Speech Meet and the Power of Rich Language

Our Grammar School students have been participating in the annual Speech Meet, and it’s been fun to hear the reports from teachers and students — the students have apparently done a great job, throughout the grades.

I think it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on why we present memorized pieces, whether poem, prose, history speech, or Scripture. Andrew Pudewa, of the Institute of Excellence in Writing, has some great perspective. (We use Mr. Pudewa’s writing curriculum in 5th-8th grades.) In his book Linguistic Development Through Poetry Memorization, he makes a case for the memorization of rich language because ”you can’t get something out of a child’s brain that isn’t in there to begin with.”

If you have no Chinese in your brain, you can’t get any Chinese out of your brain; if you don’t have any music in your brain, you can’t get any music out; if you don’t have any geometry in, you won’t get it out, etc., and this is just as true for one’s native language as it is for less familiar subject matter. Getting something into the brain is clearly a prerequisite to getting it out.

Pudewa writes that to be a competent writer, the student needs one thing before everything else:  “a large database in his brain of reliably correct and sophisticated language patterns.”

Reliably correct and sophisticated language patterns are the core of linguistic competence, especially in English, where the “rules” of grammar are less than perfectly consistent, and usages vary greatly because of the uniquely rich multi-lingual origins of the English language. Vocabulary, of course, is critical—but even more vital than knowing a lot of words is knowing how those words naturally, correctly, even artistically fit together in phrases and clauses. The students who write well are always the ones who possess an extensive repertoire of words, an intuitive understanding of when and how those words can be used in idioms and combinations, and an automatic sense of when they have been used correctly or awkwardly. What enables this type of sophisticated linguistic talent is not a conscious knowledge of “rules”, but the database of language information which has been stored in the brain.

So how does a student get this kind of a database of language? For most children, says Pudewa, the main sources of language come from the media (TV, internet, etc) and their peers. Of course parents, teachers, and books are also sources of language for children, and clearly incredibly important. These sources should be emphasized, but he says that “there is another vital but oft-neglected source of powerful and sophisticated linguistic patterning available to children: memorized language.”

The cultural, neurological, and linguistic value of memorized language is indisputable. Young children will naturally memorize language patterns from their cultural environment. If teachers and parents don’t provide high quality models, kids will automatically internalize and memorize random stuff from their environment—mainly TV advertisements and songs on the radio, most of which we would not find to be “reliably correct and sophisticated.” A child’s instinctive desire to memorize is intrinsic to language acquisition, yet for the most part we ignore it, or allow it to happen so haphazardly that we miss out on one of the greatest opportunities to build sophisticated language patterns. …  Memorization is not

only natural for young children, it is culturally powerful and educationally essential. Neurologically, memorization develops the brain in a way nothing else can. Neurons make connections through frequency, intensity and duration of stimulation.

From Linguistic Development Through Poetry Memorization by Andrew Pudewa. Institute for Excellence in Writing, Inc, 2005.

BIBLE/CHAPEL  

SING: Song of the week: The Zaccheus song!

PRAY:

Focus Country of the Week: Bolivia

Answers to prayer: The Aymara and Quechua peoples, who date back to the time before Incas, have both experienced tremendous church growth in their communities.

Challenges for prayer: Around 70% of the population is in poverty, and half of those are in extreme (abject) poverty. Pray that the government will make good decisions when it comes to farming – there may be more profitable ways to farm that the government is restricting. (For example, more coca production would likely help)

Scripture Memory: Romans 3:22b-24: There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, [23] for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, [24] and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

READ/TALK:

Tuesday, Feb. 28 Reading in morning chapel: Jesus Heals a Blind Man, John 9

Discussion Questions:

1. How did Jesus heal the blind man?
2. Who did Jesus tell the blind man that he was?
3. What does it mean that Jesus is the “light of the world,” even today?

Thursday, Mar. 2 Reading in morning chapel:  Jesus Blesses the Little Children, Mark 10:13-16

Discussion Questions:

1. Why were people bringing their children to Jesus?
2. Why did Jesus become angry with his disciples?
3. How can you trust Jesus humbly, like a little child, in your life?