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Neurobiologist on the brain development of children – part 2

26 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by ZJShen-PSimon in child development, child rearing, education

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cognitive science, education, Language acquisition, Learning, learning to communicate

This is the second part of the interview I’ve translated from Hungarian about children’s development and the role of the media that was made with Gerald Hüther and published in Hungarian here (unfortunately, this site can no longer be accessed). This part is mainly directly about the effect of the media on the brain.

“So do you think children need tasks?”

For the brain the real challenges and adventures are of decisive importance. Going fishing with uncle, building a house into a tree, or climbing a mountain. The adventures have made us all strong. Nerve scientists can now prove the connection: children have to overcome as many challenges as possible during their lives so that the most important networks can be created. Therefore, children need a world in which interactivity plays a very large role. And that not in the context of virtuality, but of real life.

“Can children later develop this neuronal network in their brains?”

“If the critical period is over and the networks important for the regulation of the body are sparsely developed, the child does not have a good feeling about his/her body. However, the brain remains malleable throughout our whole life. An 8-, or 10-year-old child shall also benefit later from all the experience of his/her body that he/she acquires nowadays. However, the child will be differently motivated to train his/her body. The learning process no longer takes place intuitively and automatically. Children are ashamed of themselves, they are mocked at – and they learn with fear, which is not a good basis.

“Provided that at age 6 the important neuronal networks in the brain have already been established, are children protected by this time against all danger from the media?”

“Not necessarily, because many children are in the danger that they will get lost in the virtual worlds.”

“Are you referring to computer games?”

“Yes, among others. It is because it becomes dangerous if children use the digital media to meet their essential needs. Each person has two of those.

One is to belong somewhere. The other is to want to perform. The first need is expressed in the need for bonding, the second in the desire for freedom. Kids suffer in our society first of all from the fact that they only rarely have the opportunity to achieve something. They find no real tasks which may strengthen them in their development. That is because those would precisely be the tools to be used to build up children’s self-image, their identity.

It is obvious that a lot of parents have already forgotten what such a task would be like, the kind helping the development of a child. The child himself has to find this task nowadays, and it should indeed be challenging and long.

At the end of it, we will feel like when climbing a mountain: we only sit up there, and simply feel happy. This is a sign that the child has solved a real task, that in this case, there is no need for outside praise, he is happy with it on his own.

Today, primarily the boys find it to be their task to develop their proficiency to absolute perfection in computer games. In such competitions, they can show others how good they are. But those tasks are not suitable to assist them to find their way in real life.

“What kind of children are especially vulnerable?”

“Precisely 40% of German schoolchildren go to school feeling stressed. In particular, the boys are those who sit down in front of the computers immediately after school. They need at least one hour’s shooting games. The computer is, for them, a means of getting rid of their frustration. By doing a great job holding their ground among the adventures of the virtual worlds, butchering monsters and becoming victorious, they find a way out of their powerlessness and the mounting agression. They reduce their frustration with a peculiar achievement.

“So then, again, the system of rewards comes in action.”

“Exactly. As if the children had come by a wonderful life experience. This experience, however, applies to a world which does not exist in reality. Neurobiologically speaking, this is fatal: the child trains his mind for situations that only occur on screen. What is more, computers create the illusion of controllability too. When a child plays with another one, his experience is that, in reality, not everything can be controlled. Another person is not always doing what we want.

Besides, a lot of kids can no longer sense their bodies during a game. They no longer need sleep, they do not respond to signals of hunger or thirst. In South-Eastern Asia, the first cases have already appeared where computer-dependent youngsters starved to death or dried out sitting in front of the computer.

“You are talking about boys basically. But what do girls do with the computer?”

“They chat. Girls feel more need to belong somewhere and to build up relationships. And then, if this is not really successful, chatting can become a compensating substitute to some extent for the missing proximity and bonding. I do not have to prattle every five minutes with a friend in whom I can trust. That girls talk so much is rather a sign that they have in fact become uncertain, and they cannot trust the durability and strength of the connection. It is like when chicks call their mother.

“And do the real social relations wither away?”

