Week 3 Readings

One sort of sub-concept that stood out to me throughout the reading of chapters 1-3 was Vygotsky's idea of the different types of language students and teachers use during their interactions. Vygotsky narrows in on three different types of speech: social speech, private speech, and inner speech. He defines social speech as the language a teacher uses when interacting or conversing with her students; private speech is the language a child uses on his or herself to guide themselves in the appropriate direction, often this speech directly reflects the teachers social speech just in an abbreviated form; inner speech is the language that the child has going on his or her head and eventually turns into thought. When I first read this it all  made sense, a teacher talks, a student reiterates what the teacher says, and then the student thinks of his or her own about the concept at hand. However, as I was answering the questions on page 30, and I reread this section, I began to think about just how critical a teachers language and speech is in regards to a child's language and thought. In the test Vygotsky states "this is not an exact imitation of the teacher's language but the child's own abbreviated version of that language" when defining a child's private speech. This is what really grabbed my attention. Sometimes I think teachers forget or becoming careless about how much of an impact they have on children, especially during critical learning experiences such as reading or writing. In order to form a positive and self-rewarding language and thought process, a student must hear positive and reinforcing language. Basically, I feel that this brings up a vital point- teachers have to demonstrate effective language and speak positive reinforcement to their students, since after all their students are modeling the way they think about themselves and their work after what the expressed thoughts of teachers.

For the most part I really enjoy and appreciate Vygotsky's theories and outlook when it comes to education. I most definitely agree with his idea of zone of proximal development and the effects modeling and gradual release of responsibility have a child's learning. I also like that he mentions how important sociocultural learning and teaching are for student's; I strongly agree that providing students with a learning environment that meets their needs, is the most important part of fostering the utmost of learning experiences.