Although the title of this post sure looks like a set up for some boring educational acronym, it really describes making learning fun.  More significantly, it describes using fun to teach.  The purpose of the bureaucratic looking title is to please the administrative types that sometimes try to understand why it is often in the best interest of our students to use teaching methods that are actually fun.  I could have called it “Goal Directed Teaching,” or “Learning for a Reason,” or “Why’s Before Whats,” but these other possibilities simply don’t seem to fit as well. 

Achievement oriented instruction is when a teacher provides a goal that requires the student to use a targeted skill to accomplish something.  This is not quite functional teaching, and its almost the opposite of drill.  The goal itself provides the motivation, and for this reason the choice of the goal is critical.  It is perhaps as or more important than any teaching method that may be used.  And this is how achievement oriented instruction most differs from traditional teaching. 

Here are some examples that may best serve to illustrate my overall point:

As you can see, the achievement based teaching column contains more possibilities, and an “etc.”  The only limit to one can go in the final column is the teacher’s imagination.  The more creative and varied the activities, the more salient is the learning.  This should not in any way disparage traditional teaching, however.  Another way to put it is that traditional teaching relies on expectations.  In achievement based teaching the learning is elicited.  The student constructs his own expectations, and uses specific targets to achieve these expectations.  Expectations and elicitations are both critical when teaching.

So when an administrator comes in and sees you playing a game with your kids, if you did this kind of teaching, you could say:  “You caught me on my ABT day.  Some days I do drill, some days I do direct instruction, some days worksheets, and about half of the days I do activities specifically designed to elicit my students’ target skills.  It just so happens that fun motivates.”

Conjunctions are an important method of extending sentence length and complexity, because they are a common method of joining words or parts of sentences together.  Coordinating conjunctions join independent clauses (as well as words and phrases), while subordinating conjunctions can join both dependent and independent clauses (as well as words and phrases).

The acquisition and frequency of conjunctions have both been studied extensively.  Among the findings are that the word and often initially takes the role of other conjunctions  (Bloom et al., 1980; Scott, 1988; cited by Owens, 1996).  The conjunctions but, so, or, and if soon are acquired in typically developing children to serve functions that and isn’t as easily able to achieve.  Conjunctions like because then develop to express not only a relationship between sentence elements, but additionally a temporal sequence.  According to one estimate, by the time a normal child’s mean length of utterances reach 5.0 (at an average age of 4 to 5 years), 20% of the sentences they use in spontaneous speech contain embedded or conjoined clauses (Paul, 1981).

Language itself doesn’t require conjunctions, but effectively communicating advanced ideas usually does.  As with other language modalities, conjunctions exist because they assist.  We use them to achieve a goal.  Just try giving a reason for something without using the word because, or try describing the time relationship between two completed events without using conjunctions such as before, after, or then.  It can be done, but much less effectively.

Generally, developmental order of conjunctions is determined by the complexity of the relationship the conjunction serves.  Conjunctions appear frequently in assessments such as the CELF, CASL, OWLS, and SPELT.  Also, Conjunction Junction is a timeless piece of art.

That’s the gist of a new study by Lizbeth Finestack and Marc Fey from the University of Kansas, published in the August ‘09 American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology.  Their study compared 6-8 year olds assigned to either a deductive training group, or an inductive training group.  A computer program was used to teach a specific aspect of an invented alien language.   The deductive training group received explanations, i.e. a brief description of the target.  Both groups were made aware that the alien – “Tiki” – used many of the same words that we use, but this alien language also contained something different.  In this case that was different word endings for male and female verbs.  The kids in the deductive group were told that when it’s a boy you add -po to the end, and when it’s a girl you add -pa to the end.  The kids in the inductive group were just supposed to figure it out on their own, another way of saying they were required to use inductive reasoning.

Finestack and Fey’s results showed that significantly more kids in the deductive group acquired the target.   They concluded by asserting that generally, the most efficacious treatment may be one that combines natural language approaches with explanations.  For those with access, here’s the link.

As a psychologist, Jerome Bruner has led much of modern thought among those labeled interactionists, constructionists, and cognitivists.  As a professor and researcher, Bruner has taught and researched for over sixty years at Harvard, Oxford, and at his current position at New York University.  He has been looked at as one of the instrumental inciters of the so called cognitive revolution, and his ideas have had great influence over the current states of psychology, education, and language.

One frequently cited idea of Bruner’s is the LASS, or Language Acquisition Support System, a term coined in response to Chomsky’s LAD, or Language Acquisition Device.  The LASS refers to the importance of a child’s social support network, which works in conjunction with innate mechanisms to encourage or suppress language development.  Every child has one, and particularly during the years of the language explosion (roughly ages 2 to 5), differences in the LASS significantly explain differences in language acquisition, according to Bruner’s model.

