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Marzano's 6 steps for teaching vocabulary

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Marzano's 6 steps for teaching vocabulary

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Educational Leadership is pleased to announce a new column this year- The Art and Science of Teaching- and a new columnist-noted researcher Robert J. Marzano. Internationally known for his practical translations of current research into effective classroom strategies, Marzano is cofounder of Marzano Research Laboratory, which synthesizes teacher research into components that schools can use for gains in student learning. A well-known speaker and trainer as well as a prolific book author, he draws from 40 years of experience in education. Each month, Marzano will focus on one teacher-tested instructional strategy in education.

After examining for decades the research on instructional strategies and reflecting on my involvement in hundreds of studies, I can say one thing confidently: If you examine all the studies conducted on a given instructional strategy, you will find that some studies indicate the strategy improves student achievement whereas other studies indicate it doesn't.

Take, for example, the strategy of providing feedback. Researchers Avraham Kluger and Angelo DeNisi (1996) synthesized the findings from 607 studies on that strategy. They found that the average effect of providing feedback to students is a 16-percentile-point gain. However, more than one-third of the studies indicated that feedback has a negative effect on student achievement. Simply using a strategy does not guarantee positive results. Rather, it's how someone uses the strategy that determines whether it produces great results, mediocre results, or no results at all.

So what's a teacher, school, or district to do? Certainly, the answer is not to ignore the research. In fact, the research is the first place to start. You should scour studies to identify those strategies for which research shows positive effects on student achievement. Next, teachers, schools, and districts should conduct their own informal (and formal) studies on how well an instructional strategy works in their particular context-with their students, their grade level, or their subject matter. No strategy is foolproof. No strategy is proven. You have to see how it works in your particular setting.

They Won't Forget the Crocodile Teeth

1. Provide a description, explanation, or example of the new term.

2. Ask students to restate the description, explanation, or example in their own words.

3. Ask students to construct a picture, pictograph, or symbolic representation of the term.

4. Engage students periodically in activities that help them add to their knowledge of the terms in their vocabulary notebooks.

5. Periodically ask students to discuss the terms with one another.

6. Involve students periodically in games that enable them to play with terms.

Teachers use the first three steps when introducing a term to students. For example, assume a teacher is introducing the term mutualism. Instead of offering a textbook definition, the teacher describes the term or tells an anecdote that illustrates its meaning (Step 1). The teacher might explain that the crocodile and a bird called the Egyptian plover have a relationship that exemplifies mutualism. The crocodile opens its mouth and invites the plover to stand inside. The plover picks things out of the crocodile's teeth. Both parties benefit: The plover gets fed; the croc gets its teeth cleaned. While explaining this relationship, the teacher might show students images found on the Internet.

In Steps 2 and 3, students try their hand at explaining the meaning of mutualism. They devise an explanation or an example from their own lives (Step 2). Next, they draw an image depicting what they think mutualism means (Step 3).

A few days later, the teacher reviews the new term using Steps 4, 5, and 6, which needn't be executed in sequence. The teacher might have students compare the meaning of mutualism with another previously studied term, such as symbiosis (Step 4). Students might pair up and compare their entries on the term in their vocabulary notebooks (Step 5), or the teacher might craft a game that students play using these terms (Step 6).

What Teacher Research Found

Over the last five years, I have been involved in more than 50 studies that involve this strategy. In all these studies, teachers used the strategy with one class but did not use it with another. Then they compared the results.

These studies have taught us several things about this six-step strategy. First, the strategy works at every grade level, from kindergarten to high school. Second, it works better if you use all the steps without leaving any out. In one middle school study, teachers found that the whole process enhanced students' achievement much more than the parts of the process in isolation did. Third, although the majority of studies indicate that the process enhances student achievement, some studies indicate that it doesn't.

For example, in one district in which 24 elementary teachers used the six-step process with one group of students but not with another, the average effect for using the strategy across all 24 elementary teachers was a 24-percentile-point gain. Six studies showed gains greater than 40 percentile points, but nine studies showed negative effects.

When students copy the teacher's explanation or description of a term instead of generating their own explanation, the results are not as strong. Ideally, student explanations should come from their own lives.

The third step in the process is crucial-having students represent their understanding of a new term by drawing a picture, pictograph, or symbolic representation. When students do this step well, achievement soars.

Games seem to engage students at a high level and have a powerful effect on students' recall of the terms. Games not only add a bit of fun to the teaching and learning process, but also provide an opportunity to review the terms in a nonthreatening way. After the class has played a vocabulary game, the teacher should invite students to identify difficult terms and go over the crucial aspects of those terms in a whole-class discussion.

