4.24.2008

Project LENA

Hello Everybody,

See and read about the following project on "Enhanced Language Development" on http://www.lenababy.com/ and write its possible implications for foreign language learning.

Good Luck,

Tuncer Can

27 comments:

Anonymous said...

The LENA project states that the quantity of words that children are exposed to until a certain age is crucial for language development and academic success. Also researches found that the greater the language environment in early ages the higher the IQ.

I believe what this could imply for foreign language learning is that language involvement in terms of communication in the foreign language/ language performance is determining for the language use/ language competence. That means that we as teachers have to make our students active in foreign language use to be me more competent in language later on. Foreign language learning does not only exist of an individual process of learning vocabulary but learning by interaction and thus exchanging ideas and expanding knowledge. Also it emphasizes that we as a teacher have to use the foreing language ourselves to expose students to the target language.
Ortherwise it could also mean that the quality of a student´s lexical knowledge in foreign language can be linked to his/her native language word quality underlying the previous exposure to lexical quantity. This implies that a teacher does not only have to work on foreign vocabulary expansion but also effectively connecting it to native vacabulary enlargement or at least clarity. Therefore individual differences and student´s gaps have to keep in mind and to have be balanced by the teacher.

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Anonymous said...

The principal notion which lies under the LENA project is to show the importance of being exposed to a language in order to achieve a real success and competence in it. The more the child hears the language, the more he/she uses the language. This Project helps us to be aware of the significance of interaction in language development process.

In foreign language teaching, our goal is to make our students competent in using the language communicatively. While we are expecting to see them being efficent in communicating in the target language, we need to observe, monitor and check what is going on around the language environment. There should be language input as much as possible by means of which the students will be exposed to target language. Everything starts at exactly that time. Is the input we give to them really meaningful, does it prompt them to speak and communicate purposefully and the most important one is it the teacher who uses the language all the time in the class. We can encourage them to have foreign friends or we can invite a foreign to our class if we have chance. If we don’t give them chance to use the language, how can we expect to see them being competent in it. It is the students who should be practising the language with the teacher. Without interaction, without being exposed to it, without conversation, without hearing it in real contexts language learning is almost impossible. Another important task for language teachers is to monitor the students in order to see if the process isgoing well or if it needs some adaptations. In other words, as in the project, we should evaluate the process.
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Anonymous said...

The LENA Project or programme closely deals with the process and activities during the babies grow up,and also feedback fort his.According to LENA sheer quantity of words your child hears every day from birth to age 4 directly impacts his or her language development and academic success and also IQ is closely related to the vocabulary children have.This Project also deals with the possible problems stems from babies being adopted or autism.The programme give useful advice and feed back to the parents and it makes parents be aware of the condition their children in.
When we come to foreing language teaching with the help of LENA,in fact,there are many things to be done.If we associate this foreign language learning with first language acquisition,we should make the conditions similar.As in the first language acquisitıon,teacher should follow such a way that makes the SLL very natural not artificial may be with this way this SLL process turns out to be SLA.Students must be exposed to the target language with reallife like conditions not from course boks or any other kind of materials that include artificial way of learning.And also,may be programmes like LENA may be used in this process such a system helps teachers monitor students second language environment.as well as their language development but here teachers have a important responsibilities to maket eh environment suitable for SLL because the language input the students gets is very crucial for their development.The more they are exposed to target language the more they hear that language the more they use that language the more easily and efficiently they learn and acquire it.Teachers should use such methods drawing students attentions to the using/performing the language more than reading tenses or conjunctions from books.Because learning or knowing the rules of grammar can’t make a student tell his problem or speak with foreing.(that’s language performance and competence should be combined,not isolated )I want to state about experience on this subject,last year one of my lecturer who teachs the course of Atatürk İlke ve İnklapları can speak english in perfect and fluent way and suprisingly he did not attend any courses until he start lecturing at university.He only attended a special course in England which is not like the courses in our country his course tutor brougt him and other students different places like supermarket , restaurants,cinema,and after arrivig their destinations their teachers come back and left them alone in that places this continues nearly 6-7months they did not get any reading text or practice but the hours they comminucate with others nearly 16 hours a day and after all their teacher gave them some grammar rules for writing practices.But now that lecturer can speak english as fast as Turkish as good as English teachers.
İn short,I want to say that this SLA process resembles drivig car because one can learn everything about driving from book in theory but con not drive a vehicle without practicing so even if every rule or words of second language are learned it is impossible to speak or Express feeling without practicing it in real life.Maybe LENA will be more efficient for SLA after being adjusted to level of young second language learners.With same principals like evaluating the capacity of learners, giving advice and feedback to them; It will be more useful for us and teachers in this neverending language learning process.


