STORYTELLING FOR CHILDREN

JOLLY JENNY

It's March and a baby giraffe is born.This baby giraffe is different. The baby girrafe has a blue tongue, purple hair and green eyes.

Father Giraffe says, "Giraffes don't have purple hair. Everybody will laugh at her. They will say she's ugly".

Look at her spots! Her spots are all different colors!" says Mother Giraffe.

"Oh, no!" says Father Girrafe. "Everybody will make fun of her. "Don't worry", says Mother Giraffe, I think she is beautiful just the way she is. I'm going to call her Jenny".

Every time Jenny goes out, the other girrafes laugh at her. "Look! That's Jenny. Ha , ha, ha.

She's different", says Jackie Giraffe. "Giraffes don't have green eyes. They have big, beautiful brown eyes like us".

But then Jesie Giraffe says, I know Jenny is different, but she's smart and she's funny. She's my best friend".

So the other giraffes ask Jenny to play.

Now they play together every day. Everybody loves her and calls her Jolly Jenny. Now the giraffes know that it doesn't matter how you look on the outside. It's what's on the inside that counts.

CROSS CURRICULUM APPROACH

English can be used to reinforce conceptual development. For example: color, sixes, etc. Furthermore, the reinforcement of concepts between different areas of the curriculum helps children to learn how to learn.

Also, language learning linked to the primary curriculum can be used to develop other subjects, sucha as mathematics, science, geography, art and drama.

In conclusion, the prymary curriculum can provide more meaninful environment.

NEUROLINGUISTIC PROGRAMMING

NPL is not a language teaching method. It does not consist of a set of techniques for teaching a language based on the theories and assumptions at the levels of an approach and a design. Rather, it is a humanistic philosophy and a set of beliefs and suggestions based on a popular phycology, designed to convince people that they have the power and to control their own and other's people's lives for the better, and parctical prescriptions on how to do so.

In language teaching NPL offers a set of humanistic principles that provide either a new justification for well-known techniques from the communicative or humanistic repertoire.

THE POST METHODS ERA FOR TEACHING ENGLISH

Methods as yhe teaching profession responds to the findings of the new research and to developments in educational theory and parctice.
There are some of the factors that have influenced language teaching trends in the past and that can be expected to continue to do in the future:

*Government policy directives: governments have driven educational changes on a fairly regular basis for decades and are likely to continue to do in the future.

*Responses to technology: technology innovations is likely to capture the imagination of the teaching profession in the future .

*Influences from academic disciplines: linguistics, psycholinguistics, and psycology have an impact on the theories of language and language learning and support particular approaches to language teaching.

*Research influences: second language teaching and learning is increasingly a field for intensive research and theorizing.

*Learned-based innovations: learner strategies, multiple intelligences.


Despite changes in the status of approches and methods, we can therefore expect the field of second teaching in the twenty century to be no less a ferment of theories, ideas, and practices than it has been in the past.

The lexical approach

The lexical approach es in language teaching reflect a belief in the centrality of the lexicon to language learning , and language use, and in a particular to multiword lexical units that are learned and used in single items.
In conclusion, lexical approches in language teaching seek to develop proposals for syllabus design and language teaching founded on a view of language in which lexis plays the central role.

AUDITION

Human brains decode the complex sounds of speech

A composite sound such as a vowel sound in human speech usually has three dominant frequency components. The movement of the eardrum and ear bones receiving such a sound is very complex, but when the sound reaches the basilar membrane, the frequency components are sorted out. Each of the frequency components sets off a separate travelling wave and each wave produces its peak at the position on the membrane that responds best to that frequency. Next, the hair cells on the membrane at each peak send signals indicating to higher centers that a certain frequency of sound has been detected.
What happens when signals from language sounds are sent to higher centers? So far, this has not been an easy question to answer. When researchers try to find which cortical centers and cells are involved in neurological functions, they often inject tracer materials into animal brains, perform experiments, and then dissect the brain to find out what areas were affected. Language processing has been difficult to study because it is a uniquely human trait and such experiments cannot be done on people. Studies of sonar and echolocation in bats have provided many insights into the processing of complex sounds.
Another way scientists find out about brain areas used in language is to study people with language problems. They then either study those patients' brains after natural death, or before death with techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which allows them to see the damaged areas and hypothesize about the functions of those areas.
Researchers are now also using positron emission tomography (PET) to study brain function during language processing in normal individuals. PET is a non-invasive procedure that shows local changes in blood flow and metabolism that occur when the brain is working-in this case, working to interpret spoken language. Through studies such as these, scientists have discovered many brain subdivisions for processing different aspects of language. The area for comprehending spoken language, for example, contains separate areas for decoding the meaning of words and for understanding the relationship of words in a sentence. These studies are opening new windows on how we decode language.

Reference

http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/hearing.html

Neuroscience

Neuroscience is a relatively new discipline encompassing neurology, psychology and biology. It has made great strides in the last 100 years, during which many aspects of the physiology,biochemistry, pharmacology and structure of the vertebrate brain have been understood. Understanding of some of the basic perceptual, cognitive, attentional, emotional and mnemonic functions is also making progress, particularly since the advent of the cognitive neurosciences, which focus specifically on understanding higher level processes of cognition via imaging technology. Neuroimaging has enabled scientists to study the human brain at work in vivo, deepening our understanding of the very complex processes underpinning speech and language, thinking and reasoning, reading and mathematics. It seems timely, therefore, to consider how we might implement our increased understanding of brain development and brain function to explore educational questions.