Page 115 - (DK) How to be a GENIUS?
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Parrot fashion You can teach a parrot to speak, but you can’t teach it to have a real conversation. The parrot just learns to repeat the sounds, and may understand when to say particular phrases, but it cannot put together its own sentences. This skill is uniquely human. Pretty Polly!
Our complex language is one of the features that makes humans
not just about making the right sounds—it is about using sounds
different from other animals. A parrot may be able to talk, but it
to communicate. We learn this when we are very young, but we
cannot use language to explain what it is thinking. Speaking is
SPEAK
keep adding to our verbal skills throughout our lives.
many adults find it is almost impossible (unless they live
languages at once. But it becomes harder with age, and
to every new stimulus. Some children even pick up two
the language-processing areas of their brains are bigger.
for a while in a country where the language is spoken).
If I am very good and eat my cabbage, can I have some ice cream?
Some people do better than others, possibly because
LEARNING TO
Second language Learning another language is easy when we are very young, because at this age our brains respond I want some chocolate!
Noam Chomsky Born in 1928, Noam Chomsky is one of the key figures in linguistics (the study of language). He is famous for his theory that children have an instinctive ability to understand and learn how to put sentences together—even though different languages work in different ways. He believes that these skills are an inherited part of our nature. more cat bag
Words and sentences Babies are very sensitive to words and speech patterns, and by two years old they know around 300 words. They start linking them together until, at the age of four, most children can say simple sentences. By age five or six they can put together more complex sentences.
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