Well, it's past time for another post to the blog.
Let's see how well I do on making them somewhat regularly over the next interval.
I went back through the blog to see what kinds of things I had covered with intent to do additional coverage to initial entries.
I found a couple of items that I might want to write some further detail on. Most notably, of course, is the series of pieces I wanted to do targetted to language learning for non-native speakers. However, I don't believe I have the available research time today to pull the next one of those together. Maybe next week.
And, I may have an incentive to do more on that, in that I met someone who teaches adult ESL learners who are at a very fundamental level and who has also shown an interest in reading my written work at many different levels. I'm sure she'd be interested to look at my prior entries on that subject, and some upcoming ones as well.
What I do have time today to address is something that I found interesting in a juxtaposition of some recent reading of mine (although I believe the book is at least five or six years old), and an entry I did some time back in this blog that dealt with factors in English language learning generally. The entry addressed the fact that as a general rule, children acquire greater English language proficiency sooner the higher the level of proficiency of adults (and older, such as teenage, children also in the home, as well) in their home environment. However, the salient point of that entry was that of a potential counter-current circumstance to that general rule. That factor was that children in a home environment in which the adults had a lesser English language proficiency than in another home environment, but the lesser proficiency language skills home atmosphere was one of valuing and encouraging communications would tend to produce higher English language skills in the children in that home than would result in the children raised in a home where the parents had higher language skills themselves but discouraged or even failed to actively encourage communications in their children.
I came across something in a book I've read in just the past few days, and which raises some interesting reflections for today's language proficiency development circumstances.
Another factor besides exposure and attitude that figures in the proficiency development of English language learners in terms of those learning the language as children.
It was, as much of my recent reading has been, a romance. I read both contemporary and historical romance; and this one was a historical.
The female protagonist, at the outset, earns her living as a traveling seamstress on the frontier. She basically sets up a route of families that she visits to help out with
the family sewing twice each year. She ventures out onto her route, and she spends about a week with each family, bringing not only her sewing skills at a more refined level than the frontier women can bring to their day-to-day sewing, but feminine companionship to isolated 'women of the home' for a brief interval, and news -- usually several weeks to months old -- from the various other outposts the seamstress has passed through on her route.
An interesting observation that the female protagonist of the book makes, and of which the underlying principle has pertinence to our day, is that what the seamstress has
discovered is that the literacy level of the children is at a higher level in frontier children living in near-isolation on remote farms and ranches than it is among comparably aged children in the larger cities.
This at first blush seems rather counter-intuitive.
After all, we would anticipate that the cities would have better schools, better teachers, and so on. Wouldn't we?
That is not, however, the essential factor.
What the seamstress has observed is far more fundamental.
In the cities, there are more opportunities for all kinds of activities. There are other children about to play with; and for the adults there are activities like sports,
concerts, and plays to attend.
To be sure, there are going to be exceptions based upon the values of an individual family, as a book like "Little Women" illustrates by portraying a family of young girls with very high language skills despite the fact that they live in Concord, Massachusetts which was then and is now a cultural mecca with a wealth of potential social and cultural activities. The parents in that family valued learning highly; and saw to it that it was given its proper due in the efforts of the four young girls in the family.
Yet, in terms of general populations, what the seamstress had discovered was that the reason that the literacy level among children living on remote farms and ranches was higher than it was among children in households inside the cities was quite fundamental.
They had more time, because they had fewer options about where to spend that time, and they therefore funneled more of that available time into their learning. And, associated with that, they had fewer outside contacts, so the parent-child communications interactions generally tended to be higher, also encouraging the children by ensuring that much communication back-and-forth passed between parents and children and as the family grew also between older children and younger children.
This ties into what writers with whom I have exchanged communications at various times and myself have observed.
Writers, after all, have a stake in having readers at least potentially available to read their material. So, literacy levels, cause and effect relating to literacy levels, and
similar issues have great interest to writers.
And I've been invovled in more than one discussion relating to the fact that in today's world there are so many activities, or potential activities, that distract from the time
given to learning effective English communications skills.
It's not always a lack of communication, but the style of communication. Texting shorthand is a primary example.
Texting is communication. But it discourages learning real proficiency. I've read more than one posting from employers trying to recruit referring to the employer being
utterly appalled at the level of "text speak" many candidates use today in their cover letters.
Employers regard such usage as highly improper in business communications, yet many younger people today who effectively learned their most dominant English language skills in terms of "text speak" appear, at least, unable to make any distinction whatsoever between "text speak" and proper English. Even proper informal English.
Truly appalling, sometimes one even runs across people of this sort who profess an intent to go into some form of professional writing, including professional business writing.
They simply have spent too much time using "short cut" and "short hand" versions of communications in comparison to learning "the genuine article," so to speak.
Presumably, since you will find exceptions in children whose home environment still demands they dedicate appropriate time to learning correct English language skills, this is in part a default on the part of the parents who neither make themselves adequately available nor monitor their children's forms of language experience nor the outcome of them.
Apart from that difficulty, there are also so many other activities that form what writers describe as a "time suck" against the potential learning time the children might apply
to learning the correct forms of English -- both written and spoken.
Many of today's youth spend time participating in everything from sports, to music lessons, to video games, to extensive televison viewing.
Something has to give, and too often it's learning in general and English language skills learning experiences in particular.
There is, therefore, a lesson in the past from that fictional seamstress's experience that we can apply to today's language skills learning environment.
If we would have children achieve superior levels of English language proficiency, then those who influence those children's activities must ensure that the time required to accomplish that gets invested into the appropriate activities to make that happen.
Although other reasons are normally given among families who homeschool, I suspect that for some of them this is a significant factor in making that decision. By removing the children from the often frenetic social environment of a brick-and-mortar school, especially a public school, they remove some of the distractions and time drains that reduce the time and parental communications interest that otherwise can be more efficiently invested in learning activities geared towards enhancing the children's proficiency in English language skills.
Skills, that is, in "proper" English.
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