Seeing children talk

As children’s own internal language rules develop, described by Chomsky as the language acquisition device, children need rich, connected first-hand experiences to practise and explore how the vocabulary and structures of the language they are learning are linked together in order to successfully convey meaning. During a routine observation some years ago, I was playing alongside a child digging out toys in the sandpit. When he dug out the small sieve, I asked, ‘What have you found?’ The child answered ‘A little net’. Three times I called it a sieve, but rather than register the change of name to what I called it, the child insisted on calling it a net, using his word saying, ‘This is what I am doing with the little net, I am putting all the sticky sand in the little net and then in my bucket. Then I am putting more in the little net and making a big one in the bucket. See, I shake it like this.’ This child knew his object to be a little net and felt confident enough to want to show me that its functions suited all his needs. Thus he had become responsible for what he had learned so far about the net and what it did. My repeated reference to it as a sieve, as it may be used for cooking, was not the way this child had encountered this object in his life experience so far. It was what he did next that remains with me. Unable to join him in his understanding of what the little net was called and what it did, he physically moved away from me! He had tried to socialise with me, find common ground with me and had even answered my pointless question about what he had found. He had tried to help me join in by explaining what he was doing. But I did not listen to him; instead my focus on progressing his understanding overcame my taking time to discover with him. This resulted in his polite dismissal of me as a playmate. I had learned a very valuable lesson that day: you must listen to children.