Of course, we still have more to learn about this strategy. But for now, it's safe to conclude that it can be a powerful tool that teachers can use in classrooms at any grade level and in any subject area.

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The Art and Science of Teaching / Six Steps to Better Vocabulary Instruction - ASCD

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Educational Leadership is pleased to announce a new column this year-The Art and Science of Teaching-and a new columnist-noted researcher Robert J. Marzano. Internationally known for his practical translations of current research into effective classroom strategies, Marzano is cofounder of Marzano R

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Focus towards the entire class.

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Vocabulary refers to the words children must know to communicate effectively. In school terms, it can be described as oral vocabulary or reading vocabulary. Find out more about effective vocabulary instruction, the relationship between vocabulary and comprehension, and practical ways that parents can introduce new, exciting words to their kids.

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Enriching Academic Vocabulary - Tier 2 Words

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Enriching Academic Vocabulary - Tier 2 Words

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Enriching Academic Vocabulary: Strategies for Teaching Tier Two Words to E.L.L. Students (Published 2017)

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Ideas for working with challenging words — in New York Times articles and beyond.

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Each month, Larry Ferlazzo, a teacher and edublogger, offers ideas for using recent Times articles, photographs and videos to engage English Language Learners - or any students for whom The New York Times can be challenging.
This month: a picture-labeling activity to build vocabulary; a video-making challenge inspired by a Times piece about a piano; a sequencing exercise for understanding complex passages; and, finally, a "noisy, fun, and rambunctious learning game well worth the organized chaos that ensues."

Teaching With Photos
Using The Picture Word Inductive Model
The Picture Word Inductive Model, originally developed by Emily Calhoun can be used with E.L.L.'s.

In the adaptation I use, I first choose an image that relates to the thematic unit we are studying at the time. (One source of wonderful photos is The Times's Year in Pictures for 2012.)

For example, if we are learning about "home," I might use an image from this Times slide show on children's messy bedrooms and use this teaching sequence:

Monday: Invite students to identify objects in the photo and label a classroom version so it looks something like the photo at the top of this post, or like this one. As we go, I'll also teach some vocabulary, and together we'll end up with a total of 20 to 25 words. Students will then label their own personal copy of the photo, or related photos they find or bring in on their own.

Tuesday: Students put the 20 to 25 words into three or four categories of their choosing (words that have an "e" in them, words related to objects, etc.) and then, using dictionaries and their own knowledge, add five or so new words that fit into each of those categories.

Wednesday: I provide students with 10 to 20 "cloze" sentences that they have to complete using the words we are learning. One cloze might look like this:

The __________________ are on the ___________________.
desk floor clothes chair

Students then categorize the finished sentences again, in any way they choose.

Thursday: Students write several new sentences about the picture under each sentence category and turn each category into a paragraph. As students advance in their English skills, they can learn about introductions, topic sentences and conclusions.

Friday: They put their paragraphs together and choose a title. Voilà: Each student has an essay.

Teaching With Videos
Creating a Video, Slide Show or Animation
Tell students that they are going to watch a short video composed of photographs with musical accompaniment, and that the photos and music tell a story. Ask them to be prepared to write a few sentences after, describing the story told in the video. Then show students The Times's video "Solo, Piano - N.Y.C."

Afterward, give students a few minutes to write down some sentences summarizing the story and share those orally with a partner. Next, ask individual students to share sentences in chronological order and write them on an overhead projector. (See December's post for more details on this type of instructional strategy called the Language Experience Approach.)

Explain that students are now going to work in pairs to create their own similar series of photos or an animation that tells a story without words. Then they will show their completed project to the class, who will have to reconstruct the story in the same way they did for the piano video. Give students a storyboard with between 8 and 30 squares for them to map out their project, which could take various forms:

Students might take photos and upload them to an easy slide show site like Slidebomb Academy, Photolist or one of many others. They could also turn them into a video with an application like Animoto.

Students could create their slide shows with tools that let them grab images off the Web instead of taking their own photos. Many of the same tools listed above allow that option, but Bookr may be the easiest to use.

Instead of using photos, students could create online animations to tell their story. One of the easiest is Make It Share It but there are many others.

Students could even compose their own musical accompaniment by using one of many online musical creation sites, playing live music while they show their story, or even just by humming (which is the most fun!).

Take turns showing the slide shows or animations, and after their audience of classmates say what they think the story told, the creators can affirm or correct them.

Even though the story that is created is silent, it creates the conditions for plenty of English practice in its preparation and follow-up discussions. The engaged and enjoyable atmosphere that results can't hurt, either.