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Anonymous said...

we all witness english langage teachers talking in turkish,not english in our school life right?they supports the idea that without knowing some vocabulay and grammar of the target language students cant understand what teacher says so they ignore L2 speaking actually it s what easy for them..however they want students to speak in target language,they even charge for a turkish word uttered..what a contradiction!!!first teacher should be a model i think..babies learn mostly by imitating dont they?they imitate their parents,sisters,brothers anyone in their learning environment..likewise students' model is teacher they imitate their teacher..personally i remember one of my english language teachers talking a bit in turkish a bit in english which i ve found fascinating at that time and unconsiously i started to talk like that..lena project says the more a baby expose to the language the more he learns..so students should be exposed to the target language as much as possible..interactions with both teacher and peers should be in target language..in that terms lena project is a proof of how higly communicative competence depends on learning environment and interaction
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Anonymous said...

According to lena,parents’ usage of words and words’ frequency determine childrens’ IQs and their success in their school-life.and also this study emphazises that the environment around children is very important for learning language.considering foreign language teaching,parents are replaced with teachers so teachers are the only ones who can create this environment.teacher is so important that sometimes students can do the same mistakes that teacher do in class.the more students hear words and utterances in classroom,the more their language and speaking skills will develop.therefore, instead of speaking L1 in classrooms,target language must be spoken as possible as.apart from teachers’ own speaking and pronounciation,also native speakers’ recordings or videos can be used for good modelling to students.
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Anonymous said...

As i have learned,"Lena" is a project used in native language acquisition and it gives parents a chance to observe the develeopment of their child’s languge and to see how they are “as parents” are involved in this process. It is good for the acquisition of L1 but why not to use some of the underlying principles of this Project in our future classes, as foreign language teachers? Keeping in mind that we are teaching a languge as well, we should use the advised ways. It is told there that it is not a Cd or a video that informs how to teach languge it is just “us”which means we are involed in the process of our student’s learning the target language as teachers like parents who are involved in first lang. acquisition of their children.


Like parents in first language acquisition, teachers are responsible for the children’s development in second language acquisition. So teachers should interact with students as much as possible. It is known that interaction is really important in ones getting his/her first languge we can say that is it the same in foreign languge learning because languge is above the structures and sentences. It should be used interacively to be able to use it efficently.Students should know how to speak and what to speak in different contexts.So as teachers we should create such an atmosphere in our classes. We should not forget that people get language from the environment as it is stated in the web-site of “Lena” as well.
Also it is a fact that the more word one hears the better and the earlier he speaks. Like parents teachers should talk with her/his students as much as possible in the target languge so that they could save them in their minds and use them when it is needed. We know that having enough knowledge of vocabulary is needed to be fluent in a foreign languge. So teachers should focus on the amount of vocabulary that is used in the class.
Teachers also could monitor themselves by looking at the improvement of their student’s language learning.
In short, Lena is not only for native language learners,but also it has some important clues for foreign language teachers to make use of it.


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Anonymous said...

