Two weeks ago, I was wearing a winter coat.Two weeks from now, I’ll , in all probability be wearing short sleeves.
Any season can make a bid for a nostalgic sentiment, but Spring and Summer have their own demands in this way.
On the return commute a few days ago, I encountered . . . separately . . . two antique cars coming the other way on the local surface road I take.They seem to come out around this time of year.
One was about a 1950 vintage.The other one was even older:almost into the Model A/Model T vintage.
They both set me to thinking about childhood experiences.
I think the 1950 era antique car was not of the same make as my Mom’s car, but it had [as do all cars of that era] that same “look.”The car that came across my path a few days ago was aqua and white, which must have cost a pretty penny back then since “custom” colors like aqua were for the rich.
During my childhood years, we had a 1950 Buick Special [dark green] that looked much like this vehicle.
The other car didn’t set off as much nostalgia, since that was even before MY time for anyone to have one.My strongest association with that one is enjoying “The Waltons” for some years:mostly in syndication.During “The Waltons” first-run I was in college;too busy in a sense being John-Boy to watch it on TV except during summer vacations.
But, this happenstance encounter with two antique cars in the same commute got me in the nostalgia mindset:which relates to some of my writing niches.
So, anticipate some upcoming posts on Sunday afternoon pizza for supper, beach expeditions, and the like for upcoming entries.
It struck me when I began this series that one of the puzzle pieces in vocabulary development for the non-native speaker/writer is the infancy and childhood experience of nursery rhymes and lullabies.
The nature of such material is phonetic, and the objectives multiple.
However, primary objectives include either soothing or entertaining the child [depending on if is it sleep time or play time, which translates to learning time for language skills], along with language exposure.
As a consequence, the composers of these ditties typically use a rhyming structure.With lullabies, and later childhood games like jump rope songs, this may be combined with a musical foundation as well, which makes it a multi-sensory experience that further supports development of language skills.
As anyone who has experimented with writing verse can attest, creating a rhyming structure can pose its challenges to the writer/composer.
Because of that, we find words in some nursery rhymes that are peculiar or unusual.
Let’s look at a few traditional such rhymes.
Diddle Diddle Dumpling
Diddle Diddle Dumpling
My son John
Went to bed
With his breeches on
One stocking off,
And one stocking on.
Diddle, diddle dumpling,
My son John.
This verse has only one occurrence, “breeches.”
The Wikopedia entry on this nursery rhyme actually uses the word “trousers” rather than “breeches.”
Well, the language is always evolving, and I don’t know too many men who any longer regard themselves as wearing “trousers” let alone “breeches.”
But, what happens, here?The baby, and on well into childhood, hears this nursery rhyme over and over, and the word “breeches” or “trousers” as an article of men’s clothing [typically today known as “slacks”] naturally over time becomes a part of that infant’s working vocabulary.
Thus, “breeches” would be part of my working vocabulary, but I would not use it in writing to refer to a garment worn by a man unless I was writing historical fiction.
Cross Patch, Draw the Latch
Cross Patch, Draw the Latch
Sit by the fire and spin,
Take a cup and drink it up,
Then call your neighbors in.
This nursery rhyme is old enough for the first two lines to be quoted in “Little Women,” published in the 1860s or so.
Again, we have usages that are not often called for in modern English.
We no longer “latch” our doors, we lock them.And while we use “spin” in modern English, more likely we refer to the spin cycle on a washing machine than we do to spinning fibers on a spinning wheel as this verse refers to.
Yet, native English speakers exposed to this nursery rhyme will have working vocabularies that include those uses of the words “latch” and “spin.”
Little Miss Muffet
Little Miss Muffet
Sat on a tuffet
Eating her curds and whey.
Along came a spider
And sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffet away.
A child who heard this rhyme over and over would include the today rarely used words of “curds,” “whey,” and “tuffet” in his/her working vocabulary.
Curds and whey are words that coming back a bit, thanks to the popularity of cottage cheese and similar foods.But, for the most part, those kinds of words are rarely used in ordinary English usage today.
Little Boy Blue
Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn.
The sheep’s in the meadow, the cow’s in the corn.
Where is the boy who looks after the sheep?
He’s under the haystack, fast asleep.
Here we find two words rather advanced for infancy, and not much needed in most English-speaking parts of the world today because most of the population no longer has an agrarian lifestyle.
But, a child who heard this verse from infancy would have the words “meadow” and “haystack” incorporated in his/her adult working vocabulary.