“This must necessarily happen so. They can only keep real relationships with another if they are really together. All else is only virtual connections. Because in the virtual spaces, people are not present in their full reality. They have no fragrance, no smell, their movement and other manifestations are not life-like. In virtuality, features of encounters prevalent to life do not occur. While chatting, they only communicate in writing.

To be continued soon …

by P. S.

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Neurobiologist on the brain development of children

25 Tuesday Mar 2014

Posted by ZJShen-PSimon in child development, child rearing, education, language learning

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cognitive science, Language acquisition, Learning, learning to communicate

My dear reader, I read a fascinating article (in Hungarian) a few weeks ago (which was accessible here in Hungarian but since the publication of this text, is has become unavailable – sorry for the inconvenience) that I found so interesting that I’d like to make it accessible for a different community here in my English translation as well.

Hüther,Gerald_08.jpg.5154300It is an interview with leading German neuropsychologist Gerald Hüther (some more information and another interview with him in English here). The original interview may have been in German, so apologies for perhaps deviating from the original meanings at points. It is also long, so I’m going to deliver it in three parts over the next couple of weeks. I’m going to insert my own ideas at places where I find it appropriate as I’m not only interested in, but also involved with young children’s development, especially as regards their language, social and creative development, being closely involved in my co-author’s children’s lives.

What goes on in children’s brains when they are watching television?

In the latest edition of GEOkompakt, devoted to child-development psychology, professor Gerald Hüther, one of the best-known German brain researchers and neuropsychologists explains what goes on in the minds of children who watch television or play with the computer very much.

“Professor, as a neurobiologist, you research how the media affect human brain development. Could you recommend to us a good TV program or a computer game for Children?

“No, and such recommendations would not help us any further. This is because in that way we would only get mired in a superficial conversation about the content quality of the supply; however, it is better to avoid that. On the other hand, you do not need to look for very long: you can quickly find five studies which show you how good watching television is for children, allegedly.

In contrast to this, however, another five studies will prove that TV is bad. This discussion is completely useless for parents. I do not talk about content, I approach the question from much further away.

A few years ago, we neurobiologists still thought that the genetic programs automatically set up all connections in the brain. Therefore, the complex neuronal networks, which direct the ways we think, feel, act, were thought to be genetically programmed. It is now known, however, that in the long run, only those relationships are created in the child’s mind which are regularly activated in real life. What is not used, withers away. (me: And so it is with adults too.) The genetic programs ensure that at first large surpluses of neuron-links get created.

For the creation of the most important neuronal circuits in the brain, children need to experience their own bodies first of all. And this is not acquired sitting before the screen independently of what goes on on TV.

“Why are bodily experiences so definitive?”

“Only those can fully develop their cognitive abilities in whom the appropriate feelings of their own bodies mature. There already exist studies which prove that those young children who are good at mathematics are especially capable of balancing too. One obtains the capabilities necessary for three-dimensional and abstract thinking and for mathematics that he learns to keep his body in balance. As a child is sitting in front of the TV, he no longer feels his body. He does not climb, does not jump, does not balance, or does not climb a tree, i.e. he does not pass the time by learning his body.

“So children should keep moving as much as possible?”

“Yes, but they do not necessarily have to climb mountains. Singing is one of the most extraordinary practices to learn our bodies. In doing this, in fact, the child’s mind has to direct  his vocal chords in such a virtuosic manner as to bring out the very exactly appropriate sound. This is the best fine motorneuoronic practice and, at the same time, this is the condition of all future, very differentiated  manners of thinking.

On top of this, we can speak of a very complex creative performance with singing. This is because the child has to bear in his mind the whole song so as to be able to hit the correct sound at the correct time. Besides, he also learns to adapt to the others in the chorus, which is one of the conditions of social competence.

Without fear

Without fear

Moreover, children also experience something wonderful, namely that we are not able to be afraid when we are singing. Neurobiologists now know that during free singing, the brain is not able to mobilise the feeling of fear. This is why, going down to the cellar, man has been singing for thousands of years  and not because he wants to scare the mice away.

“Where do such experiences condense, where are the neuronal circuits formed?”