Teaching With Articles
Practicing Sequencing Activities
Sequencing activities - cutting passages up and having students put them back in the correct order - is a common language-learning task in the E.S.L. classroom. But its value is not limited to English Language Learners: Benjamin Franklin famously developed his writing style by regularly cutting apart essays he liked and going back to them weeks or months later to challenge himself to put them back together again.

Having students begin by reconstructing comic strips can be an introduction to this kind of activity. Then, they can move to short "recaps" of sports games (like the one in the first part of this section) or obituaries.

Putting the passages in the correct order, however, is just one part of this kind of learning task. Equally important is having students explain (for example, by highlighting "clues") why they believe certain text goes where it does. As research shows, this kind of "explanation-based learning" can have numerous benefits, especially increasing the odds of students using the strategies they successfully apply in these sequencing activities to other comprehension tasks.
Playing Messenger and Scribe

Messenger and Scribe is a popular game adapted to the language-learning classroom by Joan Wink.:

1. Tape five individual lines from a text, like this article about the soccer star Lionel Messi (it should be on a familiar topic), in different sections of the classroom.

2. Pair students up, with one as the "messenger" and the other as the "scribe."

3. When the teacher says "Go!" the messenger runs to one of the texts, reads it, and runs back to the scribe to report what he or she read. The scribe writes it down. The messenger then runs back to the same text to get the rest of the words or goes to a different text.

4. The first three to six pairs who show the teacher all the texts written down correctly, including grammar and punctuation, are winners.

5. Messengers and scribes can exchange roles during the game, but students cannot just stand by a text and yell what it says to the scribe.

This is a noisy, fun and rambunctious learning game well worth the organized chaos that ensues.

Find more in the Ideas for E.L.L.'s series.

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Ideas for English Language Learners | Labeling Photos, Sequencing Passages and More

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Each month, Larry Ferlazzo, a teacher and edublogger, offers ideas for using recent Times articles, photographs and videos to engage English Language Learners - or any students for whom The New York Times can be challenging.

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Marzano's 6-Step Vocabulary Process

Vocabulary and its strong relationship to comprehension has been verified over and over again. Vocabulary plays an important part in learning to read as well as reading to learn. We also know that increasing vocabulary knowledge has a direct impact on comprehension and plays a role in overall school success.

Effective vocabulary instruction is a key foundation to helping students acquire a wide and diverse vocabulary. Students need both direct and indirect instruction in vocabulary and word meanings as well as multiple exposures to words. It is through multiple exposures and repetition that students begin to understand the nuances of words and how to use them when speaking and writing. Additionally, active engagement helps students take part in the learning process and begin to "own" the words and understand word meaning in multiple contexts. Independent reading, intentional read alouds, and wide reading all encourage students long-term vocabulary development and growth.

Teachers need a variety of instructional strategies for teaching vocabulary. Unfortunately, there remains a gap between what we know are effective strategies and what often takes place in the classroom. In Building Background Knowledge, Bob Marzano, an educational researcher, laid out a six-step process for building academic vocabulary. It includes direct instruction, linguistic and nonlinguistic definitions, recording word learning in a notebook or journal, talking about words, and playing with words. Multiple exposures are at the heart of the process.
Six-Step Vocabulary Process
The six-step process includes the following steps:

1. The teacher provides a description, explanation, or example of the term.

2. Linguistic definition - students restate the description, explanation, or example in their own words.

3. Nonlinguistic definition - students construct a picture, pictograph, symbolic representation, or act out the term.

4. The teacher extends and refines understanding of the word by engaging students in activities that help them add to their knowledge of the terms in vocabulary notebooks.

5. Periodically ask students to discuss the terms with one another.

6. Involve students in games that enable them to play with the terms and reinforce word knowledge.

Lessons Learned
For several years, I've been teaching this process to teachers and helping them implement it in their classrooms. I've found that when teachers become intentional in regard to vocabulary instruction, they become more excited about word learning and observing growth in their students. Soon, teachers get on board with a schoolwide vocabulary improvement effort and they begin selecting words with more intention, develop a toolbox of vocabulary strategies, create word walls to support learning, and observe growth in student learning and achievement.

As a teacher, you can't teach every word which is why students also need to be engaged in independent reading to build their vocabulary. However, for targeted words that are key to mastering content or comprehending text, you should try implementing the six-step process. Since Marzano's six-step process has been around a number of years, he reports several " lessons learned." Keep these in mind as you implement the six-step process:

The process works best when you don't skip any steps. Don't pick and choose which step you "like" best - do all 6 steps.

Students need to generate their own definition of a term - sometimes I call this a "kid friendly" definition.

Step 3 - the nonlinguistic definition - is a powerful and important step. When students visualize, create a pictogram, or act out a word, they learn it well and achievement soars.

Games - Step 6 - help students play with words and internalize word meanings in a non-threatening atmosphere.

