Rapid Fire Reaction - Wk1Dq1

Jennifer Strope
Week 1 Journal
ECE 315: Language Development in Young Children

Today’s journal prompt reminded me of myspace “QUIZZES” I used to like to fill out years and years ago, so I thought it would be fun to approach it in that manner and pretend I’m 19 again.

Think about your day today.

• How did you communicate? Today I spent most of my day communicating with spoken words while speaking one-on-one in person with people. Today is Labor Day so we had a family meal with my in-laws including my brother-in-law Kirk and his fiancé Elle, a good friend of the family Karol and her 2 boys. I also communicated with my son by giving him high fives, hugs, and kisses. Sometimes it’s not about what you say. I’ve posted pictures from our day onto Instagram, too. I love communicating with photos. Right now I am communicating in this journal by typing, though I don’t have an audience while I’m typing it, I will, eventually. I am also “chatting” online with Elle about our love for music. She’s a fan of 80s, while I’m a 90’s girl at heart. I also shared a music video on Facebook, along with status updates throughout the day. I live far away from my family and most of my friends, so I use Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to communicate.

• Is this different than how you communicated 10 years ago? I communicated pretty much the same way 10 years ago, however, I spent much more time face-to-face with my family and friends. And I was on Myspace rather than Facebook. I had only been a high school graduate for about a year, which I took off from school. I spent a lot of time on my cellphone and landline phone when I wasn’t face-to-face.

• How about 20 years ago? 20 years ago I was almost 9 years old.  You could not have paid me money to get off of the phone, now you can’t pay me to get on one! I did not even know what the internet was, and I communicated by playing with other kids. I lived next door to my cousin and bff Bev then, and we were inseparable. We wrote a lot of notes at that age, too. That is something I never do now. I kind of miss writing letters on paper.

• Our language and our means of communication have changed over time. I am happy that it’s so easy to communicate through texts, internet, video chat etc because my family isn’t here with me. I think it’s interesting how new words have actually been acquired. When I was younger I knew all the cool slang. Now, I read something online or hear a kid talking I am lost as to what they mean. It makes me feel old.

• Have our rules and theories also changed?  I’ve noticed that there are a lot more “bad” words being said on TV and in movies now. I also have noticed that the media is more “okay” with communicating sexual things on tv too. Perfect example the “performance” Miley Cyrus gave at the VMAs last week. I don’t ever see that being allowed on TV when I was 9 years old. I still have nightmares.

• What about our interactions and expectations? Our interactions have become more impersonal, I think. Even when email became a more common thing, we wrote out longer emails. Then IMs came along and then text messages, and our messages just get shorter and a lot less personal. Our expectations are almost the same. We don’t want long and drawn out responses, and we want responses almost instantly. If we don’t get immediate responses we start to think something is wrong. Everything is so face paced now.
• How about the effectiveness of our communication? I think we are able to convey messages and ideas much more quickly now than we could before. Different cultures and languages are more able to understand due to such quick ways of communicating and translating. For example, whenever any type of terror occurs around the world, there are always people able to communicate and translate so that everyone is able to read and react. On the other hand, the emotional effectiveness of communication has gone down. For instance, sarcasm is very difficult to pick out in an electronic message unless you know that person well and their mannerisms, however, it can be very easy to pick out when face to face or even on the phone.

• How do you think the new forms of language and abundance of diverse communication methods will affect our children and youth? Our children, due to all this interconnection of internet and news, etc., are going to be much more globally aware. However, we may witness a generation of sensory overload, which may cause them to be unable to care. Does that make sense? If you see all the bad in the world, how can you choose what bad to care most about? They will be soaking up a lot of information, but will they have time to really apply it?

• What is the impact of this new communication on the “old” forms of communication? Like I said before, I miss handwriting letters. I felt it took a lot of time, especially when I learned how to type so quickly, but now I really miss it. Typing out a Facebook comment on a person’s page isn’t the same as taking the time (and wasting pages of paper to get your handwriting perfect) to form a letter. Another difference is how businesses are now letting people go more “green” by paying bills online electronically. There is a lot less mail going out now.