Real toddlers, real learning: First language acquisition students partner with Science World

When linguistics students partnered with Science World to conduct language acquisition activities with young children and their caregivers, they gained more than course content reinforcement. Students developed confidence, practical research skills, and understanding of how real-world complexity challenges textbook theories, making it what one student called "one of the most rewarding experiences at SFU."

The Project

LING 350 - First Language Acquisition students typically learn about child language development through textbooks and research articles, but most have limited interaction with young children and caregivers. This gap made connecting theoretical concepts to observable reality challenging.

To address this problem, Henny Yeung partnered with Science World's Wonder Gallery to create experiential learning opportunities. Students conducted research-based activities with young children using seven specially designed "research toys" modelled on the Museum of Science, Boston’s activities (http://livinglab.org/). These short experiments explored topics like word learning, syntax understanding, and quantity estimation. Working in small groups during two-hour sessions, students recruited families, explained their activities, and observed firsthand whether children's responses matched academic descriptions.

Project Highlights

The most valuable learning occurred not in reinforcing course concepts but in developing practical skills and contextual understanding. Students reported dramatic improvements in understanding clinical assessment challenges, individual differences in acquisition, and parental priorities; areas not explicitly covered in lectures but brought to life through direct experience.

Survey data showed the greatest learning gains in areas requiring real-world context: understanding challenges in clinical assessments, individual differences in children's acquisition, experimental methods, and parental knowledge and priorities. While students agreed the experience helped them understand course material, the most commonly reported benefits involved "soft skills", such as overcoming shyness to approach strangers, learning to maintain toddlers' attention, and developing confidence in unpredictable situations.

Students were surprised by children's capabilities, noting gaps between "what two-year-olds can do in literature" versus their real-life expectations. Many discovered that parents' questions about bilingualism, developmental milestones, and professional resources revealed how academic knowledge intersects with everyday parenting concerns.

Looking Ahead

The experiential learning activity is now continuing with other LING 350 instructors, and discussions are underway to formalize the partnership between Science World and the Department of Linguistics as a regular curriculum component. The project is being replicated at more convenient locations for students, including Surrey and the SFU Daycare at Burnaby Mountain.

The instructor's teaching philosophy has fundamentally shifted from primarily delivering expert knowledge to facilitating student-driven investigation of linguistic phenomena. The seven research toy modules and protocols developed are now available for other instructors, potentially expanding the model to other institutions. The success of this community-classroom partnership demonstrates how experiential learning can develop practical skills and contextual understanding that complement traditional content delivery.