Input-constrained children, including the blind and deaf, still learn language, and this process continues beyond the age of five. Children are also remarkably creative in how they learn to read and write. What accounts for this robustness? For more than forty years, two distinct views have dominated the field. The first emphasizes that infant and young-child learning is qualitatively different from other novice learning, i.e., it is driven by maturation or changing brain organization. The second view emphasizes the syntax-semantics link in the acquisition of vocabulary, which seems to indicate that there is also learning machinery that is information-driven in the sense that anyone (young, old, mentally handicapped, environmentally deprived) who learns a language has to acquire elements in a certain order, e.g., "doggie" before "jump" and "jump" before "think". More recently, work in genetics and the biology of language has begun to illuminate the distinction as well as the synergy between these two views. The goal of this three-day workshop, Rich Languages from Poor Inputs, is to bridge the gap between recent theory and educational practice. It will bring together language scientists who probe these recent theoretical developments with educational practitioners so as to see how these results might inform classroom activities.
This workshop will directly inform educators as to how they can develop effective new techniques for teaching reading, writing, and interacting with the profoundly impaired. It will illustrate how educators can incorporate research on language development for children who can not learn to read easily, taking our understanding of language science into practical classroom activities. The goal is to build on children's natural talents with language, despite children's differences in abilities. This is a matter of prime importance given society's emphasis on language and reading skill attainment for all segments of the population--a true sense of no child left behind.
