fun things kids say as first class attention grabbers

[Morgan, James]

Hi Bruno,

In addition to other things, I like to tell the following story about my
daughter:

When my daughter was 19 months old, her productive vocabulary consisted of
four words: "mama", "dada", "yaya" (gloss 'doll'), and "wawa" (gloss
'dog'). She was far below age norms (and parental expectations!), and we
were beginning to worry about possible language delay.

Fast forward four short months: on the way out of the pediatrician's office
following her 2-year-old check-up, she turned to me and said (not her first
sentence by any means, but a particularly memorable one), "You know, Dad,
what I like about going to the doctor's office is getting to play with all
of the toys in the waiting room."

I use this anecdote showing developmental change as a springboard into
discussion of any number of topics: rapidity and uneven tempo of
development, individual differences in development, differences between
production and comprehension, dangers in basing accounts of acquisition
exclusively on production data, and so forth.

Best,
  Jim

James Morgan
Professor
Cognitive, Linguistic & Psychological Sciences


On Tue, Aug 20, 2013 at 10:44 PM, Bruno <brunilda at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> I like to use attention grabbers the first day of class in my language
> acquisition courses. I usually mention the fis phenomenon, McNeill and
> Braine on negative evidence, and some fun errors (for example from Erika
> Hoff's and Eve Clark's books, with attribution). Students laugh and become
> really interested in figuring out why kids say the darnedest things.
> I was wondering if somebody can share examples that can be used this way
> or if people have some favorite ones they use.
> Thanks all.
>
> Bruno
> Bruno Estigarribia
> Assistant Professor of Spanish, Department of Romance Languages and
> Literatures
> Research Assistant Professor of Psychology, Cognitive Science Program
> Affiliate Faculty, Global Studies
> University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
>
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