6 VYGOTSKY AND PIAGET: THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE Exercise B


1 Set for pairwork discussion. Students should refer to the words they have looked at in Exercise A to help describe the photographs. Monitor but don’t assist. Feed back with the whole class, checking that students can identify the child experimenting with shapes. Ask students to paraphrase ‘cognitive development’ (building mental structures). Elicit words which can be used from Exercise A (underlined below, including synonyms).


2 Set for pairwork discussion. Ask students to guess the meaning of each diagram title by referring to the diagrams. Feed back with the whole class, asking one or two students to describe each of the concepts. Make sure that students use the present simple tense to talk about the diagrams as they represent theories.


Answers Model answers:


1 The photograph shows a child playing with shapes and trying to match them with their corresponding holes. It illustrates Piaget’s theory of the child as a scientist, interacting with its environment. Piaget’s model of cognitive development (evolving our thought processes), explains learning as a process of experimentation (testing theories).


2 Diagram 1


• This diagram illustrates a schema with the central concept of ‘shapes’ and the variable concepts of ‘star’, ‘square’, ‘oval’, ‘diamond’ and ‘circle’. According to Piaget, we construct (formulate) new schemata (mental structures) when our current, stable (fixed), ideas are challenged by unexpected information. The mind accommodates (adjusts and/or assimilates new objects) the new information within existing schemata.


Diagram 2


• This diagram illustrates Vygotsky’s Zone (area) of Proximal (subsequent) Development (evolution). Vygotsky maintained that learning was culturally (socially) dependent and that knowledge can be acquired (gained) from peers (co-learners) who act as mentors (guides) to their companions.


3 Both pictures illustrate learning in a social context. The child is acquiring language by interacting with his/her parent. The apprentice has a mentor who is more experienced, taking her into the zone of proximal development Apprentices also learn from their peers.


Exercise C


As well as requiring the use of antonyms, this exercise checks that students have understood the diagram in Exercise B. Set for individual work and pairwork checking. Feed back with the whole class. A good way to do this is to use an OHT with blanks for the blue words (see additional resources section, Resource 6B).


Answers Model answers:


1 Cognitive skills are developed through experimentation.


2 Cultural information is necessary for the development of linguistic skills.


3 Children need a mentor to help them understand new ideas.


4 The human brain accommodates new information.


5 Children accumulate/acquire knowledge by interacting with their environment.


Exercise D


Introduce the idea of paraphrasing – or restating. Elicit from the students the main ways to do this at sentence level, namely:


• using different grammar • using different words • reordering the information


Write these points on the board. Also make the point, very strongly, that a paraphrase is not a paraphrase unless 90% of the language is different. There are some words which must remain the same, but these are very few, and are likely to be words specific to the subject, such as schemata. It is best to try to use all three of the above strategies, if possible.


Students should look carefully at the corrected sentences from Exercise C and then compare them with the paraphrases. The first step is to identify which sentences match. Set for individual work and pairwork checking. It may be helpful for the students if you reproduce the corrected sentences from Exercise C and the sentences in Exercise D on strips of paper so that they can move them around. Both sets of sentences are reproduced in the additional resources section (Resource 6C) to facilitate this.


Feed back with the whole class. A good way to do this is to reproduce the sentences on OHTs, with each sentence cut into a separate strip. Lay the sentences on the OHP one at a time, as you agree what is the correct match.


Once the sentences are correctly paired, ask students to locate the parts of each sentence which seem to match. They will need to look at the overall meaning of each phrase, using what they know about the subject, to make sure that the phrases are similar. Set for pairwork.


95


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136  |  Page 137  |  Page 138  |  Page 139  |  Page 140  |  Page 141  |  Page 142  |  Page 143  |  Page 144  |  Page 145  |  Page 146  |  Page 147  |  Page 148  |  Page 149  |  Page 150  |  Page 151  |  Page 152  |  Page 153  |  Page 154  |  Page 155  |  Page 156  |  Page 157  |  Page 158  |  Page 159  |  Page 160  |  Page 161  |  Page 162  |  Page 163  |  Page 164  |  Page 165  |  Page 166  |  Page 167  |  Page 168  |  Page 169  |  Page 170  |  Page 171  |  Page 172  |  Page 173  |  Page 174  |  Page 175  |  Page 176  |  Page 177  |  Page 178  |  Page 179  |  Page 180  |  Page 181  |  Page 182  |  Page 183  |  Page 184  |  Page 185  |  Page 186  |  Page 187  |  Page 188  |  Page 189  |  Page 190  |  Page 191  |  Page 192  |  Page 193  |  Page 194  |  Page 195  |  Page 196  |  Page 197  |  Page 198  |  Page 199  |  Page 200  |  Page 201  |  Page 202  |  Page 203  |  Page 204  |  Page 205  |  Page 206  |  Page 207  |  Page 208  |  Page 209  |  Page 210  |  Page 211  |  Page 212  |  Page 213  |  Page 214  |  Page 215  |  Page 216  |  Page 217  |  Page 218  |  Page 219  |  Page 220  |  Page 221  |  Page 222  |  Page 223  |  Page 224  |  Page 225  |  Page 226  |  Page 227  |  Page 228  |  Page 229  |  Page 230  |  Page 231  |  Page 232  |  Page 233  |  Page 234  |  Page 235  |  Page 236  |  Page 237  |  Page 238  |  Page 239  |  Page 240  |  Page 241  |  Page 242  |  Page 243  |  Page 244  |  Page 245  |  Page 246  |  Page 247  |  Page 248  |  Page 249  |  Page 250  |  Page 251  |  Page 252  |  Page 253  |  Page 254  |  Page 255  |  Page 256  |  Page 257  |  Page 258  |  Page 259  |  Page 260  |  Page 261