As someone who rides horses when possible, I can think of occasions I would use “meadow” in writing or communicating in speech to someone.But I can’t think of circumstances when I would want to use “haystack” in such a way.
A Dillar, a Dollar
A dillar, a dollar
A scholar.
What made you come so soon?
You used to come at ,
But now you come at .
Here again, “scholar” is a word not so much called for today.More often, we will refer to those in a formal education program as pupils or students today.
Yet, a child who hears this rhyme from babyhood will easily call upon the word “scholar” during adulthood when circumstances call for it.In this particular instance, the influence may well become derivative:as a child gets into the education years geared towards entry into post-high-school academic institutions, the awareness of the word “scholar” will assist the young person in understanding words such as “scholastics” through the process of association.
Along with those exposure deficit challenges the adult learner has to overcome, there are also some cultural associations conveyed through the early language learning experiences that may increase the difficulty of learning proper usage of the vocabulary once the adult learner captures the actual word as a part of that individual’s working vocabulary.
But the cultural challenges are matters for other entries.
The point, for this entry is that the early exposure in the entertainment context of nursery rhymes to words that would ordinarily fall outside the “age appropriateness” quotient of a pre-school child acts towards building a foundation of both a strong actual and a strong working vocabulary in a way that the non-native speaker of English cannot duplicate.
The best such a learner can do is understand the factors, and try to find the most efficient way to create an exposure environment that provides the best learning potential for each individual student in that situation.
Note:All quoted nursery rhymes are old enough to be in public domain, so I have only referenced the most pertinent references I looked at; although I did review several others.
I pass that park any time I take that route to work [almost everyday I’m on this particular on-site job] or home from work [less of the time, but still often.]
Granted, the playground is more visible on the return home trip than the morning commute in to work. I usually only take that route home in certain weather conditions or if I need to run an errand on the side of the town the park is in.
On one such occasion, within the last few weeks, I noticed that among the play equipment is some sort of activity made out of a series of hanging tires.
Which got me thinking to my childhood days, and summer days of swimming at a freshwater beach that was a family favorite:including what today we would call “pool toys” like inflatable rafts.
And inner tubes.
Real, honest-to-goodness inner tubes, from real honest-to-goodness automobile tires no longer suitable for over-the-road use.
And that got me thinking about the amazing, but taken-for-granted technology of things like cell phones.
I worked for an interval for Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, which pioneered the global positioning system on which all satellite technology of today [and thus much cell phone technology of today] is based.
But . . . I actually remember my family having an actual, real-life party-line telephone.
For you folks too young to know about those things:a party line telephone was a situation in which two [or more] households in close living proximity who could not afford a dedicated telephone line individually shared a telephone account.
Those people who still have landline phones in their homes today have what is called a “private line” in contrast to the old “party line.”[Although party lines are still available, per my phone book:but I know of no one who still has one.]Because my parents income in relation to expenses improved, and also because the family we shared the line with were .. . difficult . . . to deal with in such a circumstances, my parents finally got a private line when I was about ten years old.
Today, youth take for granted not just a regular landline phone in their house, but calling anyone from anywhere on a cell phone.
Those ruminations got me thinking on something a friend who worked as an adjunct college instructor in Media Arts once told me.
That when she showed an old western movie in class, the class asked “what’s wrong with it?”
Well, ah, that’s the way it was made, because that was the technology of the time.Black-and-white filming.
And when color filming became POSSIBLE, it was at first too expensive:at least for a full-scale production.
One of the first partially color films was “The Wizard of Oz.”This storyline lent itself to using color for most of the story, with black-and-white prologue and epilogue sequences.
Just those few black-and-white sequences saved a great deal in terms of cost.
Though it may not be the first, the first television show I remember that had a black-and-white to color switcheroo in midstream was “Bewitched.”The first few years were black-and-white, then it switched to “technicolor” when the technology became affordable.
Again, as I recall, they tied the switch into the storyline:I think, if memory serves, Samantha’s announcement of her pregnancy with Tabitha.
I grew up on black-and-white television shows, and although I’ve not watched much television lately, overall, my impression is that much of that earlier material was better quality than what we see today:because we had to “make do” with imagination rather than relying on technology.
Today, people under the age of 50 or so, take these advances for granted.
Which is a shame.Just look at the history of humanity:we have made, technologically, more advances in the past about 200 years than we did in millennia before that.
Two hundred years ago, families had no central heating nor interior plumbing, let alone electricity or internal combustion engines.
