WP1

Language Acquisition

Redick Dun

Writ 2:

April 26, 2021

Translation Essay:

Op-Ed: Teaching Languages? You could and you should.

Redick Dun April 26, 2021; 3 mins to read

A mother is teaching her son to learn novel words, Kristen Butler1

Imagine that you are teaching your son to speak English. In front of him, you hold a red object,

which you clearly know is an apple, and at the same time, you open your mouth and say ‘apple’.

After a few times, it seems like your child is able to identify the object, because from now on,

everytime you say ‘apple’, he uses his finger to point at the right object. You are satisfied with

what you have done; in fact, you deserve to be proud of yourself, but you still underestimate

your ability as a natural linguistic teacher. You can do a lot more than that.

1
Butler, Kristen, “15 Etiquette Rules Every Parent Should Teach Their Kids,” Medium, Last modified May 27, 2020,
Accessed April 26, 2021.
 3

Researchers have found that children, starting from infancy, are learning new languages by

having language experience. By as early as 17 months, infants tend to “associate a new word

with a new object rather than the one that has already been associated with a word.”2 For

instance, if there are two objects in front of him, one is an apple and the other is a banana, your

son would be more likely to match the new word ‘banana’ to the yellow object as he already

knew that the red object is an apple. This matching heuristic is called disambiguation, and

language experience plays a significant role in the development of it.

What would happen if you say ‘manzana’(spanish word for apple) while your son already knows

that the object in your hand is an apple? He would start to learn a new word from a new

language! Monolingual children might learn English words faster than bilingual or trilingual

children do, but in a given time period, the amounts of words they could learn across different

languages are very close. It means that parents/caregivers are definitely capable of raising their

children as bilinguals or trilinguals, while the parents/caregivers are not necessarily required to

speak those ‘additional’ languages fluently.

I still remember that in high school spanish class, every time I was trying to memorize the

spanish word for pencil which is ‘lápiz’, the english word ‘pencil’ would dominate my head and

refuse the entry of a new vocabulary. Things could have been different if I had learned spanish

when I was younger.

2
Byers-Heinlein, Krista and Janet F. Werker. "Monolingual, Bilingual, Trilingual: Infants' Language Experience
Influences the Development of a Word-Learning Heuristic." Developmental Science 12, no. 5 (09, 2009): 815-823.
 4

It is not a must-do thing to teach your children multiple languages; different aspects of parenting

also need attention. However, if you want to be more than a normal parent, teaching your

children to speak an additional language is the most practical method. Imagine that, if one day

after school, your child asks you to sign on their failed spanish test, would you still be proud of

only teaching him english?

Explication Essay: Language Acquisition

Even a small difference among parenting styles could have a huge impact on infants’

development. As primary and high school teachers are responsible for teaching children

academic knowledge, parents and caregivers are the ones who give them first lessons starting

from infancy. The hypothesis that ‘infants are learning from their parents/caregivers’ behaviors

in early stages’ has been supported by neuropsychological and experimental studies.3 This

concept logically entails that the parents/caregivers’ oral practice can determine which language,

or languages, that the children will be able to speak in the rest of their life. My genre translation

analyzes the peer-review article “Monolingual, Bilingual, Trilingual: Infants' Language

Experience Influences the Development of a Word-Learning Heuristic.” In this article, although

the researchers Krista Byers-Heinlein and Janet Werker only emphasizes why the data supports

their hypothesis that “disambiguation (associating a novel noun with a novel object) is learned by

language experience rather than a result of maturation”, the datas can also be used as the

foundation of other theories.4 One theory which has the biggest potential to benefit the public is

that infants, if they were raised in a multiple-languages environment, would learn a language

faster. Therefore, it is technically possible to raise a multilingual child in every family. In order

to spread this concept to the public, I translate the peer-review article into an op-ed newspaper

article. In contrast to the purpose of this peer-reviewed article, which is to offer other

developmental psychologists a definition of the developmental origins of disambiguation, the

3
Lefmann, Tess and Terri Combs-Orme. "Early Brain Development for Social Work Practice: Integrating
Neuroscience with Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development." Journal of Human Behavior in the Social
Environment 23, no. 5 (07, 2013): 640-647.
4
Byers-Heinlein, et al., "Monolingual, Bilingual, Trilingual," 820.
 6

purpose of my genre translation is to persuade the publics, especially those who are interested in

parenting, that it is much easier to raise children as multilinguals than they would have thought.

