Helen Keller's Language - Essay Example

Helen Keller Task Put the samples in rank order, from the earliest to the latest. Solution – According to digital.library.upenn.edu the chronological order is as follows- A. helen write anna george will give helen apple simpson will shoot bird jack will give helen stick of candy doctor will give mildred medicine B. helen will write mother letter papa did give helen medicine mildred did kiss helen teacher did give helen peach george is sick in bed george arm is hurt anna did give Helen dog did stand up. C. Helen will go to school with blind girls Helen can read and count and spell and write like blind girls mildred will not go to boston Mildred does cry prince and jumbo will go to boston papa does shoot dicks with gun and ducks do fall in water and jumbo and mamie do swim in water and bring ducks out in mouth to papa. D. I will write you a letter I thank you for pretty desk I did write to mother in merphis on it mother and mildred came home wednesday mother brought me a pretty new dress and hat papa did go to huntsville he brought me apples and candy. E. I am happy to write to you this morning. I hope Mr. Anagnos is coming to see me soon. I will go to Boston in June and I will buy father gloves, and James nice collar, and Simpson cuffs. I saw Miss Betty and her scholars. They had a pretty Christmas-tree, and there many pretty presents on it for little children. F. This morning Lucien Thompson sent me a beautiful bouquet of violets and crocuses and jonquils. Sunday Adeline Moses brought me a lovely doll. It came from New York . Her name is Adeline keller . She can shut her eyes and bend her arms and sit down and stand up straight. She has on a pretty red dress. She is Nancy’s sister and I am their mother. Task 2 – Analyse two aspects of Helen’s language development from the first to the last letter. Solution – Helen Keller started writing letters following the arrival of her teacher Anne Sullivan in March 1887. She wrote her first letter on June 1887. Printed chronologically, the letters provide us with an insight about how rapidly her grammatical skills developed. There has been a drastic progress in her ability to form sentences and use of punctuation and pronouns. Young Helen in her first letter formed very short and incomplete sentences. Also there was absolutely no punctuation as two following words illegible. Probably, she was unaware of the existence of pronouns , nouns etc. However, in the second letter , she showed a slight improvement in forming sentences. She used a full stop at the end of the sentence. Still she does not use articles. In the third letter her sentence forming capability has improved further and uses a capital “H” for her name. She still does not use “I”. In the fourth letter , the sentences have gained length but pronouns and proper punctuation is still missing. By fifth letter she started using articles , and might have also acquired sufficient knowledge on pronouns. Her sentences are much fluent as compared to the early ones. As we discuss about the last sample it is evident that helen’s vocabulary had developed substantially by this time. She uses proper punctuation, pronouns and her language is mature. Task 3 – explain why you think her development is similar to or different from typically developing children and to what extent it is similar to or different from individuals acquiring second language. Solution: According to specialed.about.com , Typically developing children are the ones who are not receiving special education services . Though Helen Keller was born normal with full sight and hearing , she became deaf and blind following an encounter with scarlet fever when she was about 19 months old. Later she went on to become a graduate and claim global recognition. However , I fully support the statement that Helen Keller’s development was unlike that of typically developing children. According to child-development-guide.com , the most vital aspects of child development are – Physical development , Social development , emotional development , Cognitive development and language development . I shall now discuss these in Helen’s life in detail. Though Helen did not suffer any deformity in limbs or any default in physical growth , her physical development was not normal. Since she was blind , there was no hand-eye co-ordination , her physical actions were uncontrollable as she would throw plates on others. Her dietary habits were also shabby. Vision and hearing are also very crucial for a child’s social development as they are important modes of communication. These senses connect an individual to the outside world. However , for Helen Keller the world had narrowed down and thus her social experiences were very limited .the exchange of gestures with society was absolutely nil. She couldn’t observe people’s changing facial expressions. This isolation had a very deep impact on the child’s social development. she did not obey her mother’s moral instructions and became a very difficult child to handle. Throwing tantrums became a habit for her. Young Helen did not understand the concept of emotions and attachment . She succumbed the doll to pieces that her teacher had got for her as a present. She didn’t feel any repentance though later she felt sorry for that. Cognitive development involves a child’s ability to focus and the skills of problem solving. Helen as a child was not at all civilized enough to possess any of these Language development- Helen did not speak until she was 7 years old. The first words that she spoke was doll and water. Till that age she had no vocabulary . While typically developing children have a vocabulary of about 200 words at around 2 years of age. Helen learnt the spelling of simple words like doll and water only after she turned 7. It is very encouraging to know that Helen achieved a graduate degree in 1904. However, I would also like to mention that by 1904 Helen had turned 24 years old , by that time a typically developing child possesses a masters degree. Thus, from the above mentioned aspects I would like to conclude that even though Helen Keller shot to fame because of her achievement and learnt probably much more than a typically developing child, the crucial years of her life i.e. the years that she spent in isolation made her development lag behind that of a typically developing child. Understanding, learning and using a language is not easy for a deaf and blind child like Helen Keller. For typically developing child, acquiring a language through hearing is far more easy than deaf blind child for whom the process is much slower and painful. The enigma of language became clear to young Helen when she experienced the stream of water in one hand and spelling of the word w-a-t-e-r on the other. Although Anne had taught Helen few other spellings too but she could never understand what these words meant. It was this incident that introduced Helen to the world of language as she understood that everything in this universe has a name. Helen Keller’s development was very similar to bilingual students i.e. those learning a second language. The primary language (L1) that she learnt was American Sign Language. It was actually finger spelling in which her teacher would spell words on her hands and she would try to imitate the same. The second language that Helen learnt was English. This is how she became a good speaker. Later she also mastered the art of understanding by gently touching the speaker’s mouth. Helen also learnt foreign languages like Latin, German and French. Helen not only learnt various methods of communication but went on to become a phenomenal writer and a fluent speaker. Bibliography RNIB- www.rnib.org.uk , [Accessed 26 January 2011] digital.library.upenn.edu (1905) , New York , Available from : [Accessed 27 January 2011] Brown , James Dean and Rodgers Theodore S. (2002) Doing Second Language Research. Oxford University Press. Child-development-guide.com , Available from [Accessed 27 January 2011]. Specialed.about.com (2011) Available from [Accessed 28 January 2011] Read More