Download today's tool by clicking the tag below. Like this post? Then tweet it to your followers or PIN it to your favorite Pinterest board! Need more help with vocabulary in your school or district? Check out Vocabulary Instruction that Rocks! We've helped schools and districts just like your improve their approach to vocabulary and word learning. We can help you, too.

Tool 5 of {12 Days: 12 Tools} is a 1-page summary (see image) of Marzano's Six-Step Vocabulary Process. I find that teachers like to use this summary as they implement the six-steps process. Use the six-step process as a grade-level team or content-area team and report back to each other. Which step did you find easiest? Are there any that you're having difficulty with implementing? Discuss with your teaching partners and work to refine implementation. Check for student learning in both informal and formal ways.

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Marzano's 6-Step Vocabulary Process {12 Days: Tool 5} l Dr. Kimberly's Literacy Blog

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Marzano's 6-Step Vocabulary Process Vocabulary and its strong relationship to comprehension has been verified over and over again. Vocabulary plays an important part in learning to read as well as reading to learn. We also know that increasing vocabulary knowledge has a direct impact on comprehension and plays a role in overall school success.

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No Tears for Tiers: Common Core Tier Vocabulary

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No Tears for Tiers: Common Core Tier Vocabulary

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Tier 1,2,3 Vocab Activities

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Tier 1 Words:Vocabulary and Activities

A strong vocabulary is essential in practically every academic discipline. Because of this, it's important that students have a good understanding of Tier 1 words and how they are used. The following activities have been designed with young learners in mind, but can also be used with ESL (English as a Second Language) learners of any age.

Tier 1 Word List

This list is a small sample of the thousands of Tier 1 words people use in everyday speech and writing. The words have been grouped by category to make it easier to incorporate them into the activities. Keep in mind that Tier 1 words are generally simple and do not express complex concepts or abstract ideas.

Fill-in Fun

Give each student a copy of the word list or display it in the classroom so that everyone can see it.

Print out the following text and give one copy to each student. Alternatively, you can read the text aloud and have students write down their word choices.

Remind the students that the story doesn't have to be true; it just has to make sense.

When I woke up today I felt very _____. My _____ told me I should feel _____ because it was the beginning of summer vacation. After eating breakfast, we got in the _____ and went to the _____. The _____ is my favorite place to go in the summer. We spent the whole morning there and then went to a famous _____. It was so much fun! After that we went home. I was very _____. I played with my _____ until it was time for bed. I was too _____ to sleep because my _____ told me that tomorrow we will go to the _____. I can't wait!

After students have finished filling in all of the blanks, ask for volunteers to read their paragraph to the class, or collect the papers and read a few aloud yourself. This can lead to a class discussion about how people use different words to describe situations.

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tier 1 words: vocabulary & activities | study.com

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Tier 1 Words: Vocabulary & Activities | Study.com

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A strong vocabulary is essential in practically every academic discipline. Because of this, it's important that students have a good understanding of Tier 1 words and how they are used. The following activities have been designed with young learners in mind, but can also be used with ESL (English as a Second Language) learners of any age.

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The Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) Model is a research-based and validated instructional model that has proven effective in addressing the academic needs of English learners throughout the United States.

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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6 Scaffolding Strategies to Use With Your Students

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Support every student by breaking learning up into chunks and providing a concrete structure for each.

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How do speech and language develop?

The first 3 years of life, when the brain is developing and maturing, is the most intensive period for acquiring speech and language skills. These skills develop best in a world that is rich with sounds, sights, and consistent exposure to the speech and language of others.

There appear to be critical periods for speech and language development in infants and young children when the brain is best able to absorb language. If these critical periods are allowed to pass without exposure to language, it will be more difficult to learn.

What are the milestones for speech and language development?

The first signs of communication occur when an infant learns that a cry will bring food, comfort, and companionship. Newborns also begin to recognize important sounds in their environment, such as the voice of their mother or primary caretaker. As they grow, babies begin to sort out the speech sounds that compose the words of their language. By 6 months of age, most babies recognize the basic sounds of their native language.

Children vary in their development of speech and language skills. However, they follow a natural progression or timetable for mastering the skills of language. A checklist of milestones for the normal development of speech and language skills in children from birth to 5 years of age is included below. These milestones help doctors and other health professionals determine if a child is on track or if he or she may need extra help. Sometimes a delay may be caused by hearing loss, while other times it may be due to a speech or language disorder.

What is the difference between a speech disorder and a language disorder?

Children who have trouble understanding what others say (receptive language) or difficulty sharing their thoughts (expressive language) may have a language disorder. Developmental language disorder (DLD) is a language disorder that delays the mastery of language skills. Some children with DLD may not begin to talk until their third or fourth year.

