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second article review: Article review of “The relationship between symbolic play and executive function in young children” written by Rachel Kelly and Sabine Hammond. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, Volume 36 Number 2 June 2011.

The article mentions many aspects to consider when learning a first language and a second language too, specially symbolic play and executive function. Symbolic play is defined as the substitution of one object for another, the attribution of absent/false properties, and the imagination of absent objects. However, it is generally accepted that this description is too narrow and that symbolic play can also involve the attribution of animation and role play and executive function refers to a set of self-regulatory abilities necessary for problem solving or the conscious control of thought and action, Abilities such as planning ahead, working memory, inhibitory control, set-shifting and attention flexibility are generally thought to be part of the set of executive functions.

The participants were 20 children (15 males, 5 females) between four and seven years old. The majority of the participants are from middle-class and Caucasian background, with both parents present in their homes and with a combined yearly income bigger to 50, 000 AUS. In what concerns to the procedure or method to measure the inhibitory control of the children, they were tested in a laboratory playroom with one experimenter. The WPPSI-III was administered first, followed by the tests of symbolic play. To help with the rapport´s establishment and the creation of an atmosphere, each participant was administered the ToPP prior to the free play session. The Object Substitutions task was presented after the free play session in order not to influence spontaneous symbolic expression during play. The order of presentation of the Sun-Moon Stroop task and the Semantic Fluency task was counterbalanced so that half of the children completed the Sun-Moon Stroop task at the start of the session and the Semantic Fluency task at the end, and the remaining half completed the tasks in reverse order. In total, the testing session lasted approximately 90 minutes, with frequent short breaks. All tasks were videotaped for later coding of behavior. Talking about the results it indicated that the ability to inhibit prepotent responses to a situation is indeed related to the production of symbolic play, with greater inhibitory control being associated with more symbolic play, explaining 16 percent to 30 per cent of the variance. It also confirms that the Sun-Moon task does indeed measure a different construct of executive function from that of the other two tasks.

Symbolic play is vital for children´s learning specially kids (4 to 8 years old), this is a strategy that many people and teachers could use to teach an L1 and L2. Symbolic play is not a strategy for a specific level or group of people but it is commonly used in young people. the article shows the ability to generate multiple uses of an object does not seem to be involved in the production of symbolic play, as there was no relationship with semantic fluency and object substitution scores, children with and without disabilities are able to inhibit a habitual response to an object with a common purpose, but they did not include an independent assessment of inhibitory control in their study. Jarrold, (1994).

When a child engages in symbolic play always performs an executive function according to the experiences the child has had and the knowledge he learned and still learning about their real world. This proved that to make a symbolic game there must be a proper executive function (the adult must define the educational required purpose and express it in a clear and not to confuse the child) if the executive function is not the correct one as a consequence the symbolic play will be incorrect too.

References

Kelly, R. and Hammond, S. (2011). The relationship between symbolic play and executive function in young children. Australian Journal of Early Childhood, Vol.36 No. 2.

“Bilingual Education, the Acquisition of English, and the Retention and Loss of Spanish”

In the article krashen talks about the importance of the bilingual education ad the retention and loss of the Spanish, this is focusing in the Hispanic population living in United States the paragraph that explains better the theory of the article is “The importance of learning our first language is the age and immersion or exposure a person has with the foreign language and at the same time as important as learning a second language because it will become a great tool for us if we learn both languages acquiring it not learning it; The article tries to explain this idea with a very good example: a Hispanic, Fernando de la Peña, who grew up in Mexico came with his family to United States when he had 9 years old, He Stay in the third person. never took English classes especially to learn the language, he took his regular classes and as a consequence he learn English in a very quick period of time and without a direct instruction. Avoid writing one-sentence paragraphs.

The most relevant result is that He learned English by the simple need to express his ideas, needs, opinions and in general to communicate with his teacher and classmates. One thing that the author tries to expose is that people who have a better education on their firs language will have less problem to learn a second one because the knowledge of certain topics helps students to concentrate in the content of the reading but, at the same time students are a learning a foreign language without know noticing”.

Help ourselves to learn a second language with using the tools that our mother tongue gives us, like the reading, seems like a great strategy for a bilingual education. The absence of many books written in both languages (English and Spanish) and the lack of interest for the reading, contribute to the illiteracy in any country students who participate in free reading activities in school, show superior literacy development when compared to students who do not (Krashen, 1993; Elley, 1998). This is simpler than what it looks because when students are reading they will be more interested in read something that they like than an academic text or an article. That is a consequence of why many people that their native language is, for example, Spanish choose the unnecessarily decision of change the mother tongue for the second language.

Though the time is less rare to find people who are known to be Hispanic but really can not speak Spanish as their mother language no longer the Spanish long that happens to people who fail to practice the language in a slightly more closed for example in their families or with certain types of company is more exposed to English than to Spanish instead of having the same level of exposure to both languages.

References

Krashen, S. “bilingual education the acquisition of English, and the retention and loss of Spanish” See APA on how to list references./font&gt;

Examples of articles
Literature paper DeKeyser, R. (2006). Foreign language instruction: implementing the best teaching methods. American educational research association, vol 4 (issue 1). http://www.aera.net/uploadedFiles/Journals_and_Publications/Research_Points/AERA_RP_Spring06.pdf

field study o research paper Freeman, D. (1991) Second language acquisition research: staking out the territory. http://coursestar.org/ku/markham/TL817/docs/larsen_freemanArt.html.