For such a transition from interpreting a peer-review article to writing an op-ed newspaper

article, I apply three main conventions including an action-oriented conclusion, opinion-based

analysis, and pathos, which all enhance the effectiveness of my translation.

An action-oriented conclusion is one primary convention that contributes to the

transition on the purpose of the article. The purpose of the op-ed newspaper article, to educate

the public and stimulate thoughts, reflects a significant difference from the exigence of the

peer-reviewed article, to share study results with other developmental psychologists in the field

of language acquisition. However, if there is no such an action-oriented conclusion in the op-ed

newspaper article, readers are not able to realize that they are in fact learning from reading the

article. An article without an action-oriented conclusion will not leave a strong impression in

their minds. Especially for those readers who always skim over the newspaper pages, an

action-oriented conclusion is the part which they are most likely to pay attention to. As the

readers start to be interested in the topic of the article, they will also be interested in going back

to other paragraphs and looking for the rationale behind the suggested action. By including an

action-oriented conclusion in the op-ed newspaper article, I inculcate my readers with the latest

findings in the most efficient way, and at the same time they are even encouraged to participate

in the discussion. On the other hand, the introduction of an action-oriented conclusion also

reflects the difference between the peer-reviewed article and my translation. Typically, the

conclusion of a peer-reviewed article will enumerate research topics which other researchers

might be interested in the future. However, the author is not suggesting them to do anything;

instead, he/she is only giving an inference on what other fields might be closely related to the
 7

study. The main reason is that the author is assuming that the readers have the ability to read,

interpret, and generate their own thoughts just based on the perfect re-presentation of study;

therefore, an action-oriented conclusion is not needed in a peer-review article. As I adjust the

role of my op-ed newspaper article’s conclusion, I effectively make the transition from the

original exigence of the peer-reviewed article to educating my readers and stimulating thoughts.

Opinion-based analysis, another newly introduced convention, has the greatest impact

on the content shifting. As Kerry Dirk claims, he has to “determine what the essay might look

like'' before starting writing this essay.5 Every writer, no matter which type of articles they have

planned to write, has to have an expectation for what their articles would eventually be. Krista

and Janet must have known the purpose of their peer-reviewed article even before their writing.

They must realize that their ultimate goal is to re-present the whole procedure as detailed as

possible. Only in such a way, the readers will have the most accurate dataset to work with, and

they might even feel that they are the ones doing the research. In order to achieve this goal,

Krista and Janet first describe the research method and hypothesis and then re-presente the

experiment procedure. Lastly, they include all the datasets and analyze them using statistical

tools and equations. Although it seems like the case that the analysis is subjective, what they do

in the peer-review article is only using commonly recognized statistics to present the datas in

different perspectives so that the readers do not need to do the calculations by themselves. On the

other hand, It is the same as in my translation procedure. An op-ed newspaper article is supposed

to be the loudhailer in which the author can freely express his/her opinion throughout the article.

Therefore, I realize that including a huge amount of datas will not necessarily support my

5
Kerry Dirk, “Navigating Genres,” in Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 1, ed. Charles Lowe and Pavel
Zemliansky (Parlor Press, 2010), 250.
 8

opinion, so I discard all of them. Instead, I interpret the obscure theories and distracting datas by

myself, and I present my comprehensive interpretation in my translation. One benefit of doing so

is that I can better achieve my goal of educating the public because they will only either agree or

disagree with my argument. After taking a viewpoint, they can start to interpret my interpretation

thoroughly and generate their own thoughts. It is worth noting that the whole critical thinking

procedure does not require my readers, namely the public, to have any background knowledge

about psychology and statistics. Although my op-ed newspaper article is highly subjective, the

readers are receiving useful information in the most effective way; and even if readers like to

question the soundness of my opinion, they are free to read the foundational peer-reviewed

article as I have quoted in my translation. In order to shift from purely statistical analysis to

opinion-based analysis, it is essential to adjust components of the article so that the existing

content can better support the persuasiveness of the article.