In a spiral curriculum simple subject matter is introduced at the bottom, and made increasingly complex with each revisit

Part of the LASS is another key component of Bruner’s explanation of how the most effective learning occurs – the “spiral curriculum.”  Bruner used the spiral curriculum to argue against the modes of teaching that deem some subjects too difficult for learners to grasp before they’re ready, which was partially in response to Piaget’s strict stages of cogntive development.  Many have come to accept Bruner’s view that learning is more successful with early exposure and subsequent scaffolding of more complex concepts that occurs over earlier developing ones.

So how does a spiral curriculum differ from a traditional one?  Traditionally subjects are taught in big chunks to everyone at the same time.  Spiral curriculums are broken up into smaller chunks which are revisited, moving from exposure to more in-depth understanding with each revisit.  Optimally,this gives greater flexibility for learner’s individual differences, while providing the more opportunities for challenge, creativity, and advanced mastery of subjects.

And, it mimics how we naturally learn language.  A child doesn’t learn his first words in one day sections devoted to each word.  A “Today we’re going to learn the word, doggy.” day would not be as effective as how kids naturally learn the word doggy.  Initial exposures are added to with repeated revisits, increasing a word’s understanding with each revisit.  The most effective learning of subsequent words occurs in the same manner.

Bruner went on to write more on the significance of cultural influences in education.  For more on Bruner and his work, click here or here.  A good article on the spiral curriculum can be found here.

Information that can be organized in some manner is most easily retrieved (Nippold, 1998).  The organization of words into categories provides effective neural “hooks” for retrieval and an effective “filing cabinet” for storage.  Many words fall neatly into categories that help this storage and retrieval, while many other words require more linguistic manipulation to find category relatives.  The philosopher Immanuel Kant’s claim that categories are essential in understanding the world has both influenced and withstood generations of philosophical debate.  The notion that things exist independently of human categories which are then imposed upon those things in order to better understand them has deeply influenced metaphysics, language, psychology, and education.

Examples are the opposite of categories.  For example, spring and summer are examples of the category of seasons.  The term “superordinate” is frequently used in linguistic circles to refer to categories.  “Subordinates” is used to refer to category members.  For example, trumpets and flutes are subordinate members of the superordinate class of instruments.

The use of categories is especially relevant to memory  (McCormick and Schiefelbusch, 1990).  Short term memory relies on techniques such as chunking, while association is key to long term memory.  Chunking and association both use categories.  The use of categories also aids us in describing related words, allowing us to more effectively communicate our knowledge of these words.  One of the most widely seen features of semantic language impairment is the deficient use and understanding of categories.

As with any word, or word group, some categories tend to be learned before others.  Below is an abbreviated list that I’ve used in my language teaching.

In teaching and assessment a foil is simply an incorrect alternative.  Any time a choice is given the foil itself can make or break a response’s accuracy.  As an example, consider this picture:

What is this?

Now, here are four questions designed to determine your knowledge of the picture’s subject.

    1)  What is this?

    2)  Is this uranium, pyroxite, or feldspar?

    3)  Is this plagioclastic-orthonograph feldspar or uranium? 

    4)  Is this a type of fruit or uranium?

Much can be ascertained about one’s uranium knowledge depending upon which questions can or can’t be answered.  We can learn that somebody that can answer the question without foils (labeling, in this case) knows his rocks.  Conversely, when using bad foils nothing may be discovered at all.  Most second graders could answer the fourth question correctly which, of course, tells more about the child’s knowledge of fruit than uranium.  The third question’s foil is almost as bad.  If someone answers “uranium,” how do you know it’s not simply because the foil was so hard to pronounce?  While these examples may be extreme, they illustrate the significance that seemingly simple framing and foils can have on good assessment.

Three main foil factors can increase or decrease a response difficulty independent of a respondent’s knowledge of the target stimulus.

    1)  number of foils

    2)  semantic similarity of foils to target

    3)  syntactic complexity of foils

So, the greater the number, the closer the similarity, and the less complex the syntax, the greater the difficulty.  Increasing difficulty may be a good thing, such as when testing more advanced knowledge of a subject.  Decreasing difficulty can also be desired for lower functioning students. 

For example, when measuring a respondent’s knowledge of labeling vowels, you may show three pictures and ask “Which one is a vowel?”  If you show the letter O and two animals, the respondent requires very little (but still some) actual knowledge of vowels to point to the O.  If you use one similar foil, and one semantically different foil, you learn more.  A student that points to the picture of a tree rather than an O obviously knows less about vowels than a student that at least points to a consonant.  The latter student at least knows that vowels are letters.

