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There is a fair amount of evidence that corrections (negative evidence) do not actually improve the grammar of children who are still developing their language

by cyphar 6y ago

There is a fair amount of evidence that corrections (negative evidence) do not actually improve the grammar of children who are still developing their language skills[1], for two reasons: adults are bad at correcting mistakes consistently, and children do not internalise corrections because language acquisition is not a conscious process. In addition, even in early development children actually do appear to have pretty strong understanding of their native language's syntax[2] even if they cannot produce adult-level English. There are certain classes of mistakes they do not make (indicating they have internalised many more rules than may be apparent), and they can understand sentences which have grammar that they do not produce themselves (meaning that the level of output is not a good indication of their language development). [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7Un06tDOn0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7Un06tDOn0 [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmghbKNiI1k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmghbKNiI1k

jjeaff 6y ago
Interesting video. But it seems that the definition of negative evidence is telling the child "no" and then correcting them. When I say we "correct her", I simply mean that we repeat back the sentence correctly. It seems to work well as she will often repeat it back again how we say it or sometimes just continue on. We never withhold understanding because the grammar is wrong. I can definitely see how the example given of correcting with "no, that's not proper grammar" would not be effective with young ones. By repeating it back correctly, she is given another example of correct grammar and I know of no other way for a young child to learn than to hear it spoken more.
- cyphar 6y ago
  > But it seems that the definition of negative evidence is telling the child "no" and then correcting them. The video goes through several examples from peer-reviewed studies, and several of them involve "repeating back the correct sentence". In fact while the video did mention the fact that saying "no" just makes communication harder, the majority of the video is explaining why giving corrected examples of grammar doesn't necessarily help. The video talks about your approach specifically here[1]. > I know of no other way for a young child to learn than to hear it spoken more. That is true, but repeating back a specific sentence is not necessarily the most effective manner of helping them acquire an aspect of grammar. Language acquisition isn't a conscious process, so focusing on a mistake doesn't help -- and repeating a sentence with correct grammar is only a single example of that particular grammar concept, which the child still needs to hear many more times before they actually acquire. It should also be noted that one of the studies (looking at what sentences parents would correct) found that "there is not even a shred of evidence that approval and disapproval are contingent on syntactic correctness". So it's quite likely that you aren't actually correcting grammatical mistakes -- most of the time you're probably correcting sentences with incorrect meaning and pronunciation. I mean, it probably doesn't hurt or anything, it's just probably not as helpful as you might think it is. [1]: https://youtu.be/a7Un06tDOn0?t=272 https://youtu.be/a7Un06tDOn0?t=272

by cyphar 6y ago

jjeaff 6y ago

Interesting video. But it seems that the definition of negative evidence is telling the child "no" and then correcting them. When I say we "correct her", I simply mean that we repeat back the sentence correctly. It seems to work well as she will often repeat it back again how we say it or sometimes just continue on. We never withhold understanding because the grammar is wrong. I can definitely see how the example given of correcting with "no, that's not proper grammar" would not be effective with young ones. By repeating it back correctly, she is given another example of correct grammar and I know of no other way for a young child to learn than to hear it spoken more.

cyphar 6y ago
> But it seems that the definition of negative evidence is telling the child "no" and then correcting them. The video goes through several examples from peer-reviewed studies, and several of them involve "repeating back the correct sentence". In fact while the video did mention the fact that saying "no" just makes communication harder, the majority of the video is explaining why giving corrected examples of grammar doesn't necessarily help. The video talks about your approach specifically here[1]. > I know of no other way for a young child to learn than to hear it spoken more. That is true, but repeating back a specific sentence is not necessarily the most effective manner of helping them acquire an aspect of grammar. Language acquisition isn't a conscious process, so focusing on a mistake doesn't help -- and repeating a sentence with correct grammar is only a single example of that particular grammar concept, which the child still needs to hear many more times before they actually acquire. It should also be noted that one of the studies (looking at what sentences parents would correct) found that "there is not even a shred of evidence that approval and disapproval are contingent on syntactic correctness". So it's quite likely that you aren't actually correcting grammatical mistakes -- most of the time you're probably correcting sentences with incorrect meaning and pronunciation. I mean, it probably doesn't hurt or anything, it's just probably not as helpful as you might think it is. [1]: https://youtu.be/a7Un06tDOn0?t=272 https://youtu.be/a7Un06tDOn0?t=272