Pathos, defined by Laura Bolin Carroll as “appeal to emotion”6, is the most important

rhetorical strategy that I apply in my translation because the op-ed newspaper article is targeting

a larger group of audience compared to the audience of peer-reviewed articles. According to

College Composition and Communication, the audience should be “influenced by or react to the

writing.”7 By introducing the first two conventions above, I effectively encourage my readers to

engage in the discussion and react. However, the most effective way to leave a strong impression

is still to manipulate their emotions, definitely in a good way. They do not necessarily need to

laugh out loud or cry, but as long as the topic is relevant to their personal experience or somehow

fits into their expectation for the future, they will be influenced by the writing. For instance, the

6
Carroll, Laura Bolin, “Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps toward Rhetorical Analysis.” Writing Spaces: Readings on
Writing, Volume 1, published through Parlor Press, 2010.
7
College Composition and Communication, “Rhetorical Situation”, National Council of of Teachers of English,
2010
 9

topic of my op-ed newspaper article is on parenting, specifically on how to teach their children

multiple languages. The readers are very likely to imagine what they could have done better if

they had raised their children, what they could make up if they are still raising their children, or

what they should do if they have not had a child yet. Because my translation is targeting a wide

range of audiences including anyone who is interested in parenting, it is even more crucial to

make an appeal to their emotions, to evoke their feelings. What I have done, in the beginning of

the article, is to ask the readers to imagine that they had a son and they were trying to teach him a

language. I even include an image showing a mom is teaching her son using body gestures.

Anyone who is interested in parenting will automatically depict the scene in their head,

imagining that they were the mom in the picture. By doing so, I quickly draw their attention to

the topic of the article. Besides that, I also used my personal anecdote to illustrate that a

parent/caregiver is definitely capable of teaching their children multiple languages. In the story, I

failed my spanish test, and I assumed that if my parents had teached me the simplest spanish

words when I was young, I could have done exceptionally well on the test. As the readers took

the role of a parent in the beginning of reading the article, it is not difficult to feel the regret of

not teaching their children multiple languages. Two sections, one in the beginning and another in

the end, will have a large impact on the readers’ emotions, which is a case that is not likely to

happen in peer-reviewed articles because, again, the goal of a peer-reviewed article is to

re-present the research information rather than to educate and the readers. Especially for those

who are doing scientific research, they will be willing to see the rationale behind each

movement, so the author of a peer-reviewed article will be more likely to appeal to their logic,

namely logos. However, in order to correspond to the new audiences, I use appealing to emotion

as the main rhetorical strategy.

The goal of any article is not to simply persuade or argue. A decent article should

convey the author’s philosophy and emotion to readers. One common trait of the peer-reviewed

article and my translation is that the readers are not forced to accept a certain opinion. Instead,

they are invited to participate in the discussion and generate their own thoughts. Although I have

to adjust the content heavily because of the purpose and audience shifts, the op-ed newspaper

article and the peer-reviewed newspaper article are still closely related. As I introduced multiple

conventions and used rhetorical strategies, I effectively translated the peer-reviewed article into

another genre, the op-ed newspaper article.

Bibliography

Butler, Kristen, “Etiquette Rules Every Parent Should Teach Their Kids”, Medium, Last modified

May 27, 2020, Accessed 26 April, 2021.

Byers-Heinlein, Krista and Janet F. Werker. "Monolingual, Bilingual, Trilingual: Infants'

Language Experience Influences the Development of a Word-Learning Heuristic."

Developmental Science 12, no. 5 (09, 2009): 815-823.

Carroll, Laura Bolin, “Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps toward Rhetorical Analysis.” Writing

Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 1, published through Parlor Press, 2010.

College Composition and Communication, “Rhetorical Situation”, the National Council of

Teachers of English, 2010.

Dirk, Kerry, “Navigating Genres,” in Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 1, edited by

Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky, 249-262. Parlor Press, 2010.

Lefmann, Tess and Terri Combs-Orme, "Early Brain Development for Social Work Practice:

Integrating Neuroscience with Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development." Journal of

Human Behavior in the Social Environment 23, no. 5 (07, 2013): 640-647.