs. You know me me me me me or you. Both of those areas are perfectly understandable adieus is a false analogy. Judy should have changed the sound of the vowel from the up when she added the s ending. But the evidence in the rest of English verbs doesn't bear this out. No it doesn't except in a few similar cases like say changing descends. Well how do you account for what that is John. Well I think Jodi probably has been asked dozens of times. Do you know what that is. So when she wants to know what that is that's what she says. But you'll soon learn the intricacies of transformational grammar and be able to wring all the changes that English called for in

that sentence patterns. Well I'd like to play one more word there John this one from Jill. Jim is a great inventor of new transformations. She's responsible for. I'm gusted meaning disgusted Pyar whip for pirate and title for boat time. Here's another. I don't understand how. Well you know. Oh my God. Yes like everybody else and I go I go I go. Jody and Jill seem to cooperate in their invention here. We want my good team in the business of using their parents. The teamwork isn't the rule though it seems to me among 4 and 5 year olds like Scott and Paul. They're still somewhat isolated from others. They can apparently be playing together and even talking together but their own individual needs seem to dominate their general behavior. Well isn't that true of adults too. Yes but not in the same way adults can identify their needs with those of others and cooperate for the ultimate satisfaction of their own individual needs. But small children want

self-satisfaction now not in the long run. I spent an afternoon recording three four and five year olds supervising them and guiding their activities so that the affair had the semblance of cooperative communication. But as I listened to the recording later I was impressed with the amount of egocentric communication that they had had in a passage I want to play. Mark the four year old performs like a prima donna at the front of the stage. Alaric who was five interrupts the performance once with a caustic remark from the way everyone. Oh. Oh.

OK yes. You show up. Here. I know you have me. I do. Maybe Mark is headed for show business John. He feels a bit light for his regard for the critics that's true. Well he knows that speech is useful for more than communication with others for message sending. He knows it's good for passing the time away for avoiding silence for releasing those feelings and even for entertaining others if they're willing. We've touched on some of these facets of speech in earlier programs and will be looking at others later. The speech of children is a focal point that informs every aspect of human communication. That's why I said at the beginning of today's program the parents ought to learn how to observe the development of their own children speech and communication not only so that they can better teach the children but also

so that the children can teach them. I have recordings of one more child. There will be time to discuss their implications but they suggest that one of the most interesting and instructive topics of all is the growth of the unique individual personality the individual speech is the most important gauge of his identity and his personality. I have recordings of one child may over the course of 13 years at 3 7 10 and 16. The first two were made when she was three. Here's Chris telling the story of The Three Little Pigs. If you only knew. Clearly they're good. Yes I am. I think that I couldn't help noticing how careful she was to make a proper sound. That's usually one of the last sounds Joan and M.. A little later in the story

demonstrates her ability to play different roles. She's imitating her parents reading and stirring. So we. Can go let's go. So. It will be good. OK good. She reads a lot of feeling as if the outcome of the story means a great deal to her in this imaginative play and by imitating others she's learning what it feels like to be somebody else. This kind of role playing practice will be very important to her as she grows older not only as a wholesome counterbalance for natural human egocentricity but also as you point out in a later program as a tool for thinking before we leave today's topic.

What did Chris sound like as she grew older. Well here she is first at age 7. We haven't done anything like that. And then at age town where I'm going to marry me one day in her week and finally at 16. Well I don't know I haven't and I won't pass tomorrow yesterday I was here. And that doesn't do anything. You know you've been listening to where minds meet a discussion of human communication by professors John frind and Arnold Nelson when our minds meet is produced and recorded by WMU under a grant from the National Association of educational broadcasters. This is the end of the Radio Network.