A thousand years ago, anything you MIGHT read would have been laboriously hand-copied.Typewriters and the Gutenberg press were well in the future.
And, I’m sure, many of my readers in the age of all-season-radial tires have no clue what an “inner tube” tire is.
Ah, it was a shell much like the modern tire; but lesser evolved in technology and more subject to problems like punctures.
Inside the shell we had an “inner tube.”
In the technology of the time, that was a double layer of protection from damage.
That we have advanced from that to where we are today, in less than one hundred years, is not a technological achievement anyone should “take for granted.”
And . . . the rapidity of technological advancement poses moral and ethical issues, also; which [society wide] haven’t kept pace.
But THAT is a post for another time.
What makes me rather sad, in terms of this particular post, is that “we” as a society fail to recognize that amazing fact:in the past two hundred to three hundred years, we have made more technological progress that we had in more than three thousand years prior to the year 1800 [just as a nice round number choice of date.]
I believe that that puts us at risk as a society.As I have heard said:“History repeats herself because no one listened the first time.”
And I think we are going to find that we are on a self-destruct pattern by not recognizing “history” in terms of ethical considerations of our rapid technological advancement.
And . . . I have also heard that a lack of concern is a far greater enemy than active opposition to a position.
So, we need to cultivate a historical perspective among our youth.
Next up on my coverage of the issues for adult learners of English, is the nature of a “working” vocabulary.You may sometimes see a term with an equivalent meaning of “functional vocabulary.”
The problem for adult learners involves:how does an individual get a strong working vocabulary?
As with most situations, it certainly helps, and may even be mandatory, to define the nature of the issue before seeking a resolution.
So . . . what language skills experts appear to have settled on is that a “working vocabulary” involves that percentage of vocabulary words an individual knows that she or he is likely to use his/herself in speaking and writing.
Since I spend much of my communication time with people who are either readers, writers in some form, or both that definition brought me up short.
Taking myself [and pretty much every other writer I know] as examples:there are a substantial quantity of words in MY vocabulary that I COULD in the appropriate situation call upon for use in communicating to someone in spoken or written form, and yet I probably would not.
So, I would say that a working vocabulary includes those words an individual knows with enough familiarity not to need to look them up in a dictionary when encountering that word during the reading of a fiction or reference piece of reading.Even then, I’d give the exception of needing to look up the word if it occurs in a radically different way than the reader has encountered before for that word, given that many English words have ten or more different meanings.
So, for non-native speaker/writers, there are potentially two issues here, at least:1) realistic assessment of the current state of the individual’s working vocabulary, and 2) how does an individual acquire a strong one?
The estimates I saw suggested that the actual vocabulary, on which working vocabulary is based, of literate native English speakers at about high school graduation encompasses approximately forty to forty five thousand words.But, as to a working vocabulary, the figures seem to vary to somewhere between six thousand to ten thousand words.
Broken down, the studies that indicated these statistics noted that for a child to acquire a vocabulary containing forty five thousand words by high school graduation, the word acquisition rate is three thousand to three thousand five hundred words per year.My own mathematical cross check indicates that, assuming high school graduation at the typical age within the United States of seventeen, the actual average annual acquisition rate for a child brought up speaking and writing the language is approximately two thousand six hundred forty seven unknown words annually.Of course, the rate of acquisition is going to vary with the age of the child.
For those who really want to get down to the nitty-gritty, that translates to an acquisition of an average of seven and a quarter new words daily, on average, for seventeen years.
Of course, a working vocabulary includes the most common words in the language that we use daily:such as “is/are,” various prepositions, and even the word “word.”
What a native speaker needs to do is find the most efficient replication, within his or her own personal circumstances, of the level of exposure that native speakers experienced from infancy up through high school graduation.
There are some aspects of this that cannot be replicated.Even if an adult English language learner could capitalize on a version of learning through the phonetic characteristics of nursery rhymes and lullabies, the experience would still lack the parent-child bonding that a native speaker/writer experiences along with the early language exposure:and which can have an impact, in that it conveys attitude, on the infant’s language skills development.
Nor can an adult learner with existing language skills in another language reproduce the “clean slate” experience of infancy.The infant has little or nothing filed in memory banks as yet.This provides an absorbancy quotient for new data, including language skills, that an adult learner cannot duplicate.
What is the goal, in effect?
This is the crux of the problem facing adult language learners:how do they most efficiently, being adults with responsibilities, provide the exposure that allows them to encounter that almost three thousand words per year?Or, in some instances when “make up” time is taken into account, well over three thousand new English vocabulary words per year.