Trying to find out how it works/1

Trying to find out how it works/1

“In the most complicated part of our brains, in the so-called pre-frontal lobe. It is located right behind the forehead. That is where our idea of ourselves evolves. And at the same time, this is also where the urge to turn to the world also evolves, the urge to plan actions, to control impulses and to bear frustration.

This has to be formed in early childhood, until around the age of 6. The networks in the frontal lobe responsible for all this, however, will only evolve if the child acquires this experience. Such experience, in its turn, results primarily from dealing with things that he can make sense of and is able to manipulate. This, however, is more and more difficult today.

“What is the cause of this?”

Trying to find out how it works/2

Trying to find out how it works/2

“The children’s world has changed just as much as that of adults. We are not able to understand any more how our household articles actually work. Formerly this was otherwise. Each object was understandable, the bicycle, the steam engine, even the car. A child could take the clock to pieces, he could study the cogwheels on the inside, and in this way he could uncover the mechanism behind it. Today, in the days of the information society, things may be so complex that very often we fint it hard, or impossible, to understand the cause and the effect.

“How does it all affect the child’s mind?”

“Our brain always adapts to what we do enthusiastically. In the previous century, people felt enthusiastic about machines, and that was what they identified themselves with. In fact, they even applied this machine-like way of thinking to themselves. This then affects the language: we call our hearts pumps, and we talk about run-down joints, which we then replace.

But now suddenly there is this new era. It will be more and more difficult to comprehend the causes and the effects. For example, why the arrow on the screen moves to the right when the mouse is moved. The lack of this mental connection will lead to children not being interested in causality any more. This is the simple result of human brain development. They seem to learn that they have to accept things without capturing the inherent sense behind them.

It is not only that lots of digital media are not understandable, but in addition, there are very few possibilities for us to get involved in current events actively. A very simple example for this is that we cannot change anything else about a television than choose the program. The first time we put a young child in front of the telly, they even talk to the set. They tell the bunny where the fox is lurking. This means they try to participate actively in the events.

This has been taught to them by their experience so far, without virtual media. After a few weeks of watching TV, however, most kids resign to the fact that they cannot actively get involved in the development of things on-screen and give up, that is, they query a part of their own efficacy.

“This is, however, an important element in the development of a child.”

The strength of our inside urge - a toddler choses his own activity against looking at the TV

The strength of our inside urge – a toddler choses his own activity against looking at the TV

“Yes, and this only develops by its own experience in the frontal lobe – as a very complex neuronal network. To expand their knowledge horizon, children have to place their new experiences in a mental context. This is because our brain is only able to learn something if the new impressions are linked to an existing pattern which originate in previous experience. This is an exceptionally creative process.

Therefore, the child will try to suit the new to the existing, older patterns. But to do this, he/she will first start looking for things in his/her mind, so to speak. A stage of productive anxiety emerges, until the pattern of stimuli falls in place. And then the chaos is converted into harmony in the brain. This is that particular ‘I see’ experience.

In the meantime, the bonus system is activated. Nerve cells emit “hormones of happiness”. All little experience of our own achievement causes happiness comparable to taking a little cocain and heroin at the same time. In contrast, it is terribly difficult to be actively, creatively involved in watching films. Therefore, it would be preferable if kids did not get into contact with the television or the computer before schooling.

“But we also receive the action in a book ready-made. Reading is also a passive activity.”

“When a child reads, a lot of things go on in the meantime in the brain technically. It puts the letters together into words. The words and sentences are converted into worlds of phantasy. What the child’s brain has read appears before his mind’s eye.

Little Red Riding Hood is walking in the forest. No child sees the letters here. This is an incredible achievement of the brain: to create a picture from black and white. In contrast, a Harry Potter movie is worth nothing. Before you can turn on your imagination, the following image is already there. In fact you are only developed by what you have worked for yourself.”

(me: A proof of this can be considered in the fact that most people watch films to relax, to get out of their own reality, to stop worrying. We may laugh or cry over a film, but we do that because we copy, we are moved at best, not because we take their happiness or sorrows on ourselves. The rare film which is so good that we feel involved is not only rare, but soon becomes obsolete – people get fed up with them; just watch Lars von Trier, or Mike Leigh films – most of them exceptionally good and disturbing films, but never successes at the box office.)

