option #1

 “The Scientist in the Crib” written by Gopnik, Meltzoff, and Kuhl is based on that the baby learns about the world is like the scientist. It means the baby knows much more than we think and the baby use their knowledge to learn the world that is people, things and language. They make hypothesizes and get learning by experimentations and observation. Specially one focuses on how to learn about language.

 The baby already knows discrimination sounds. Through using that information they learn which sound combinations are possible. By nine months babies show a preference for listening to sound combinations that are possible in their language.

 About three months old babies start to babble. Then seven of eight months babies produce consonant-vowel combinations using sounds like b, d, m, and g with the vowel ah like “dadada or bababa.”

 When babies begin to talk, they will tell you about when they use their first name. Parental egocentricity being what it is, the parents report “Mama” and “Dada.” And also, other things like juice, ball and doggie. Babies’ language is very simple. Almost always your first guess at what a word meant would turn out to be wrong. For example, gone was one of the most common words these babies used. Parents assume that it has something to do with finishing up food. But the babies used gone to describe the many and varied way that objects disappear form view. Babies at this stage start to learning words and meaning.

 After learning words, they start putting words into two-word combinations. At that time they already have some idea of grammar such as word orders and different meaning by orders. And then, they learn, and create systematic rules, such as the plural s or the past tense ed, and they omit “grammatical” words such as the or of.

 As the book mentioned that we cannot remember before three, I do not know how I get my language. However, my mother told me what word I started to say. Even though my mother wanted to call mother first, I said “father” which is [abah] in Korean. That word consists of consonant b and vowel ah.

 Once a week, I teach Korean for Korean American Kids. When I talk with them who are three or four years old, they sometimes make mistakes in sentences. Korean has postpositional word like preposition. The kids omit postpositional words. It is like that English speaking kids omit “the” or “of”. Though the languages are different, learning language processing are similar. Also, I stared to study English 2 years ago. I still feel hard to write “the” or “of”.

 Before I read the book, I think babies do not know anything. However, the book’s theory persuaded and taught me that babies are scientists. In addition, my text book “The Study of Language” mentioned that human has something in human genetics for language. I think I taught Korean for kids by rote. But if the kid knows much more than I think, I try to help them experimentations and observation language.