Castle transcript task

Overview

As Evie is in conversation with someone she knows, she is likely to be more comfortable and therefore take risks with her language choices. Grandma affirms an asymmetrical power balance with Evie, which she maintains by setting the agenda throughout the discourse. However, this does not discourage Evie from developing her language as she uses the set conversation to talk about local topics that interest her; this encourages her to communicate. By doing this Evie incorporates her development into the role-play activity including examples of Halliday’s functions such as imagination.

Six points

1) Skinner’s operant conditioning- how Grandma uses negative and positive reinforcement in reaction to Evie 2) Power- in relation to the lack of politeness strategies from Evie’s point of view 3) Observers paradox- are we observing natural behaviour? 4) Child-led discourse- the use of local topics 5) Theorists- Halliday’s functions and Vtgotski’s zone of proximal development 6) Fairclough- power balancing and powerful participant

PEE paragraph

There is an asymmetrical power balance between Evie and her grandmother. Her grandmother has both instrumental and influential power as she has authority over Evie as there is an ideological assumption in society that adults hold power over children (instrumental); yet, she also has influential power as Evie looks up to her for guidance for her language development as she is a caring figure due to their family relation. Evie’s grandmother shows aspects of being the powerful participant by setting the agenda through the use of interrogatives such as “who else do you want to put in the castle?” However, rather being used to assert her power, she may just be doing this in order to keep the conversation going, encouraging Evie to talk about things she likes which acts as motivation to talk and develop her speech. This supports Nelson’s theory of local topics and results in child-led discourse as Evie names all the nouns, such as “pig” and “triangle” that she would “like to put in the castle”. Evie’s common use of imperatives drives the task, for example “come on car”. This supports Halliday’s theory of imagination as she is incorporating role play into her speech. Furthermore, it also shows an attempt by her to experience the other side of a power dynamic as “come on” is most likely a phrase she has heard in unequal encounters with her parents when they are trying to make her hurry. By repeating this phrasal verb, it shows an example of how usually children feel powerless and want to know what it feels like to be powerful so Evie repeats an imperative usually used against her to do this. The fact she is able to understand the phrase and then apply it shows how she has a more complex understanding of language suggesting she may be in the telegraphic stage.

CLA task

As Evie is in conversation with someone she knows, she is likely to be more comfortable and therefore take risks with her language choices. Grandma guides her speech by developing these skills that are in Evie's zone of proximal development including examples of scaffolding and positive and negative reinforcement which are a part of Skinner’s operant conditioning.

1) Social skills/politeness- Evie's grandmother does not only correct uses of non-standard English but also reinforces the idea of social skills and politeness. For example "hahaha that's a lovely smiley"; smiling is an important social expectation/rule in order to be a friendly member of society.

2) Interaction theory-  Following ideas in Brunner’s interaction theory, Evie’s grandmother uses scaffolding as a form of modelling to show her how to pronounce something. For example how “wan-da” is modelled and therefore corrected to “panda”.

3) The observer's paradox- Usually when people are filmed they start to display unnatural behaviour, this is called the observers paradox; however, this may not actually effect the conversation between Evie and her grandmother as the camera has been incorporated into the conversation as a game. The whole conversation is centred around “who else” they “shall take a picture of”.

4) Skinners operant conditioning-  Evie makes a virtuous error when using the declarative “I sneeze” as she omits the past tense suffix. Her grandmother uses negative reinforcement to correct this by repeating her statement except this time adding the suffix, “you sneezed”.

5) Child-led discourse- Evie is encouraged to speak about things that interest her as this is motivation to communicate. Her Grandma achieves this by using local topics, an idea by Nelson, of the toys around her such as “tigger” and “cat”.

6) Power- Evie’s grandmother sets the topic of conversation, this demonstrates her instrumental power; however, her the interrogatives used are always open, such as “what’s that? Who is it?”. This suggests that rather than displaying her power through asking questions, she is rather trying to keep the conversation going by giving Evie an opportunity to talk about something she knows about and is familiar with in order to develop her language.
 

E Magazine Article

 World Englishes refers to the variety of English in different communities.



 Dynamic Model of Postcolonial Englishes:

Phase 1: foundation, in which Englishis brought to a territory by a colonising power.

Phase 2: exonormative stabilisation, where ‘exonormative’ means that the variety is outward-looking, in that it

is dependent on the model of English spoken by someone from the colonising power, i.e. the UK or the US, depending on who colonised the region, and is viewed as a second language (L2).

Phase 3: nativisation, in which the variety starts to have native speakers for whom it is no longer an L2.

Phase 4: endonormative stabilisation,where ‘endonormative’ means the variety has developed its own standards which are not based on the original variety of the colonisers.

Phase 5: differentiation, in which varieties form within the new variety, much as

they have in the UK.

Phonological Development

•Uses sentence-like intonations. This means they are starting to vary their pitch when they speak. They ask questions by raising intonations at the end of a phrase.

•Some echolalia- repetition of speech by a child learning to speak. They repeat it, but they don’t understand what it means so they don’t retain it.

•Can use some words in the correct context, but you cannot understand the majority of what they say.

•Omits final consonants and some initial consonants- clips the beginning or end off of a word eg. Playin’ or ‘tory. They are simplifying constant clusters. Adults also do this.

•They want to pair vowels with consonants eg. Bubble not splash.

•Accurately imitate some words

•65% of what they say is understood by the time they are two.

•By the age of two, they are starting to structure things like consonant, vowel constant instead of consonant, vowel. For example, saying ‘hot’ instead of ‘ho’

Media Text – Synthesising Skills

A guide to teach your toddler to speak- NHS resource pack

The ability to talk is a crucial skill in order to learn, socialise and develop in the world. You have the crucial role of helping your child understand the world around it before they can participate within it themselves.

There are several things you can do to encourage your child to start talking:

• Firstly, it’s important to understand that just because your baby may have uttered its first word, this does not constitute as the ability to have acquired language. Although it is progress, there are still vital developmental stages your child has to go through until they become confident with speaking.

•  Talking to your baby as if they can already understand you is a good way to help your child become aware of speech and how it works as before they can learn it, they must understand it.

•    Between the ages of one and two, your child, even though they cannot reply, will start to understand simple commands such as “put that down”. It is important to continue with these simple sentences with your baby as they are still developing their understanding and awareness of language. 

• Don't expect perfection straight away! It will be a long time down their developmental road before their pronunciation becomes clear, so there's no reason to worry if you feel that your child is struggling to talk at this stage.

• It's important to motivate your child at any given opportunity to encourage them to continue to talk. This is critical as your child will not only learn by imitation but by the feedback they receive from you as well.

Media text idea

Media text idea

Are you becoming victim of yours or other people’s language?

Do you want to stop people walking all over you?

Is the way people phrase things making you self-consciously do things you would otherwise not?

Are you being manipulated into doing things with the way people use language, do you want to get out of it?

Looking at the way deontic modal verbs and imperatives are used to try and get people to do something you want them to.