One final note about using choices -  their use is also a good way of promoting labeling in teaching.  A child that can’t label can often provide the answer to a choice.  Incremental manipulation of the choices can be good therapy.  One final example:

    Instructor:  “What is the coldest continent?”

    Student:  “I don’t know.”

    Instructor:  “Is it Antarctica, Asia, or Canada?”

    Student:  “Canada.”  (Providing the final answer, even when far from correct, indicates a great deal about the student’s target knowledge.)

    Instructor:  “No.  I’ll give you one more try.  What is the coldest continent?  Is it the United States or Antarctica?”

Hopefully the student will now correctly answer, and in doing so, not only will the instructor have gained assessment information, but the student will have actually labeled the correct answer with cues.  This increases the likelihood of later labeling the answer with fewer cues.  The only way that this can happen is if learning has also happened.

We often seem to teach something for a long time before progress is made.  Then, it all seems to click, and suddenly the target is achieved.  In language, after this “click,” there is usually no need to continue teaching the structure.  The click factor encompasses two frequently observed phenomena:  1)  a student will use a target structure at a low percentage for some time, then suddenly use it at a high percentage.  2)  a student will not use a target structure at all, until being taught, after which time the student will suddenly use it at a high percentage.  There seem to be two reasons that this occurs.  One is that children may go awhile without a real world need for a target structure.  For example, Joe has been exposed to the word “she” in speech therapy, but with no sisters, and inconsistent correction from his parent on other occasions when the word “she” has been needed, he has continued to use “he” time and time again.  One day he refers to his grandmother as “he,” and is corrected by his grandfather.  Suddenly, it all clicks!  He realizes the reason for previous frustration, he knows how to eliminate this frustration, and he begins using “she” correctly.  If we’re all lucky, there’s quick generalization to other structures, and the goal of pronoun usage can be soon crossed off the SLP’s list.

Another possible contributor to this phenomenon is the measurement of progress that omits imperceptible increments.  Initially Joe may produce pronouns with no cueing at 20%, and may require extensive cueing to do anything beyond this.  With work, he soon may require less cueing, although his number correct without cueing may still be at 20%.  This sort of thing happens all the time.  It’s not necessarily problematic, though it can be if Joe moves or his SLP forgets exactly what Joe was previously working on.  For this reason, the more specific information a data sheet can provide, the more it can help describe exactly where Joe is at.  Forming good habits in criterion testing, such as testing often (such as with weekly quizzes), using structured data sheets, and including all relevant information can assist us in providing the best language teaching possible.

Accurate and frequent criterion referenced assessment can be the language teacher’s friend.  To accurately measure language progress several things are needed:  the method of elicitation, actual data, an accurate description of what’s being measured and the type and amount of cueing required.  The method of elicitation is what type of language is required from the student.  Data is a description of what the student has done.  Cueing describes what the teacher did to facilitate production.  Different types of each of these are listed below.

Aspects of Criterion Testing                 Examples of Types

Method of elicitation                            identification, choice, label, use

Data type                                              5 out of 5 sentences, 70% of choices with 2 foils

Cueing modality                                    verbal, visual, tactile, multimodality

Amount of Cueing                                 minimal, moderate, extensive, none

Statements of progress which omit any of these areas can not reliably be representative of a student’s actual skills.  Descriptions of cueing are often the most difficult to phrase.  It should be noted that classroom teachers do not include cueing information on their tests because the hindrances of the classroom setting preclude this.  A teacher is simply not able to give cues to large groups of students taking a classroom test.  It’s often not as essential in areas not as dependent upon social interaction as is oral language.  Information regarding cueing can be critical however to the language teacher that is able to administer and manipulate specific test items to specific students.  Consider the following examples, where nos. 1 and 3 are describing the exact same Joe, and nos. 2 and 4 are describing the exact same Sarah:

1)  Joe labeled subject pronouns (with no cues) with 20% accuracy.

2)  Sarah labeled subject pronouns (with no cues) with 20% accuracy.

3)  Joe labeled subject pronouns (with extensive verbal and visual cues) with 20 % accuracy.

4)  Sarah labeled subject pronouns (with extensive cueing) with 20% accuracy.

Without information regarding cueing, our knowledge of students usually looks like the first two examples above.  In these examples, Joe and Sarah seem to be at similar levels, while the last two examples tell something completely different.  Often we may know or feel that there is progress being made, but when we don’t attend to how much help is required, we miss a critical element of this progress.  For this reason, progress notes without measurements of cueing tend to contain weeks upon weeks of statements similar to the first two with seemingly little progress being made over large periods of time.  Ignoring the help required to elicit language requires the social dependencies fostering language acquisition.  This also ignores what many therapists know as the “click factor.”

