Lesson Plan May 10, 2011

Lesson
May 10 , 2011
ENG 31106

Topic: Chapter 10: Language Acquisition, How English Works: A Linguistic Introduction
Summary of pages 336- 348.

Learning Outcomes:
1. Students will learn when and how babies acquire language.

Materials:
Power Point Presentation

Planning Tips:



-Greet the class
- Inform the class about the activities that we are going to do today.


-Start power point presentation
- Explain that babies are able to hear the phonemes of all the known languages of the world and that they can hear differences by sounds.




- Explain that 3-4 months old babies are more attentive to their mothers’ voices than to a stranger’s voice.
- Four month they prefer listening to language than listening to other sounds (e.g., TV, music, washing machine).

- Explain the “Sucking Test”



- Explain them the test which shows that 5 months old babies do lip reading.


- Explain why 7-8 month old babies start to babble.



- Explain that infants have learned to pay attention only to the phonemic distinctions relevant to their parents’ languages.




- Explain that English speaking babies’ first words are mostly nouns.
- Ask: “Do you remember which was your, cousins, siblings, nieces, nephews’ first word?”

- Explain that 12-18 month old babies can speak maybe 10 words but they probably understand between 50 and 200 words.




- Explain that with 18 months English speaking children rarely use inflectional ending; third person singular -s on verbs or functional words.


- Discuss with the class the chart “Approximate Rate of word Acquisition for Children” and ask these questions:
1. Why do children between the ages of 8 to 12 years learn 12.1 words per day? What could be the influences on this performance?
2. Some children start speaking earlier than other children. What could be the reason?