Children who have trouble producing speech sounds correctly or who hesitate or stutter when talking may have a speech disorder. Apraxia of speech is a speech disorder that makes it difficult to put sounds and syllables together in the correct order to form words.

What should I do if my child's speech or language appears to be delayed?

Talk to your child's doctor if you have any concerns. Your doctor may refer you to a speech-language pathologist, who is a health professional trained to evaluate and treat people with speech or language disorders. The speech-language pathologist will talk to you about your child's communication and general development. He or she will also use special spoken tests to evaluate your child. A hearing test is often included in the evaluation because a hearing problem can affect speech and language development. Depending on the result of the evaluation, the speech-language pathologist may suggest activities you can do at home to stimulate your child's development. They might also recommend group or individual therapy or suggest further evaluation by an audiologist (a health care professional trained to identify and measure hearing loss), or a developmental psychologist (a health care professional with special expertise in the psychological development of infants and children).

What research is being conducted on developmental speech and language problems?

The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) sponsors a broad range of research to better understand the development of speech and language disorders, improve diagnostic capabilities, and fine-tune more effective treatments. An ongoing area of study is the search for better ways to diagnose and differentiate among the various types of speech delay. A large study following approximately 4,000 children is gathering data as the children grow to establish reliable signs and symptoms for specific speech disorders, which can then be used to develop accurate diagnostic tests. Additional genetic studies are looking for matches between different genetic variations and specific speech deficits.

Researchers sponsored by the NIDCD have discovered one genetic variant, in particular, that is linked to developmental language disorder (DLD), a disorder that delays children's use of words and slows their mastery of language skills throughout their school years. The finding is the first to tie the presence of a distinct genetic mutation to any kind of inherited language impairment. Further research is exploring the role this genetic variant may also play in dyslexia, autism, and speech-sound disorders.

A long-term study looking at how deafness impacts the brain is exploring how the brain "rewires" itself to accommodate deafness. So far, the research has shown that adults who are deaf react faster and more accurately than hearing adults when they observe objects in motion. This ongoing research continues to explore the concept of "brain plasticity"-the ways in which the brain is influenced by health conditions or life experiences-and how it can be used to develop learning strategies that encourage healthy language and speech development in early childhood.

A recent workshop convened by the NIDCD drew together a group of experts to explore issues related to a subgroup of children with autism spectrum disorders who do not have functional verbal language by the age of 5. Because these children are so different from one another, with no set of defining characteristics or patterns of cognitive strengths or weaknesses, development of standard assessment tests or effective treatments has been difficult. The workshop featured a series of presentations to familiarize participants with the challenges facing these children and helped them to identify a number of research gaps and opportunities that could be addressed in future research studies.

What are voice, speech, and language?

Voice, speech, and language are the tools we use to communicate with each other.

Voice is the sound we make as air from our lungs is pushed between vocal folds in our larynx, causing them to vibrate.

Speech is talking, which is one way to express language. It involves the precisely coordinated muscle actions of the tongue, lips, jaw, and vocal tract to produce the recognizable sounds that make up language.

Language is a set of shared rules that allow people to express their ideas in a meaningful way. Language may be expressed verbally or by writing, signing, or making other gestures, such as eye blinking or mouth movements.

Your baby's hearing and communicative development checklist

Birth to 3 Months

4 to 6 Months

7 Months to 1 Year

1 to 2 Years

2 to 3 Years

3 to 4 Years

4 to 5 Years

This checklist is based upon How Does Your Child Hear and Talk?, courtesy of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.

Where can I find additional information about speech and language developmental milestones?

The NIDCD maintains a directory of organizations that provide information on the normal and disordered processes of hearing, balance, taste, smell, voice, speech, and language.

Use the following keywords to help you find organizations that can answer questions and provide information on speech and language development:

For more information, contact us at:

NIDCD Information Clearinghouse
1 Communication Avenue
Bethesda, MD 20892-3456
Toll-free voice: (800) 241-1044
Toll-free TTY: (800) 241-1055
Email: nidcdinfo@nidcd.nih.gov

NIH Publication No. 00-4781
September 2010

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Speech and Language Developmental Milestones

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How do speech and language develop? The first 3 years of life, when the brain is developing and maturing, is the most intensive period for acquiring speech and language skills. These skills develop best in a world that is rich with sounds, sights, and consistent exposure to the speech and language of others.

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What is the link between language and learning? While exploring these issues, fundamental questions arise that have far-reaching effects for the classroom and beyond.

