The Language of School ‘Subjects’

Abstract

In previous lectures, I invited you to consider how children develop, from birth, in home and family, through the neighbourhood and perhaps preschool and kindergarten, into the status of ‘being educated’; and to look at this development from the point of view of language. I suggested that, if we take a linguistic perspective on learning, we will be able to understand better the true nature of what it is that a child is accomplishing, and of the learning tasks, and the learning difficulties, that may arise on the way. The better we understand these processes, the more likely we are to be able to act effectively, and to know how to intervene when things go wrong.