Children’s words

In the article, “How Children Learn Words” George A. Miller a psychology professor at Princeton University and Patricia Gildea a social science professor at Rutgers University, they wrotea thought-provoking article on how children learn words. Their analysis shows that children learn to speak very quickly in several stages one being the tendency to overextend new words, and their meaning as their learned, and several different teaching methods with reading and using the dictionary, and some of methods of the teachers aresometimes harder for the children. According to Miller and Gildea analysis their data shows how children’s learning process in social settingsisbeneficial to their learning process. They also have some discussion about computer programs that may be helpful for children to understand meanings of words quicker, and with more clarity then the dictionary. Miller and Gildea both agree that children learn words at an alarming speed, and teaching, socialization, and parent participationcan contributeto achild’s success. The first targeted audience was the science community, professionals, educators, and computer technicians. However, a secondary audience would be parents. The original article is published, Scientific American,1987. It was also published in a book lan-guauge, 2008. Miller and Gildeagivean analysis in the article on how children associate sounds of words with the meanings of words. This would bebeneficial to the science professionals in many ways, and will help them to create more research and experiments to better understand the learning processes of children. The article says, "learning a new word entails so much conceptual clarification and phonological drill that there simply is not enough classroom time to teach more than 100 or 200 words a year in this way.” Professionals that workwith children will get a better understanding of how children are learning words,

Joyce Corder

and can gear their technics towards enhancing their progress. The data in Miller and Gildea’s article says “Children are quick to notice new words and to assign them to a broad semantic categories.” This information will help educators create curriculum, strategies,programs,and grants to teach children to the best of their abilities. Miller and Gildea’s information in this article can also help with children that are learning delayed, so teachers can adjust their curriculum to better suit the child. Parents would even get a lot out of this article the information will help parents work with their children and prepare them by socialization with others or find different educational tools help them. The article talks about computer technology that can provide “illustrative sentences”instead of the meaning and show pictures to help the children understand these words. This information could give computer techicans ideas to create these programs for children. . Even though, Miller and Gildea reached theirinitial targetedaudience, but their secondary could have been reached if it would been in more than the scientific magazine or an English book.
In the article they used a logical appeal from their research. Theyused several educational experiments that they performed and other professors. That was done by Susan Carey and Elsa Barrett a decade ago at Rockefeller University. They used a group of three year olds, and showed them the color olive. The children were unfamiliar with the colorso they gave the colors green or brown. Carey and Barrett gave the children a bogus name for the color olive, and showed the children the color a week