The most fundamental mechanism by which humans share information is language, but does language fall into the category of biologically evolved function or cultural invention? If it is, at least in part, an evolved function, how did language evolve, and what are the mechanisms of the mind that depend upon it? How language came into being has intrigued many great minds, including Charles Darwin, but it is also a question that we can all understand and ponder. In the course of thinking about language and its evolution, we inevitably introspect and examine the very process of thought itself. We grit our teeth in frustration with what the past hides from us. But ultimately, we may experience personal epiphanies about the workings of the mind, triggered by ideas conveyed to us through the language upon which we are reflecting. There is a great deal to read on this topic, and much of it is worthwhile. Here we shall only attempt to whet the appetite.
Evolution and Information
In the scientifically literate world, and even in many parts of the United States, evolution has become mundane fact. Wander through any museum of natural history and view the skeletons of animals from both past and present, and this central theme around which all biology is organized will seem obvious. We recognize the structure of our own hand and pelvis in the articulated forelimb and vestigial pelvis of a whale skeleton. That we share an ancestor with these behemoths of the sea seems clear.

The question arises not whether evolution occurred, but why were people so slow to grasp it? Is evolution like the seemingly unsolvable puzzle that becomes trivial once the answer is revealed? Are we just smarter than people were 150 years ago? And if evolution is obvious, why do we make such a big deal of Darwin? Evolution and the relatedness of animals are in fact very old ideas and common to many cultures, presumably because they are obvious. What is not obvious, however, are the mechanisms by which evolution operates.

The theory of natural selection, Darwin's great idea, was important because it resolved aspects of evolution that run counter to our intuitive sense about information: information does not arise spontaneously, but is transmitted from a source to a receiver. In a seminal paper in 1948, Claude Shannon formulated these ideas into a precise mathematical theory, known as "information theory", that allowed for exact quantities of information being transmitted to be calculated (information theory is important in many subfields of neuroscience - for background see Lucents Information Theory Web Page. But in the case of evolution, the source of the information that has led to increasingly complex structures in some organisms is unclear. Darwin's insight was that the information source is the environment. Random mutations in our DNA do not generate information. Rather it is the selection of individuals that carry these mutations (a euphemism for the relatively higher killing of those who don't) by the environment that imparts new information to the gene pool.

Many vertebrates, however, do not rely solely on genetics to transmit information to the next generation. Conditions in the mother's external environment can influence the conditions in the womb, which can in turn greatly influence the developing embryo. After birth, parental nurturing can transfer still more information to the young. In humans, this extra-genetic transmission has become massive through the invention of culture and technology. The written word is certainly a profound cultural invention that has greatly changed the amount of information being transmitted from generation to generation. But is the language upon which writing is built a cultural construct or a biological capacity? This question continues to be one of some debate, but the answer certainly lies somewhere between these two extremes.
What is Language?
Before investigating how language came in to being, we must first decide what language is. When alone in a quiet space, one may think in a continuous stream of internal speech. At such times, language seems to be an integral part of thought. But there is no evidence that language is essential to any particular cognitive operation. Damage to the brain has for some patients resulted in a complete loss of speech, both external and internal, but researchers have been unable to correlate cognitive deficits with this loss. In his book Origins of the Modern Mind, Merlin Donald compares the loss of language in these patients to the loss of a sensory system. The patients have lost a tool that greatly simplifies life in the world, but like a blind or deaf person, there is no diminished intellect or consciousness that accompanies this loss.

Language is thought to be a mechanism for transmitting the information within thoughts. One experiment used to demonstrate this idea requires subjects to listen to a short passage of several sentences. The subjects are then asked to repeat the passage. Most subjects accurately convey the gist of the passage in the sentences they produce, but they do not come close to repeating the sentences verbatim. It appears as if two transformations have occurred. Upon hearing the passage, the subjects convert the language of the passage into a more abstract representation of its meaning, which is more easily stored within memory. In order to recreate the passage, the subject recalls this representation and converts its meaning back into language.

This separation of thought and language is less intuitive than it might be because many people find language to be a powerful tool with which to manipulate their thoughts. It provides a mechanism to internally rehearse, critique, and modify thoughts. Language allows us to apply a common set of faculties to our own ideas and the ideas of others presented through speech. This internal form of communication is a powerful tool for a social animal and could certainly be in part responsible for the strong selective pressures for improved language use.
A Universal Grammar
Linguists are concerned with the structure of language and the rules used to form this structure. These rules constitute a "mental grammar" that is thought to be well-defined, though not identical, in every language. These mental grammars are not the grammars we learn in school, but rather they are the unconscious process by which we decide whether a sentence is well-formed. The process is somewhat independent of meaning. We know that "Bob book read the" is an ill-formed English sentence though we can guess the meaning, whereas Chomsky's nonsensical "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is well-formed.

