Language and Learning of Adolescents: Let’s Review

1. Language and Learning of Adolescents: Let’s Review Tina K. Veale, Ph.D. Minnesota State University Moorhead

2. Adolescence • Students between the ages of 8-18 years • Includes preadolescents and adolescents • What is adolescence? • A time of maturing • A transition from childhood to adulthood • A time of identity crisis • A move toward independence • A period shaped by biological, sociological, psychological, and cultural influences

3. Changes that Define Adolesence • Biological changes • Onset of puberty • Completion of bone growth • Rapid bodily change • Sociological changes • Ability to function independently • Moving from school to work • Tolerance of others • Psychological changes • Abstract thinking emerges • Significant cognitive growth • Personality formation • Psychosexual role definition • Self awareness; body image

4. Developmental Stages of Adolescence Psychological Development

5. Stage I: Child-Adolescence Stage • Ages 10-13 years (girls); 12-14 years (boys) • Growth spurts in height and weight • Emergence of primary and secondary sexual characteristics • Emotional response to rapid bodily changes are limited by maturity • Somewhat egocentric • Home and family remain strongest influence • Peer group emerges as a new influence • Social conformity is valued • Do not worry about the future

6. Stage II: Adolescence Stage • Ages 13-16 years • Neither a child nor an adult • Physical growth continues; not as rapid as in Stage I • Mental growth accelerates; abstract thinking emerges • State own theories • May demonstrate idealism • More aware of others • Introspective; may develop self-doubt • Becomes interested in dating, sexual relationships • Social life shifts from family to peers • May try different social roles without full commitment

7. Stage III: Adolescence-Adult Stage • Ages 16-20 years • By end of stage, have achieved most of adult growth • Socially, remain adolescent in views and behavior • Capable of sexual intimacy; dealing with interpersonal complexities • Fully developed self concept • Concerned about the future

8. Cognitive Development

9. Cognition • Cognition--mental representation of experiences • Includes these abilities: • Reasoning • Judgment/Analysis • Recall • Inference • Imagination • Problem solving

10. Cognition Development During Adolescence • Metacognition—The ability to think about one’s own thinking • Ability to consider events from another time or place • Ability to think about real or imagined events • Ability to consider various possibilities or outcomes • Ability to form hypotheses and test them • Ability to engage in both deductive and inductive logic • Metalinguistics—Ability to talk about one’s own talking

11. Piaget’s Views • Formal operational thought • Ability to reason systematically and logically • Ability to consider abstract ideas which may have no basis in reality • Emerges between ages 12-15 years • Studies suggest that both adolescents and adults apply formal operational thought inconsistently • People may reach true formal operational thought only in their areas of expertise • Adolescent boys surpass girls in formal operational thought relative to traditional logic problems • Adolescent girls surpass boys in formal operational thought relative to interpersonal matters • Learned helplessness, poor locus of control, and feminine gender roles led to formal operational thought deficits

12. Extension of Thinking/Reasoning Skills • Analogical • Uses observations of similarities/differences between own experiences and the current situation to draw conclusions • Ex: “My friend liked my pink lipstick, so I will get her some pink lipstick for her birthday.” • Deductive • Uses two known facts to draw a further conclusion (syllogistic thinking) • Ex: “My friend’s favorite color is red. She likes short sleeved shirts. She will like this red short sleeved shirt for her birthday.” • Inductive • Uses empirical evidence in addition to logic to draw conclusions • Ex: “When we went shopping, my friend said she wished she could buy these sparkly blue flip flops. When she tried them on, she needed the large ones, but the store was out of them. I’m going to order her those shoes in large for her birthday.”

13. Inductive Reasoning/Analogies • Analogical thinking/reasoning grows • Noting similarities and differences between objects or events • Using what you know/can see to solve problems or make sense of things • Simplest form of logic • Verbal analogy performance improves during adolescence • Increased speed • Improved accuracy • More systematic problem solving strategies • Increased comprehension • Better ability to explain relationships

14. Deductive Reasoning/Syllogisms • Syllogistic thinking/reasoning emerges • An argument with two premises • A logical conclusion based on the premises • Uses deductive thinking • Ex: All cars have axles. I have a car. Therefore, my car must have an axle. • Solving syllogisms improves throughout adolescence • Syllogistic ability tends to develop more slowly than analogical thinking.

15. Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives • Six levels of cognition (a hierarchy): • 1. Knowledge • 2. Comprehension • 3. Application • 4. Analysis • 5. Synthesis • 6. Evaluation (see next slide for definitions) • All six levels of thinking are required by middle and high school.

16. Knowledge—remembering through recall or recognition. • Comprehension—knowing the meaning of what has been communicated. • Application—selecting the appropriate abstraction (theory, principle, idea, method, rule) to solve a new problem based upon past problems observed. • Analysis—breaking material into constituent parts, determining relationship between the parts, and being able to organize them. • Synthesis—combining parts from various sources to make something new (creativity). • 6. Evaluation—making judgments about the value/purpose of ideas, solutions, methods.

17. Conceptual Development

18. Conceptualization • No longer tied to perception • Can now use words to conceptualize ideas • Increased ability to use language as a vehicle of thought and to acquire new concepts • “While the young child thinks by remembering, the adolescent remembers by thinking” (Vygotsky, 1962). • Concept acquisition central to middle and high school • Upon high school graduation, the average adolescent has acquired the meaning of at least 80,000 different words. • Throughout adolescence, new words are acquired, meanings are extended, and the lexicon is continually reorganized. • Learning word meaning is a gradual process (Nippold, 1998).

19. Vocabulary Acquisition • Advanced adverbial phrases • Adverbs of likelihood and magnitude • Terms related to academic content • Verbs with presuppositional, metalinguistic, and metacognitive components • Words with multiple meanings • Extended meaning of known words • Derivational connections among words • Antonyms • Synonyms • Homonyms

20. Critical Thinking

21. Critical Thinking • An intellectually disciplined process • Conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, or evaluating information or ideas • Comprehensive thinking • Involves evaluating one’s own thought process • “Critical thinking is thinking about your thinking while you’re thinking in order to make your thinking better” (Richard Paul, 1993). • Goal of critical thinking is self improvement. • A “meta” ability—thinking about thinking!