The LENA project gives a chance to parents to evaluate their children's language development. As İt can be understood by its name LENA_Language ENvironment Analysis, Children languge use is recorded thanks to a tool and the findings are anayzed. After the analysis, parents have the chance to see their children's language use, word use. So they can see the frequency and amount of words their children use. They also see "turn taking" in the conversation. So by this way parents can evaluate themselves . They see how much they do for their children's laanguage acquisition.If they notice that conversation turns are little, they try to allow enough time to speak.
So some aspects of this project can be used for foreign language learning. As I said before LENA makes a conclusion about the kinds and frequency of words. And with the help of that extract parents see their children's process. So as teachers, we can evalute our students'. We must be careful about their words. We must consider the interaction with the students. So we have the chance to see the access to foreign language. So what is the significance of this? If we determine our students' stage/language use correctly, then we can make things meaningful. For example, if we are not aware of our students' language knowledge, then we can make faults.After teaching a subject and new words, if we do not check their speech and words we suppose they learn them. So as LENA, we must check the words and conversational turns.If we notice they do not use the words that we teach(supposing), we must try another way to teach and make the sts interact more. So to do this we must be aware of sts' languge use. So we can utilize from LENA.

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Anonymous said...

3233050007 (ÇAP)

LENA is a project emphasizes that the more the children are exposed to language, the more efficient they learn. Contrary to Piaget, who gives importance to the child’s cognitive development and thus concludes that children learn in stages and that all stages present certain activities that the children can do only in those stages, LENA Project stresses child’s interaction. Hence, the inputs provided by the parents become more important.

The implication of this theory is easy in the language classroom: The process of the first language acquisition should be the same to second language learning. Hence, the teachers have to use the foreign language as much as possible in the classroom. Unfortunately, this is the opposite in Turkey: Teachers find it easier to use Turkish in the classroom, so they teach grammar, vocabulary with translation without any effort. The students after graduating cannot communicate in L2 despite the fact that they had memorized all grammar rules. In our system, we give more importance to memorization, grammar; yet we ignore the pragmatic dimension of communication. The result can be analysed in Grand Bazaar: Young boys who had learnt nothing from their language classes, speak fluently English, French, Italian…etc because all the day they see tourists, they hear their utterances and slowly they interiorise they as the baby does while acquiring his / her mother tongue.

LENA Program also develops the pragmatic competence of the baby, because as the parents talk the baby becomes aware of turn taking which is a pragmatic competence. Yet, in order to gain the students all those skills; the teachers have to be aware of their talk, the words that they use and their turn takings, as the LENA Program advises. So as LENA Progran emphazises, the teachers have to use the words, the structures that they teach in the class in order to provide as many input as possible.

Anonymous said...

If a child gets a lot of language input in her early ages,she will get more successful in academic life and her IQ level will be higher than the child who gets less input.That is the starting point of LENA project.When a parent always talks to her child with same words,then the child will learn only these words.However,when a mother uses very different words while speaking to her child,then the child will get new different input and will start to use them.
The more input the child takes,the more different language use will occur.
In language teaching period,LENA's findings can be used.It is about communication and when teacher speaks a lot,students will try to speak,as well.Its basis is imitation and enivironmental effects,I think.There are some examples in my student life.For instance;my English teacher in primary school was pronouncing the word 'wednesday' as 'vednısday'so this mispronunciation of word became a part of my pronunciation,too.Another example is from my university life.The word'real'is used by everyone and as if no synonym of it is absent ,everybody uses 'real'.One day our teacher started to use the word'authentic'instead of 'real',a couple of days later,one student was explaining one thing and I heard the word 'authentic' in her explanation.That can be another example of LENA project in foreign language learning.I have a 3-year-old cousin,she has no sister or brother and her mother always speaks everything with her.As she hears lot,she produces lot and her speech and use of language is adult-like.
In foreign language learning,communication has great importance,by speaking a lot,using different words and structures in their speeches,teachers can help their students.When synonym of a word is used instead of repeating the same word,the passive vocabulary level the students have will decrease,as well.

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Anonymous said...