Chomsky's insight that there are a limited number of possible grammars came from an intuition about information flow. He believed that children were acquiring language too quickly to be explained by the exposure to language that they were receiving within their environment. He reasoned that the system the children were born with was already highly constrained so that with only relatively few examples, a child could derive the structure of their native language. Chomsky called this set of constraints "the universal grammar." This set of constraints is like those on a die used to generate a random number. One cannot predict ahead of time whether the result will be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6, but one would never waste time guessing that the result was 7 or 3.14.

Other evidence for the existence of a universal grammar is the process of "creolization." When adult humans come together that do not share a common language, they begin to communicate by forming a "pidgin." A pidgin is not considered to be a true language because though there is a shared vocabulary, there is not a set of grammatical rules from which a rich set of expressive sentences can be generated. Children that are born into a culture speaking a pidgin will speak a language different from that of their parents. They impose a grammar upon their parents' vocabulary to create a new language called a "creole."

"Twin speak" is another example in which twins or two children at similar developmental ages will invent a language with each other that no one else can understand. According to Chomsky, invented languages, creoles, and all other human languages (both spoken and gestural) are in part defined by a grammar necessary for generating well-formed sentences, and these grammars share many properties according to the constraints of a universal grammar that all humans, and only humans, carry in their genetic code.
Language and the Brain
Whether all such examples of grammatical analysis hold up to detailed scrutiny is a matter of debate. Phillip Lieberman points out in his book Eve Spoke that no complete description of a grammar of any language has ever been produced, implying that these analyses are somewhat superficial. Lieberman believes that many aspects of language that Chomsky attributes to a specific brain module, "the language organ", are in fact performed by areas of the brain using more general cognitive and learning capabilities.

Lieberman suggests that just because a skill is uniquely human does not mean that an area of brain evolved to perform that skill. Humans are the only animal that plays chess, but we do not expect to find a "chess module" within the brain. But chess does seem remarkably well-suited for humans. It is an interesting game because it is not too easy, like tic-tac-toe is, and not too hard. But theoretically, chess is not very different from tic-tac-toe. The only difference is that the level of planning required is matched to our brain capacities so that we can not see so far ahead that we know the final outcome, but we can see far enough ahead that we can influence the outcome and do not feel like all is left to chance.

As with chess, our ancestors may have invented a means of communication that matched the cognitive capabilities of the brain. Chomsky's universal grammar may exist in at least the constraints that these capabilities place on language. Language may have culturally evolved so that it was easy to learn using these capabilities, even with relatively few examples from which to derive its grammatical structure. It may be our desire to communicate with each other that is hardwired into our brains. In the absence of an existing language, this overpowering desire forces us to create a new language. However, because this new language is built upon the same cognitive structures as an existing language would have been, the new language shares common structural themes with existing languages.

The fact that the brain appears to have areas within it that are used for processing distinct aspects of language is thought to be evidence for a language organ. However, this evidence would only be supportive if the language areas appeared before a language was learned. The fact that language areas develop as language is learned, that there is a fair amount of variance in their location, and that their location within the brain can dramatically shift if early damage to the region is incurred, is at least as supportive of the theory that there is not a specific language organ, but rather general cognitive modules that have the potential of becoming language processors.

It seems likely that language was built on top of an existing cognitive structure. However, given the importance of language to human social interaction, including reproduction, it also seems likely that selective pressures would prefer genetic modifications that improved language capabilities. These pressures also existed in the cultural environment, and groups that could create a language that would improve cooperative behavior might have had a distinct survival advantage over other groups. Their language and language capabilities would have effectively isolated them in a speciation process resulting in a new language-based species.
Language and Speech
Language is a complex phenomenon with origins that are difficult to trace. Certain aspects of language, though not without controversy, are better suited to empirical investigation. Speech is one example because it requires some physical properties that can be measured in, or at least partially derived from, the fossil record.

Phillip Lieberman has investigated the origin of speech for many years and has used this research to form hypotheses about the evolution of language. Lieberman suggests that speech improved greatly about 150,000 years ago when the larynx descended into the throat. According to the work of Lieberman and his colleagues, this descension improved the ability of early homonids to make key vowel sounds. Whereas the Neanderthals had a vocal tract similar in many respects to that of a new born baby, the elongated pharynx of a modern adult human is thought to enable production of a more perceptible repertoire of speech sounds. Lieberman suggests that though Neanderthals probably had some form of language, they may have failed to extend this language because they lacked the physical apparatus for producing a more sophisticated set of speech sounds. The theory that the modern human vocal tract is better suited for production of vowels has, however, recently been called into question by Louis-Jean Boe.

