arpitha rao | Tata Institute of Social Sciences

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An understanding of the nature of language and its social dimensions calls for the placing of lin... more An understanding of the nature of language and its social dimensions calls for the placing of linguistic coordinates in the dimensions of cognition, language design features and socialisation aspects. Elementary education is the stage at which children acquire and develop linguistic abilities of varying competence in sections of speech, writing, listening and reading. Instead of compartmentalising language learning into discrete 4 elements as mentioned above, it is imperative to see to it that the language development grazes through the sections of speech, cognition and representation of the world in equal proportion. When we employ such an all-encompassing approach to language development in elementary education, then it is only right to assume that the educators (teachers, teacher educators, curriculum developers, policy makers, administrators and parents) develop an overall understanding of the nature of language and its social dimensions. This section will explore how such an understanding affects the learning in elementary education. As Susan Langer says " human beings have a crying need to express ". Language is the tool for a child to make sense of the external world as well as represent her feelings. There is often no one-on-one relationship between the spoken words and the things that they represent (except for onomatopoeic words), a feature called as arbitrariness of the language. Language then also shows displacement and creativity through which a speaker or a listener can come to relate to things/events that are separated from them in time, space and person. Added to this all languages are structure-dependent in that the meaning making occurs due to the internal structure of a sentence rather than the individual elements present. When a teacher/pedagogue is aware of these features, then she looks at language development as a meaning-making constructivist activity that cannot be developed through methods of rote learning, isolated tampered learning materials but that which can only be fostered through an authentic engagement in varied activities designed to build human expression in all those different activities. Chomsky talks about an intrinsic LAD (Language Acquisition Device) and a universal grammar that every human child possesses. Upon exposure to natural environments of different languages, these features are then used to build those particular languages. There is a critical period of language acquisition (from birth till the age of puberty) in which children are capable of acquiring any new language. The pedagogical implications of this understanding is that the teachers/educators need not consider one language sacrosanct and try to instil that language in them through their schooling. This is highly pertinent to Indian scenario where there is a desire to teach children English language as soon as possible. When the teachers realise that upon meaningful (language through natural and expository) exposure over a long period of time, they will strive to create learning environments that do not place undue importance on any one language but treat communicative competence (achieving mutual understanding in real life scenario) in any language as the foremost goal for a child. This would mean that the creativity, expression and representation of the world occupy preference over alienation and non-comprehension that occur due to the over-emphasis on one/some specific languages.

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arpitha rao | Tata Institute of Social Sciences (original) (raw)

Drafts by arpitha rao