The Matthew Effect - Named after a parable in The New Testament in which Jesus speaks (in fancier biblical words) of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.  While the term has been bandied about in multiple fields, it’s special significance to special education was expounded by psychologist Keith Stanovich.  Because those who learn linguistic foundations, such as phonology, grammar, and reading, have the things they’ve learned, they then learn more.  Those without these foundations fall further behind.  A strong body of evidence supports The Matthew Effect’s common sense notion that the gap that exists in early language learning widens in part because of the very existence of the gap itself.

The Flynn Effect  – The research of James Flynn and others like him has demonstrated that IQs have gone up between 5 and 25 points among those in the general population during the past century.  While some have stated that this is proof positive of our ever increasing intelligence, explanatory opinions have ranged from more expansive schooling, to better nutrition, to better problem solving abilities due to the greater accessibility of puzzles and video games, as well as the greater complexity of society overall.  While a general consensus has remained out of reach, Flynn’s own hypothesis is that IQ testing correlates with intelligence more than it actually tests it.  Click here for a well balanced explanation.

Built by the mob? Or partial reinforcement?

The Partial Reinforcement Effect - This is the one that keeps building those large Las Vegas hotels.  Responses acquired after intermittent reinforcement (such as gambling wins) last longer than those acquired after continuous reinforcement.  Simply put, spacing rewards is the best way to reinforce desired behavior.  Despite it’s power, this one seems underutilized in education and teaching.  I think it just needs a catchier name.

The Spacing Effect - Repeated spaced presentations naturally aid our memory in learning, much more than presentations that occur bunched together.  If you read my earlier post, the spacing effect may be helping you learn about the spacing effect.

The Mozart Effect - Does listening to classical music actually improve intelligence?  Probably not, but click here to read about why this effect has been so easy to believe.

The Perceptual Magnet Effect – According to this theory, this enables us to more easily learn differences between sounds that exist in learned language.  We perceive a sound as its intended exemplar, even when not produced exactly as that exemplar.  Here’s more info.

Estimates exist that vocabularies can consist of 60,000 to 80,000 words or more by graduation from high school (Bloom, 2005; Miller and Gildea, 1987).  We can’t possibly teach this number of words.   Fortunately we don’t have to.  This is due to the fact that teaching vocabulary relies on three equally important modes.  1)  Discovering which of the words that are considered appropriate for a child’s age and abilities have not been learned;  2)  Meaningful exposure;  3)  Providing opportunity for meaningful use.  Formal language testing may uncover some words within specific areas that are problematic, but criterion testing is important to determine a significant quantity of these words.  Discovering these words may be more important, if not equally important, as actually teaching these words.  This is because of the sheer quantity of words that children are expected to learn.  We can’t teach them all, but we can provide exposure, opportunity, and critically – acceptable expectations.

For use in my own teaching, I’ve compiled lists of words for each of various language areas that SLPs typically address.  The words that I’ve chosen are considered high impact and foundational for further learning.  The key “curriculum” vocabulary words are almost entirely nouns and  verbs.  Other words are usually addressed when specific language deficits are addressed.  The order comes from developmental data, state goals, benchmarks, and often educated guesswork.  There is a variable developemental order for each linguistic unit.  A preponderance of unknown words equals a deficit area.  A preponderance of known words equals an area thay is likely not considered deficient.  Many language categories are divided into basic, early elementary, later elementary, and advanced.  Here is how this looks with adjectives, as one example:

     Basic:  ahead, alike, afraid, bad, behind, big, fat, funny, good, great, etc.

     Early Elementary:  angry, better, best, beautiful, bright, closed, covered, dizzy, etc.

     Later Elementary:  crooked, dull, equal, exact, gorgeous, grumpy, handsome, level, etc.

     Advanced:  backward, precise, rectangular, slanted vast, etc.

Division into linguistic units such as adjectives is done merely to facilitate teaching.  This facilitation is possible because of tendencies in children’s unassisted learning.  Without help, a child with a few errors in one area tends to have errors concentrated in that area.   Because there’s a potentially infinite number of adjectives, the grammatical class of adjectives is considered open-ended, which is the reason for each division’s “etc.” ending.  Once it is discovered which words a child doesn’t, but should, know, this information can be passed on to parents, teachers, and to the students themselves.

