MEANING OF WORDS

Do Children Have to Pay Attention to Intention to Learn the Meaning of Words?

Do Children Have to Pay Attention to Intention to Learn the Meaning of Words?

Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to enlighten and explore the statement whether students have to pay attention in order to learn the meaning of words. The paper explores the learning ability of children during the period of infancy which is the earlier learning phase in their life. During this phase of learning children adapt diverse learning methods in order to grasp knowledge about their surroundings. Nonetheless, the academic learning phase during infancy is associated with the use of symbols in order to identify particular words. There are certain symbols and pictures used to teach children the meaning associated with the words. There are several children that successfully grasp the knowledge conveyed to them through various symbols. In addition, there are certain children that hardly understand a word of meaning associated with it. These children are often victims of dyslexia or other syndromes that hinder children's learning process.

Discussion

The infant brain responds to speech in a special way, distinct from other auditory signals. This dovetails well with evidence that infants map words (but not non-speech stimuli like tones) to meaning. There is evidence that the infant brain responds in a specific way not only to speech sounds in general, but also to words in particular. This specific response to the presentation of words provides the first neurological correlates of word-learning. Even newborn infants process speech stimuli in a way that is distinct from non-speech stimuli suggests that the human brain comes prepared to process human speech. In particular, areas of activation observed in the newborn brain bear a striking resemblance to those for adults. Even in neonates there is a left hemisphere bias when listening to language, a bias that is not observed when listening to backwards speech or silence. Moreover, this left hemisphere bias was shown to emerge even when subjects were presented with a language other than their own.

Infant's Vocabulary Building Process and Phonological Awareness

There are several factors associated with the child's learning through enhancement of his/her vocabulary. Nonetheless, there are five essential components for successful reading acquisition through which infants can enhance their vocabulary. However, it can be noticed that these skills may not be discrete and separable. Nonetheless, different researchers have asserted that vocabulary is predictive of growth in phonological awareness. There is significant concurrent and longitudinal association between children's vocabulary skills and their phonological awareness skills (Houston, Carter, Pisoni, Kirk, Ying, 2005, 77-85).

A research study conducted on preschool children declared that the children in the oral language group experienced significantly more growth in phonological awareness skills than those who did not receive the oral language intervention. For those in the phonological awareness group, significant differences in phonological awareness growth were evident; however, there was a lack of a cross-over effect on the phonological awareness intervention on vocabulary. Moreover, it can be stated that vocabulary development is causal in the ...