But the strongest part of Lieberman's argument is evolutionary rather than strictly phonetic. He points out that the descension of the larynx into the throat makes humans much more susceptible to choking than any other mammal. It is unlikely that such a dangerous adaptation would have evolved unless there was some strong selective advantage provided by it. Since the larynx contains the vocal cords and is critical for speech, it seems likely that Lieberman's hypothesis is correct in that this change somehow improved speech and that improved speech gave a distinct selective advantage, even if his hypothesis about what the exact improvements to speech were turns out to be incorrect.
From Hand to Mouth
Even before the development of speech, there must have first been a desire to communicate. Purposeful communication is very different from animal calls that signal more or less automatically to the whole group. Purposeful communication requires a coordinated transmitter and an attentive receiver. The first form of such communication may have been through hand gestures and facial expressions. Reading facial expressions may have helped individuals to anticipate the coming actions of their peers. Attention to hand movements may have allowed copying of skills requiring manual dexterity such as tool making.

Giacomo Rizzolatti has performed a series of experiments that show a possible neural substrate for such abilities in monkeys. Rizzolatti discovered a cell type in an area called F5 that can respond to a precise hand or mouth movement performed by another animal. A neuron might respond when the experimenter turns his hand clockwise to obtain a food pellet. No other hand motion by the experimenter causes the cell to fire. It might also fire, however, when the monkey itself performs a similar movement with its own hand to reach the pellet. For this reason, the neurons are called "mirror cells."

Mirror cells are causing quite an uproar in the scientific community. They are exciting because they seem to provide a cornerstone upon which a system of communication can be built. In a concrete usage, the cells might allow an animal to mimic a motion that it sees another animal perform in order to obtain food. In a more abstract usage, these cells might let the animal mimic the hand or mouth movements of another animal to copy a sound or gesture to which that animal had assigned a meaning. In this way, the two can create a shared vocabulary.

Rizzolatti has suggested that F5 corresponds to Broca's area in the human brain, the area ostensibly responsible for speech initiation and production. An interesting hypothesis about the role such an area may have played in early language evolution has been proposed, though by no means proven, based on this research. According to this hypothesis, dexterous hand movements useful for tool making were adapted for a system of communication based on gestures. Sounds were used to append ancillary information such as emphasis to the gestures. In time, the complex motor control area was adapted to also control the vocal tract, and the primary means of communication shifted to sounds thus freeing up the hands for other work. However, the hands could and still do provide ancillary information such as that previously provided by voice (as Rizzolatti, whose laboratory is in Italy, well knows).

Though highly speculative, this scenario fits well with some other important phenomena. For example, the hypothesis suggests why the sign languages used by the deaf are successful languages. The hand and mouth have always been partners in communication, and one can fill the role when the other cannot.

The hypothesis also fits well with a phenomenon known as the "McGurk Effect" which is a strikingly powerful illusion in which one syllable is pronounced (tape recording), another is seen (silent film), but a third syllable is perceived. This effect demonstrates that we obtain speech information visually as well as aurally. When the two information channels do not agree, we blend the information to perceive a syllable that was not produced. The mirror cells suggest that the visual information channel may serve in language acquisition when we attempt to mimic the speech sounds that we see being made.
Conclusion
The desire to communicate is strong in the human species, and language provides a powerful tool by which to communicate. Although language is not required for complex cognitive thought, it has undoubtedly evolved to aid with an individual's internal thought. It simplifies symbolic representation, allowing for a host of powerful mental manipulations, such as long-term planning and abstract reasoning.

Natural selection probably played a significant role in the emergence of language. This selection process is effective whether information is transmitted genetically, culturally, or both. Troops of animals that communicated well within their group would have had a distinct advantage in coordinated action over closely related troops that did not. Of all the hominid species, it is ours, presumably the most sophisticated user of language, that alone survives. The emergence of language marked a turning point in human biology when the information that defined the species and was being conveyed from generation to generation was no longer primarily in the genetic code.

Dr. Bret Peterson has been working towards integrating informatics and neuroscience for the past eleven years. He worked most recently as Editor-in-Chief of BrainConnection.com for Scientific Learning Corporation in Berkeley, California. Previously, Dr. Peterson was an associate research scientist at Yale University working on the Human Brain Project. He has also worked as an employee of Apple Computer and as a consultant to BioRad. Dr. Peterson received a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley and a master's degree and a Ph.D. from a joint University of California, Berkeley / University of California at San Francisco Bioengineering program. He also conducted subsequent research at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

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The Evolution of Language - Brain Connection

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What is the link between language and learning? While exploring these issues, fundamental questions arise that have far-reaching effects for the classroom and beyond. The most fundamental mechanism by which humans share information is language, but does language fall into... Continue Reading →