Many grammatical categories are considered closed-ended.  A developmental hierarchy can be established for them as well.  Here is the closed-ended class of conjunctions:

     Common Coordinating:  and, but, so, or

     Common Subordinating:  after, because, before, for, if, so, unless, until, when

     Less Common Coordinating:  nor, for, yet

     Later Developing Subordinating:  although, as, as if, once, since, than, that, though, till, whenever, where, wherever, whether, while

     Correlative:  both/and, either/or, just/also, neither/nor, not only/but also, whether/or

Coordinating conjunctions tend to develop prior to subordinating, because they generally signify a simpler relationship.  Conjunctions that are common tend to come before ones that are not common as they express more frequently occurring concepts.  Using and to talk about the coexistence of two things occurs more often than using yet to talk about the differences between two things.  It should be stressed that these are tendencies, and not set in stone.  But, as with developmental articulation tendencies, these too can be used to our teaching advantage.  As with articulation normative data, the hierarchies are not meant to be followed rigidly.  They are only meant to provide flexible guidance.

Generally, especially with semantic areas such as categories, functions, similarities and differences, and unlimited word categories, such as adjectives, nouns, verbs, and adverbs, there are more words to be learned as the child advances in age.  As students get older, the vocabulary gets more focused within various subject areas.  There is a large amount of words that an older student interested in math should know specific to math compared to a student expecting to go into health care.  As with younger students, the only way to address an older student’s specific language needs is to start off by determining what words that student should know.

For vocabulary word lists, presented in developmental order, for a wide variety of language areas, please refer to my other site:  freelanguagestuff.com.

The current knowledge of language development includes a large amount of theory, research, and debate from a variety of fields.  These include linguistics, psychology, philosophy, sociology, medicine, computers, biology, neurology, speech and language pathology, and education.  What is known about language has come far in recent decades due to a recent flurry of activity in these disciplines, and as a result of the interdisciplinary sharing of information between the groups.  Still, there are many questions.  The nature-nurture debate rages, as do arguments regarding the pros and cons of specific theories of language acquisition.  The search for autism’s elusive cure has gained unprecedented heights of popularity.  And, how has language evolved?  Or has it?  To what extent, if any, does language precede thought?  These and similar quests have sparked considerable debate but little consensus.  And one large question still looms:  Is it possible to devise a systematic way to teach language?

Recent theorists and researchers have lined up to either support their favorite traditional theories or to develop unique descriptions of language that may provide insightful clues into answering some of the existing questions.  Theory of mind’s relevance in recent explanations of autism is one such example (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, and Frith, 1985).  The number of other language theories is extensive.  An incomplete list of these theories range from behaviorism, Chomsky’s nativist theories (universal grammar, principles and parameters, minimalism, etc.), connectionism, optimality theory, Vygotsky’s social interactionism, Piaget’s cognitive constructivism, information processing theory, neural network models, interactionist approaches (such as Bruner’s LASS and Bates and MacWhinney’s functionalism), and models that stress pragmatics, such as speech acts theory and Grice’s conversational maxims.  This list doesn’t even include more “philosophical” models (such as structuralism, semiotics, logical positivism, Frege’s direct reference theory, or Wittgenstein’s picture theory), waning models (such as case grammar, pivot grammar, and the semantic relations approach), or many of the more recent theories being promoted and debated in specific circles (including Ullman’s dual system’s model, Fodor’s language of thought, Tomasello’s usage based grammar, Jackendoff’s conceptual semantics, and Sperber and Wilson’s relevance theory).

Many drawbacks exist to the language teacher when attempting to use current research and theory in functional practice.  An obvious drawback is that there are likely too many theories to choose from.  Having a wide selection of options often obscures the availability of the best option (Schwartz, 2004).  Also, because so much of the theories exist as explanations of hidden processes, they tend to be so general that teaching assumptions don’t apply across categories of language or from individual to individual.  Connectionist ideas may inspire treatment relevant to semantics, such as graphs and webs.  An instructor could teach implications and sarcasm as implied in pragmatic theories.  Or one may use underpinnings from theory of mind explanations to inspire joint attention and reciprocal turn taking.  While these explanations apply to specific parts of language, others don’t even apply to instruction at all.  How would you teach optimality theory to a preschooler?  And beyond futuristic gene manipulation, improving universal grammar is impossible.  The time and resource limitations involved in using evidence based practice in language therapy have been eloquently discussed in Brackenberry, Burroughs, and Hewitt, 2008. Compounding difficulties greatly is the predominance of some theories (nativist) that work from the assumption that because grammar is analogous to an organ that grows, it can’t be taught (Chomsky, 1980).

That no one language acquisition theory has been settled upon indicates that no one method of language teaching can currently be deemed the best.