A sense of realism about it, also, should allow those learning English as a second language to cut themselves some slack in the process.
It’s a monumental task they have undertaken, and any show of progress deserves recognition.
In order for an adult learner to define the most effective means of replicating vocabulary acquisition, which starts with exposure, within the individual’s own circumstances, the adult learner needs to have an awareness of the factors involved in adult learning in general, specific factors that pose challenges in learning English, and the nature of challenges in generating that exposure that may arise simply from the fact of living the life style of the average adult.
Additional posts on this area will explore each of these aspects of English vocabulary acquisition for adult learners.
To understand the challenges facing adult learners of English, I believe it has usefulness to look at the normal pattern of language development.
And, potentially, we’re already stuck.
Because we know that in terms of even middle/junior school level, we find a vast variance of literacy levels among native speakers.
Why?
Identifying those factors can play a part in adult language learners making their learning process as effective as possible.
For reasons I will explain in a later blog post, I don’t think it is possible for an adult learner [short of someone who literally can survive on zero sleep each night] to make up for the lost childhood language skills experiences.
But understanding the factors can help such a person define his/her own best learning approach and choose the most effective and efficient activities available to produce best results.
So, on to the typical development.
As a general rule, we will find that children raised around the same time in the same home will have (barring things like developmental delays and learning disabilities) roughly the same level of literacy development by about third grade and continuing to high school graduation.
This is a distinct difference between what we used to call “two-generation families.”That is, well, we HAD a family altogether, but that last one was a surprise.
And eleven, or thirteen, or fifteen years younger than the previous youngest.
There is a marked distinction in such cases:these youngsters grow up not only with two parents with adult vocabulary levels, but varying numbers of older siblings with adult, or near-adult, levels of vocabulary.
All the evidence, formal or anecdotal, suggests that one key is EXPOSURE.
Children with older siblings old enough to have adult-level vocabularies, barring complications, acquire greater language skills.
But, as to the norm, what makes the difference?
There can be several factors, some beyond control.
Someone I know who was a teacher indicated there is a correlation [though cause-effect is not proven] between extended crawling-before-walking phases in an infant and literacy levels.
BUT, what I do know that I have seen repeatedly in research is two factors that matter in development of the native speaker have generally been widely accepted as important.
One is exposure, the other is attitude.
Repeatedly, I have seen it reported that the single, most important factor in literacy development for native English speakers is that the child gets read to as soon as possible:even before comprehension is possible.
Bluntly:parents who read to their children beginning when they are newborns as a general rule will raise readers and potentially writers.That seems to be just the way it works.
HOWEVER, there is a second factor:attitude.
That is to say, no matter how much parents have high-level vocabulary skills, if the internal family attitude is anti-communication, then that child will have a lower literacy level that a child in a lesser language skilled family that places a high value on communication.
What’s the transition?
Exposure involves the level of skill available.But attitude TO exposure also matters.A child raised in a home run by two professors of English who, however, are involved in their own worlds and discourage or even FAIL TO ENCOURAGE the efforts of the child are likely to produce a less literate child then a family run by two blue-collar workers who wished their language skills could have made life better and place a high value on communication:EVEN assuming comparable reading of bedtime stories, nursery rhymes, and so on.Although in such an instance, it is likely the blue collar workers spend more communication time with the children than the professors.
What pertinence has this to adult learners?
Well, my personal opinion is they need to best streamline their efforts to define their situation as of today and figure out their best supports AND their deterrents.
This will permit them to develop a program that allows them to make up for as much as possible of the lack of not learning the language as an infant.
And not learning the language as an infant involves a variety of challenges I will explore in future entries.
AND, learning the language as an adult [as separate from NOT learning it as an infant] poses its own challenges, which I will also address in upcoming entries.
My personal thanks to the individual who inspired this series.
Well . . . the fact that “travel” is one of my niche areas in writing gives me the chance to write about regions.Including my own, being a native New Englander.
So, one of the aspects of New England ambience that has been on my mind lately involves the New England clam shack.
Firstly, I love seafood:and particularly fried clams.
But, then . . . I just love the ‘rough and ready’ ambience of the New England clam shack.
I remember, some years back, I was working as a temporary office support person in a situation where a local financial institution had been taken over by the FICA people or something to that effect.
Meaning that, with a sprinkling of other New England natives who had been officers at the closed institution, most of those I worked with had flown in from places like Texas and were living for a few months at “residential inns” at a time when that was a brand-new concept.
