research paper (2/5) : what children learn about people and things

Last week, I talked the book about that the baby is like scientists because they experiment and learn about the world. This week, I read about what children learn about people and things. I was really interested in many funny experiments during reading the book.

   The baby can distinguish faces, smell and voices from born and prefer familiar faces, smell and voices. In Korea, many parents do antenatal education. Parents make the baby’s name and talk a lot with the baby. I heard that the baby can hear their parents voices. So, I think the baby can distinguish their parents’ voices from born.

   The baby copies other people’s acting. For example, someone gives telephone toy to her baby. Then the baby holds the phone on his/her ear and talks something that we cannot understand. I also have a picture which is that I hold a telephone toy. Babies can learn by other. We should do something carefully in front of babies.

   The author described that 2 year-old babies are “terrible tows” because 1 year-old babies just look forbidden stuff but 2 year-old babies touch that. I also touched forbidden stuff when I was 2 years old. When my mother did something, I held iron chopsticks and put it in an electric cord. I got shocked and went to hospital. It was funny happening but dangerous.

   The best interesting one was comparing between Korean speaking mother and English speaking mother. Korean and English grammar are different. Korean verb is in at the end in a sentence. Korean mothers and children use verb more than English speaking mothers and children, but English speaking mothers and children use noun more than Korean speaking mothers and children. In addition, Korean children learn how to solve problems well, but English speaking children started categorizing objects earlier than the Korean. Thus, grammar of our language influenced the way we thought.

   While I teach Korean to Korean American children, I feel they are smart but they are slow to learn language than one language user. I wonder if my feeling is right they are slow to learn language because they should think Korean way and English way.

   Next week I’ll learn about what children learn about language. It’ll be interesting part because it will be connected our class study; I hope it can be helpful to us.