Learning languages, both our own and other tongues, is a significant portion of a Charlotte Mason education. More time is given to their study than any other subject on Ms. Mason’s timetables. In today’s podcast, we look at the foundational principles of language acquisition to lay the groundwork for learning to speak and write in any language.
Listen Now:
Charlotte Mason, Volume 6 (Amazon) (Living Book Press – use code DELECTABLE for 10% off!)
ADE Vol 6, Chapt 10 Reading List
Thirty Million Words by Dana Suskind
The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker
Episode 44: Language Acquisition
Emily
Welcome to A Delectable Education, the podcast that spreads the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method. I’m Emily Kiser and I’m here with…
Nicole
…Nicole Williams…
Liz
…and Liz Cottrill.
Emily
Charlotte Mason had a very distinctive method for teaching language, both our English tongue as well as foreign languages, both modern and ancient. It is this part of her curriculum that usually causes the most trepidation in parents and teachers because it looks so different from what we ourselves have experienced. Yet despite a gentle start in the first form, which is grades 1-3, if we steadily present each component as Ms. Mason laid out, we will be amazed at the command our students have of language.
So today, Liz will be sharing the foundational ideas underlying this subject.
Liz
Yes. We are going to begin to explore this area of the feast called language, namely English Grammar, the study of foreign languages, and the study of Latin. But before we dive into those individually in subsequent episodes, we want to talk about her particular method of teaching there. It’s important here to think about our relationship to language, how we gain confidence in any language.
Language is part of what makes us unique as persons. Without it, we would be unable to thrive or function. Language, by definition, is the process or method of human communication, words used in a structured, commonly understood way by groups of people in a community or a country. So to consider the whole world with its eight billion people, and think about the fact that there are over 7,000 spoken languages among them. There are a lot of languages out there. We can get lost in other places and not understand a thing. But within each group, those members understand one another.
Most of us know only our mother tongue. Some of us maybe one other language, or a little bit of a couple of others. Americans, in general, because of our geographic location, separated by two big oceans, are pretty isolated, and we tend to only use English, and we get along just fine. But Ms. Mason included the study of English, of course, naturally, but the study of other languages was included in her feast as well. She believed learning other languages put us in sympathy with our neighbors in the world who don’t share our history and our customs. So the wide feast means widening our view of the world and the people in it who are like us with a difference.
Since English is what most of us have in common – I’m speaking in English right now, this minute, and you’re understanding me because you know that language. We’re communicating. So let’s consider the process by which we gain this language. The average adult knows between 20,000 and 30,000 words, and obviously it takes some time to acquire that number of words. This also shows us, when you think about it, how many combinations of all those words that we can invent.
How does a newborn baby become the adult who can comprehend and make sense and use those words? In the world of linguists and language specialists, the official term is called language acquisition. Ms. Mason understood this progression. She said the sense that is most needed to learn language is the ear. So before speaking a language, babies must hear it spoken. Beginning in utero and throughout infancy, they are receiving language spoken by others. An intriguing book about this is “Thirty Million Words” by Dana Suskind. And another really fascinating classic I read a couple of years ago is called “The Language Instinct” by Steven Pinker.
Whatever language a baby hears from birth is the one that he learns. All babies begin to make sounds in their first year, but soon their mouth becomes adept at replicating and pronounce all the phonemes of the one language that they hear. From the ear, it goes to the mouth. They make more and more attempts to imitate what they’re hearing. Say words at first for objects and actions, and then babies are incredible linguists. Before long, words become sentences, and it’s incredible how their grammar is so well-formed right from the very beginning. It is instinctive to all of us. That’s what Pinker’s book goes a lot into. It’s really fun reading, but I like that kind of thing.
Emily
And sometimes it’s been more logical than our actual grammar.
Liz
Oh, yes. When they put all those patterns. What was the good one of your kids that they used to say?
Emily
Two of my four children have, of their own, they’ve never heard this. Obviously, we don’t say, “I amn’t,” but they say, “I amn’t” instead of, “I’m not.” And it was just crazy. Because we say, you aren’t.
Liz
Well, yeah, we say “we aren’t”.
Emily
We usually contract the “o” in “not”, right? In I amn’t instead of I’m…
Liz
I always love that. Why do grandchildren have to grow up?
Anyway, it’s not long before all those words become sentences, as I said. And then there comes a time when their mouths just flood us with their sentences. And one of the reasons young children ask why? so often, Charlotte Mason said, is they’re trying to gain some vocabulary. They have thoughts to express, and they’re figuring out all the ways that can be done by listening to us describe and explain things as we respond to their questions. They become very conversational.
This seems really basic information to all of us. It’s our experience, but there is a pattern and a progression and a definite stage that language development happens. After speaking comes reading. And interestingly, most children begin acquiring this skill between ages five and nine, the early years of school when it begins. And because by that time, they have become quite proficient at verbal communication and begin learning the symbolic code that communicates meaning from a page of print. Reading takes several years for them to become comfortable with it.
But written language is the last phase. Just as hearing precedes speaking, reading precedes writing. Like those first babblings, once children understand that print tells you something, they start scribbling and pretending to write, or at least show interest in writing. Writing also, like reading, takes many years. And first, as with reading, they begin with learning how to form the letters, then they move to making words, and then sentences.
Charlotte Mason’s scope and sequence in language follows the child’s natural development. They learn how to write the mechanics in Form 1, but putting original thoughts on paper doesn’t begin formally until Form 2 or fourth grade. That’s when they begin learning about the structure of language. We call it Grammar, and that’s what we’re going to discuss next week.
Emily
Thank you for joining our discussion today. You may like to go back and listen to our earlier episodes on language, particularly episode 44. You can find links to that episode in the show notes.
As we continue to discuss a Charlotte Mason curriculum this season, we invite you to read along with us in chapter 10 of Volume 6. Next week, we will be looking at the subject of English Grammar, discussing the particulars of these lessons and considerations Charlotte Mason made that apply to the study of your native tongue. We hope you’ll join us as we continue to spread the feast of the Charlotte Mason method.