Relevance of Cognitive Science to language skills
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Hi
Any parents out there read about the recent Cognitive Sc conference and the speech by Heng Swee Keat on its relevance and application to our current education system? Especially the part on language, reading and comprehension skills.
Its interesting to see how MOE would be looking into this area and help our school kids, especially those in primary school! It would have alot of relevance with the latest change in the English Syllabus! -
Yes, I have read it. It’s been long, long overdue. Many countries have already adopted Cog Science to learning as it involves our most important part of our body - our mind/brain. So much time and research has been put into this field and there are also new discoveries on how our brain works.
With the change in the English syllabus, our kids will need to widen their level of understanding, knowledge and vocabulary as opposed to just learning for the sake of learning. Gone are the days of just doing worksheets. Worksheets do help but the lessons need to have more elements or areas that are interactive and engaging with a built-in cognitive approach. -
This brain science thing is really interesting. Seems like quite a good move.
Makes sense since everything starts from the brain. If that’s not trained properly, everything else won’t work properly… been reading a lot more these days about how the brain works and how it relates to learning especially in languages… quite a bit of research out there…
Hope they introduce to more schools so that my kids can benefit from it before they sit for major exams! -
Interesting that MOE chose to speak about this topic. Not sure how they plan on really implementing Cognitive Science into curriculum though. What kind of studies has shown that it really works?
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am a neuroscientist wannabe so feel quite compelled to respond.
the speech was excellent and defnitely in the right direction. it is true that implementation may be challenging but it is not impossible.
2 examples i will mention here 1) i heard some schools do not allow students to run in the fields or courts during recess for fear of falls. that is so un-neuroscientific!! there is strong evidence of physcial activities improving attention and learning in kids so we should get them out of their seats more often then just 2-3 periods of PE each week! esp when kids tend to be glued to TV, PC, IPAD etc these days... it is sad...
2) school curriculums should fit to kids' pace instead of kids fitting to the pace of curriculum! with one standard curriulum, v bright kids can get bored and slower kids have a hard time keeping up and end up with low confidence and motivation... adapting curriculum to kids is harder to implement but possible with the use of adaptive computer educational programmes. i cant wait for the day to see our schools become more brain-friendly!
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