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DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN’S CONCEPTS (WORD MEANING) AND COMMUNICATION IN THE TEACHING PROCESS
Lucija Puljak
; OŠ Pučišća
Sažetak
Children and adults do not think in the same way. The thoughts are best expressed by language (speech) and the unit of spoken thought is a concept (the meaning expressed by a word). The differences between children’s language and the language of adult, mature speakers can be found by examining semantic fi elds of certain words. Children and adults use the words which sound the same, but have a different meaning. Because of that, there are frequent misunderstandings which are hard to notice outside the teaching process. The peculiarity of language acquisition causes the phenomenon that the word which sounds the same has a different meaning to different individuals. Children master a language by learning the words from adults in various communication instances. Communication experience, that is, the real context in which a child hears a word, is essential to the construction of meaning of that word. The meaning is determined by subconscious associative connections between the sound of a word and the mental content which has been formed with respect to the recipients’ experience gained in their immediate environment. By multiplying the experience, the associative connections also multiply and semantic fi eld of a word becomes expanded, which again leads to the creation of a mature concept. Once a concept has been formed in the mind of an individual we can be sure that a word has approximately the same meaning to different speakers.
This paper presents the process of meaning development, from single-pronged complex to the mature concept.
Ključne riječi
word meaning; concept; complex; pre-concept; complex thinking; conceptual thinking
Hrčak ID:
31455
URI
Datum izdavanja:
17.7.2008.
Posjeta: 11.464 *