Week 3 Reading & Reflection

After reading "A Brief Guide to Developmental Theory and Aesthetic Development"

Before entering MU art education program, I took a class, Foundation of Education in Moberly community college. Since I wasn't majored in education in my undergraduate program, I wanted to learn overview of education. During the course, I was very excited because I met a lot of educators and their interesting theories or researches. I was especially impressed by both Piaget and Montessori. As a mother having a young kid, it is a very interesting to apply what I learned to the learning environment I provide for my kid. In terms of that I might have researched and experimented my kid.

My biggest project in my child's education is about to raise her as a perfect bilingual person. It might be influenced by my personal experience because I perfectly understand how hard adult master a new language. Later, I realized that not only adult but also young kids have a hard time learning new language. I initially began my experiment when my kid entered the preschool. (She was two years old.) She could speak Korean well but there's no one who understand what she said. She was only one non English speaker and she hate to go school. Feeling sorry and sympathetic, I strated speaking English at home to help her adapt to English environment.

At first, she was embrassed by the change of mom but soon she suprisingly started learning new language. During the first few moments, I focused on words, simple greeting and commands. Then I worked on the sentences which are needed when having a conversation. It requires huge amount of repetitive interactions as Piaget points out. One year after then, she became a good English speaker even though she learned from non-native speaker. (I've tried to learn English expressions in order to talk with her.) Somebody would say she might learn from the teachers and peers. But I am pretty sure that if I didn't use the language at home, she still say very simple expressions becuase the school hardly provide enough meaningful interactions and attention for her. My friends complained that her kids can't speak English even though the kids are going to the preschool for two years.

However, another thing showed up. She forgot Korean a lot. Even though I ask her in Korean, she answered to the question in English. So I decided to use Korean a lot this time. I slowly and repetitively say and say, somtimes, with motion. After two month now from then, her Korean is suprisingly better than before. Now she understand and use both languages and enjoy to match meaning of both language. Now I use the both according to the date. I guess my new experiment will begin after going back to Korea since I am planing to mostly speak English at home to help her language skill continually developing.

I love this article since it provide wonderful overview of the foundations of VTS as Marry mentioned. The most interesting thing is that it provided a chance for me to understand Housen's reserch, Aesthetic Development based on Piaget and Vygotsky theories. Maybe, I am going to try another experiment on my kid which is about "Aesthetic Development". Since my kid is only three years old, I could modify the VTS instruction a little bit. I think having a VTS talk while reading the picture story book would be a good start for my child's aesthetic development.