As i understood, LENA project helps parents monitor the developmantal stages of their children and gives chance to bring them up as creative individuals. It is very useful because children grow up in healthy way. In this programme, children are exposed to language and they acquire the competence in that language. So, it can be said that children who grow up by this programme can manage the difficulties in any language easier than any other children. Furthermore, it is possible for parents to give the neccessary skills to the child in respect of its developmental age.That is, they know what to give in which age to their child by the help of this project.
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Anonymous said...

Language acquisition course basically deals with natural language environment. That environment surrounds child whether we intentionally form it or not. In that point, Lenababy project helps parents to take professional support.Statistics show that the more word used in the environment of child, the more intellectual development is supplied. That scientific fact is the aim of Lenababy project.related to lenababy project,we can use more complex words in our classrooms to provide our students more cognitive meanings.we can also monitor and guide the language acquisition process.furthermore,we may check the level of real time information.

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Anonymous said...

what ı understood from LENA ıs that however much parent speak wıth theır chıldren especıally when they are learnıng language new,chıldren can acquıre language as same as the lımıt theır parents talk wıth them.so ın that case when ı speak only ın englısh ın my classroom and encourage my students to speak ın englısh,theır language acquısıtıon wıll develope accordıng to ıt,an they canlearn more easıly3231060009

Anonymous said...

LENA PROJECT focuses on the importance of imitation and conversation.Even english parents' babies cannot speak without being spoken so how we can expect our students to speak english while they dont hear any english words from their teachers.You may think that grammar is more important and people around the students want u to teach grammar rules to students inorder to make them to be ready for exams but when they grow up and begin to work people who wanted u to teach grammar before will want them to speak like a native speaker we shouldnt forget that asbeing turkish native speaker we didnt acquıre grammatical rules firstly we spoke turkish and then learned grammar at school
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Anonymous said...

LENA is a project which deals with the effects of environment on language development of babies.ıt says that if a child expose to more vocabulary in his/her critical period,he/she will have higher IQ than the other children.ın other words,quantity of words the child hears until the age of 4 is very important for language development.
in foreign language learning,the basic concept is the same.we can also see the effects of class environment on language learners.for instance,when I was in secondary school,I always used to write'for example'to give an example.but day by day,we were get accustomed to use 'for instance'instead of it.Because our teacher was always using it in the classroom.another example is if a teacher use L2 in the class,the studens also will stop to use his native language.the more they speak in l2,the more their language will develop.as we are candidates of teacher,we must definitely use the target language in the class and students speak.
in my highschool,we learnt german in 4 hours in a week.but we know only basic sentences such as 'danke schon' ,wie get es dir' or else...in contrast,my best friend who went to germany with his family can fluently speak it.because,input is important.He heard more vocabulary than me and the people around him also spoke german everyday.
as a teacher,you should use suıtable techniques for the acquısıtıon of l2language
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Anonymous said...

LENA project is about the importance of the environment on babies'acquısıtıon of language.it supports that if a baby hears more vocabulary from birth to the age of 4,his/her IQ will be higher.
ıt is also the same in foreign language learning.the theacher should use real objects such as a tape recorder or a video in the class.so,students will hear the correct pronouncıatıons of the target language.day by day they will not have difficulty in pronounciatıon and won't make any mistakes.for example,the theacher who always says'maunteyn in stead of mauntın(I wrote ıt as ıt is read in turkish) will prevent his students and they will also pronounce ıt the same.
another example is when you go to the grand bazaar,you will see that the sellers speak English fluently.because,they are engaged in language everyday,they hear and speak regularly without regarding rules of grammar.I mean input is high and they are obligatory to communıcate with native speakers to gain money.likewise,listening activities can be useful in the class.Even if the students hear some unknown words and do not know the meanings,they will remind of them when they encounter with the same words.And the more she/he encounters with them in different sentences,the more they will use the new words in their speech.
indeed,the teacher should always use the target language in the class.even if students don t understand in the beginning,later they will begin not only understand but also speak.
all the examples above show that the envırontment around the learner is quıte crucial for the development of language.
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Anonymous said...