I do remember one exchange of explaining the local clam shacks to one of the, as it were, “foreigners.”
The Texas-origin FICA lady was wearing a peasant blouse and khakis, about as “business casual”, short of shorts, one could get [especially in the financial industry!]
We were trying to tell her about the clam shack experience.
I recall the other woman from N.E. saying to our associate:“You’re overdressed in what you’re wearing.”
I still recall the look on the woman’s face.
But . . . apart from the tastiness of the food at these places, this is precisely the kind of ambience that makes the experience both fun and specifically “New England.”
Where else, aside perhaps from the tropics where clothes almost cannot be mandatory due to climate conditions, can you go where bathing suits and flip-flops are included in the appropriate attire for a public eatery?
Among my rather broad-ranging interests within the general area of “writing” is the matter of challenges facing those who learn English other than “from the cradle,” whether they are developmentally delayed or whether they (more commonly in terms of my personal experience) are English as a Second Language learners.
While, as the Blog title “Writings, Etc.,” reflects, any writing-related topic is fair game, I have tried so far to focus on areas that would interest native speaker/writers of English either concerned with business-and-technical writing, or in a serious way with “creative writing.”
I recently had occasion to ask someone interested in developing English writing skills who is, essentially, learning the language as an adult the kind of topic he would like to see discussed in such a blog as this.
When he gave me his answer, I briefly researched one aspect I wanted to cover in a series of posts:and realized he had hit upon a gigantic motherlode of raw material for a set of entries for this blog.
He indicated he would like to read about “word usage.”
Well, at first I thought he meant using words correctly, which I know he has some challenges with.
But then he also made a point about wanting to have access to better ways to learn new words:which is technically vocabulary development.
Now, apart from the fact that those are in a sense two different . . . although related . . . topics, each of them lends itself to multiple sub-topic areas.
At the same time, some other possible topics for coverage have come to my attention.
So, I’m launching a series of Blog entries on different topics hopefully within the next week or two.
But for those interested in the challenges and potential solutions pertaining to the cultivation of vocabulary and usage skills for adults . . . primarily but not necessarily those learning English as a second language [as opposed to lack of education, developmental delays eventually resolved, and any number of other causes], I thought I’d start with an introductory post and a list of the sub-topic areas I now know of that factor into exploring the challenges of honing English skills in this situation.
I do not rule out finding new sub-topic areas as I go along.
And there should be some fun for my blog readers along the way.For example, we will take at least one stop along the way looking at nursery rhymes, songs, and other children’s “play” language exposure, like jump-rope songs.
I also want to make a note to my regular readers:in posts on this topic, I anticipate that I will use words I would not use normally in similar contexts.
That is because of my potential audience.
In business writing, it is good to have a great vocabulary, but reader accessibility is paramount.
In business writing, I can think of some, but very few, contexts in which I would use either the word “hone” or the word “paramount.”
BUT . . . if I am to go by my informant, vocabulary acquisition is a big concern and challenge.
And by my own experience . . . part of the solution is exposure.
So, ALSO in business writing, audience is paramount.The demand of this audience is ‘make it attractive, but give us [new/unknown] WORDS, WORDS, WORDS.The more unusual, the better.’
And I’m going to do my best to fulfill that anticipation.
So, for those more interested in the other aspects of writing I cover, I will be using words like “paramount” and “hone” knowing that THIS audience will WANT to look them up in a dictionary if they don’t know them.
When, for example, I’d rarely use such words either in business writing or in fiction with certain exceptions.
With that warning and caveat (I know of a few folks who teach ESL people, also who may have an interest.), here are some sub-topics to look at for those interested in this area of writing skills:
Young’uns learn languages in ALL languages, why is English differenet?
[Or, the history and structure or English]
Natural acquisition processes [or why Sally may be much more literate than Brucie, or vice versa.]
Cultural issues:yesterday, today, and tomorrow
The nature of a working vocabulary [including what’s wrong with the definitions I’ve run across in my research so far.]
The comparative level of working vocabulary for contemporary versus historical timeframes.
The impact of learning styles
Issues of exposure [related to learning styles and levels of working vocabulary at different historical times]
Complications for adult learners that “learning experts” appear not to take into account
Resources to advance the “cause.”
Those are my starters:and those are more than one post apiece.
It’s a bit ironic that the person who asked this, while our first encounter suggested otherwise, is in fact doing all the right things that life makes accessible to him.
Hopefully, I can contribute a little bit to the progress quotient with this [in terms of the enormity of the problem as I now see it] humble effort.