To be followed soon …

by P.S.

Ideas about what works while learning a language – Part Three: mostly to the learner

30 Tuesday Oct 2012

Posted by ZJShen-PSimon in language learning

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education, English as a foreign or second language, English language, Learning

So now let’s go into more detail, even though I already gave a few ideas in the previous posts as well.

First, I’d like to give ideas to students, although those who can read my posts well, are not in much need to get additional ideas, they may already be well on the way to speaking English perfectly. However, teachers may also find some ideas to forward to their students, and we’re not only talking of learning English as the ultimate aim, but possibly learning as many languages as other bloggers have done. Besides, I’d remind my readers again that this site is written by an average language learner who happens to have become an English teacher and now has decades of experience, so the points of view I’m making my noise from is not the learner-genius-teacher for whom his own instruction to students once is perfect and anyone who can’t follow him had better think twice and cram into their own caves to practice a lot more. To avoid pig-headedness, I’d also like to remind colleagues that the state of English teaching is so much higher in quality than with other languages precisely because it’s based on a tradition of a lot of exchange of ideas. By writing this blog, my own purpose is to a great extent also to learn from the reactions of my readers. Learning never ends.

For those learners who would quite confidently state that their English is fluent, let me bring up the story of an excellent former friend who went on to study English and American literature in the States, where she was often met with people asking if she really came from Hungary. When it had become embarrassing enough for her, she asked her mentor, who she wasn’t embarrassed with, about the reason why so many people knew her country of origin. What he told her was that on the one hand, everybody in the States pronounces /w/ correctly and differently from the sound /v/, while on the other, almost everybody from Hungary can only pronounce /v/, of which Hungarians have become famous.

English: Image taken by author of a sign on a ...

English: Image taken by author of a sign on a door. This is an example of Chinglish. This door is located in the city of Taipei, Taiwan, the foreign immigrants recreational hall administered by the Taipei government. The word “Steek” is a legitimate English word, except it fell from common use hundreds of years ago. From top to bottom, the languages are Chinese, English, Vietnamese, Thai, and Bahasa Indonesia. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I can also tell you that teachers who relatively often meet teachers from other countries, can usually correctly guess who comes from where. My point is that even the best speakers, professionals and excellent students have some peculiarities at least in pronunciation that they can work on. National dialects have small, but sometimes disturbing features that can make the speaker difficult to follow, like the English spoken by lots of South-American colleagues for Middle-Europeans, which, however, may just as well work in the reverse direction. To avoid talking Chinglish like the Chinese, as mentioned in an earlier post, you’d better work on your spoken language at any possible occasion.

If you are not so talkative and don’t have so many opportunities to talk the target language, you can at least try to listen to others talk it. The internet age helps a lot compared to earlier times. If you don’t even have a Skype-friend, or you find talking more tiring than useful, you could still listen to news and other radio and television programmes on-line. It has great advantages over direct listening if you can find broadcasting sites that re-broadcast overdue programmes. Then you can go back to what you didn’t understand for the first time and clarify the vocab or the strange structure. It works like rewinding a tape twenty years ago. One example can be http://www.hebikietsgemist.nl, where you can find English-speaking programmes as well as Dutch. Another is Metropolistv, at http://www.metropolistv.nl, where you can add /en for English-, or/nl for Dutch-language programmes, while some of the broadcast comes in the original local language and the broadcast is dubbed.

For the best, trying to revind the video while transcribing parts of the program is perhaps the most outstanding listening activity that helps break through the ‘intermediate plateau’, which is widely known among teachers but quite unknown for students, the best of whom perceive lack of steady development a failure. It is not so. Experience and skills accumulate even while you can’t feel it, and on or above the intermediate level, it takes longer to achieve higher levels than below. As a student, you’d better believe your teacher that it exists and makes your feelings about your perceived lack of development wreched, but you shouldn’t give up on using a language that you already speak. People can forget anything not used over a longer period, so don’t let that happen. It would be a huge waste of your time and energy already invested. But transcribing is definitely time well spent, because it focuses on all aspects of the language and writing it down makes it resemble a kind of interaction.