there are two important key words here: an exact age and more input. child's input level effect his IQ level. more input more intalligent! moreover there is time limit, 4 age. that project is especially for L1 acquisition but we can also make use of it in our class. our students will be older than 4:-) but we can give more input to our students. before taking this lesson I was thinking that it is not meaningfull to speak english in the class as ss won't understand me but I don't think like that now. I will try to speak english as much as possible. and as I am not a native I will also make them listen native speakers from casettes or videos.
more they listen native more native like they will be..
01

Anonymous said...

there are two important key words here: an exact age and more input. child's input level effect his IQ level. more input more intalligent! moreover there is time limit, 4 age. that project is especially for L1 acquisition but we can also make use of it in our class. our students will be older than 4:-) but we can give more input to our students. before taking this lesson I was thinking that it is not meaningfull to speak english in the class as ss won't understand me but I don't think like that now. I will try to speak english as much as possible. and as I am not a native I will also make them listen native speakers from casettes or videos.
more they listen native more native like they will be..
01

Anonymous said...

there are two important key words here: an exact age and more input. child's input level effect his IQ level. more input more intalligent! moreover there is time limit, 4 age. that project is especially for L1 acquisition but we can also make use of it in our class. our students will be older than 4:-) but we can give more input to our students. before taking this lesson I was thinking that it is not meaningfull to speak english in the class as ss won't understand me but I don't think like that now. I will try to speak english as much as possible. and as I am not a native I will also make them listen native speakers from casettes or videos.
more they listen native more native like they will be..
01

Anonymous said...

LENA project aims parents to make aware of the importance of using the language around the child in developmental stage and exposure the child to the target language as possible as it is.
in my opinion,it is a great chance to take parents attention to their child's language development and become aware of whether he is in correct order to produce the sound,the word.etc or whether they are enough active to help the child to speak.
as well as for parents,it is also useful for us as a language teacher since we can teach the target language by exposure them to the language as possible as and they can acquire language more easiky through imitation and enhance their knowledge of words,sounds or other linguistic implications needed for language learning.The more they are exposed to the language,the more easily they acquire the language.

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Anonymous said...

The aim of lena is to monitoring ,examining the child's language environment.I think the most attracting feature is to analyze the language age as chronologically and report them.At the end, we can get true results.Also by using it at home is very confortable and confidental.Ithink we should subscribe to Lena immediately to aware of ourselves .Ilooked this site and saw some comment about Lena.There are positive comments, so we can understand from this it is very useful for us to build our child's exposure to language as friendly.
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Anonymous said...

lena project is helpful for child's language development by providing reports of child's ability on language. Meanwhile parents and their children will be in a real communication. parents should consider that the more they talk the more their children will comprehend the language that they hear. the lena project tries to work on babies abilities while they are growin up. their IQ will be effected especially at early ages so the environment that they in is important. after parents the teachers are also have a role in their life. mostly at school children get knowledge about the language that they speak. grammatical rules, forms and functions of language. then when it comes to learn a second language �t's hard to learn the rules etc. there should be real communication and contexts because just to learn all the rules of a second language is not enough in order to speak a child should know where and how to speak. teaching how and where to speak is a task of a teacher. while parents speak native language in order to teach to their children teachers shoul talk with their students in L2.

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Anonymous said...

LENA (Language Environment Analysis) is a kind of project that focus on the importance of environment when acquaring/learning language.Its basis is imitation and enivironmental effects.It says the more vocabulary a child hears, the more (S)he will learn.It also teaches "turn taking" in the conversation.
In my opinion,the methods of LENA can be used in classrooms very effectivly.I mean if the teachers use language much,his students will use it much,too.While speaking the students will also learn turn takings.Of course,the variaty of words in classroom will effect the lexical knowledge of students,too.
Teachers can control the language of his students by the help of LENA.And they can criticise themselves if he/she can teach enough words,competence.In other words,we should monitor and examine the students' language environment as a teacher to realy teach them any languages.

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Anonymous said...