Listening practice is the most important and often neglected side of language learning and is especially important when real communication is rarely possible. Besides, we can only use knowledge already acquired for talking. If we can use the listening material for collecting vocabulary, we provide ourselves with more to be used for interaction when the possibility arises.

For those less inclined to talk or listen, reading is the best way to build up the often elusive vocabulary base in meaningful contexts. But for good results, you shouldn’t be too lazy to revise, and you’d better revise a little frequently than too much too rarely. The brain tends to forget stuff fast after a while, but after revisions of not-yet-forgotten material, the rate of forgetting tends to get lower. It’s much more difficult to revise what we’ve almost forgotten, and then it may again become easily forgettable.

Methods of revision are numerous, but keeping your own vocabulary list and often revising it is a minimum. It’s also a good idea to keep a clean version of handouts so that you can later compare your solutions to grammar or vocabulary tasks, or the understanding of former texts to your present knowledge of them. There are also computer programmes, for example the kind downloadable from http://www.byki.com/ where you can find vocabulary lists, often with pronunciation from dozens of languages, and for a little one-time fee, you can upgrade and then make your own vocab lists. Those lists also serve as testing tools in both directions using flip-cards. In several countries there are also web-sites that have been designed to enable you to make your own vocabulary lists and tests out of those, like the http://www.wrts.nl/ site, which is possibly also accessible in lots of countries.

With these activities, the rules of interest are easy to apply: you listen to or read or practice what you are interested in, at the time and to the depth you find most suitable for you. My additional advice would be to use both ways to practice speaking. While reading out sounds quite matter of fact, you can also repeat what you’ve heard on the video. This is a very important preparation of real speech, because the speaker’s speaking organs also need practice before they can perform their tasks well. Every sound has its specific place of origin in the mouth in interaction with the tongue and lips, often with the throat too, and each has its own specific pitch, for which the larinx, in the depth of the throat, needs various positions that we are unavare of. It’s all like a singer preparing for the opera stage.

What I haven’t talked about is the area of grammar. There are numerous reasons. For one, some languages, among them English, Dutch and above all Chinese, don’t really rely on grammar much. There are rules, naturally, covering the structures of sentences, word-formation (if any), or verb tenses (if any, because these don’t exist in Chinese), but there aren’t numerous forms to verbs to be adjusted to the number, gender and person of the subject, and there aren’t numerous forms to the nouns and adjectives according to noun gender and various aspects and cases, as is the case with French, Russian or Hungarian and a lot of others.

Vocabulary - Words Are Important

(Photo credit: Dr Noah Lott)

A large part of modern English teaching considers vocabulary groups far more important than traditional grammar, that is, in what contexts and together with which other words can we use items to form utterances, which come together as idioms, what sentences can we learn by heart without grammatical analysis to be used as everyday forms. So you are also advised to consider certain structures in English as whole items to be learned, like for example ‘would you be kind enough to tell me if …’, just for the sake of being polite enough to your next interviewer for a new job. In the same way, it’s useful to learn something about the sequence of adjectives like in ‘a very old bright brown sunny Austrian wooden mountain house’ where you’d like to spend your next holidays, and that to talk about any other idea is not ‘very preposterous’, but ‘utterly preposterous’. There are rules about these possibilities, but they are in the usage, not in grammar.

And at the end of the day, teachers usually tend to overwork grammar anyway, so you’ll have covered probably everything five times over by the time you leave school. If something is not clear, there are masses of books to answer, and the teacher is always there to explain. That’s where most of them feel completely at home.

Some final words to students. Teachers know that you have lots of priorities outside class and studying, and some may resent that. They also tend to stick with their own methods, which may not suit you. If that is the case, find out what your own best methods are and use them to cover what needs to be done. But before going into rants about that stupid teacher, look into your own ways and habits, put your hand on your heart and try to declare that you’ve done all you could to develop and learn what was necessary.

Related articles
  • Time to stop avoiding grammar rules (guardian.co.uk)
  • EFL teachers’ perceptions about vocabulary acquisition and instruction (udini.proquest.com)
  • Welcome to LEFLa (Learning English as Foreign Language) (lefla.wordpress.com)

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