The awareness of parents on their child’s acquisition of languge has a great importance on the child’s future life,I think.As their language and their pesonality with their IQ level are shaped between the years 1 and 4 .Their parents’ awareness and their attitudes according to this will raise the inputs and this will cause more positive outputs.In my opinion LENA Project is a great chance of children and is a good step on language acquisition.With this project children-parents relationship will change into a more meaningful process.Parents will also learn how to care with their children and when there are some errors they will change their attitudes and continue more carefully.However,it is very posssible that only a small group of children will see the benefits of LENA Project ,as many families think that it is very surprising for a small child to understand and there is no need to talk to them.

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Anonymous said...

LENA is system which monitoring language Assessment in a Natural Environment. Parents that have been desperately searching for answers and a way to measure and improve their child's language development can have LENA (Language ENvironment Analysis).It is good example for using more and differently words in classroom. Using LENA child’s IQ and theirs vocabulary size can be changed a lot.You can get real time information - hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly - and take control of your child's development.
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Anonymous said...

As Russian scientist Lev Vgotsky said, the influence with the environment has a huge role in acquiring a language. In fact, it is probably the most important component for it. However, it is difficult to have a healty measurement like in the project Lena in foreign language classes. Therefore, teachers have to speak in the target language when they are with their students, developing conversations and beeing good observers are also necessary.

Lena shouldn’t be followed just in the class; if students could come together out of the class too, it would be for their benefits. Project Lena can become fun and faster if the families are also attend into the project.

Thus the kids who are between 0 and 6 years old don’t have time and beeing in the classroom problems. They learn best both the native language and other languages at that range of age as we had in the last lesson.

Consequently, Project Lena could be followed only if students take the responsibility on both success and failure as well as the teachers.

Özge KAVAK
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Anonymous said...

according to the lena project the aim is "to help parents easily monitor and measure their child's language environment and development.to help them to track their child's language developmental age compared to his or her chronological age.to report the number of adult words and conversational turns between the parent and their child to help give clarity to conversations with their clinician or pediatrician.to get real time information hourly,daily,weekly or monthly and take control of their child's development."
we can use of this project in our classes.the more we use language in our classes,the more our students comprehend and they can get familiar to that language,because they are exposed to language.if we don't speak in english in the class,they never dare to speak.for example when they come across a tourist on street,they can't even tell him where the süleymaniye mosque is.(like us).
according to vigotsky,"social environment is important to children's development because it can accelerate or decelerate development."in one research done in America,when twins are borned,they are adopted by different parents.one is brougt up in rich family and all family members are well-educated.on the other hand another child is brought up in very poor family,and none of the family members is educated.the language and words which are used by families are different.and after 20 years twins come together and the differences can be seen very easily.the child who grows up in rich family talks about everything from operas to tennis...another one can't understand what he talks about.
in conclusion,how much we use language affects our chilldren's development.because of this we should be careful about using english words a lot in our lessons.

Anonymous said...

according to the lena project the aim is "to help parents easily monitor and measure their child's language environment and development.to help them to track their child's language developmental age compared to his or her chronological age.to report the number of adult words and conversational turns between the parent and their child to help give clarity to conversations with their clinician or pediatrician.to get real time information hourly,daily,weekly or monthly and take control of their child's development."
we can use of this project in our classes.the more we use language in our classes,the more our students comprehend and they can get familiar to that language,because they are exposed to language.if we don't speak in english in the class,they never dare to speak.for example when they come across a tourist on street,they can't even tell him where the süleymaniye mosque is.(like us).
according to vigotsky,"social environment is important to children's development because it can accelerate or decelerate development."in one research done in America,when twins are borned,they are adopted by different parents.one is brougt up in rich family and all family members are well-educated.on the other hand another child is brought up in very poor family,and none of the family members is educated.the language and words which are used by families are different.and after 20 years twins come together and the differences can be seen very easily.the child who grows up in rich family talks about everything from operas to tennis...another one can't understand what he talks about.
in conclusion,how much we use language affects our chilldren's development.because of this we should be careful about using english words a lot in our lessons.

6:38 PM

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