Film Review of "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day"

Miguel Arteta’s film Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day is a fun, family oriented film that should be enjoyed accompanied with plenty of smiles. This film is great partly because of the wonderful cast including Steve Carell and Jennifer Garner who play busy parents with opposite gender roles. Similar to the modern day family, the Cooper family is a busy household that includes four children, Alexander, Anthony, Emily, and Baby Trevor. Considering their busy lives, Alexander seems to go practically unnoticed in comparison to the other kids and the busy lives of his parents. Another student stole Alexander’s spotlight by having his birthday party on the same day, adding to the bad day that Alexander was having. As revenge against his oblivious family, Alexander makes a wish for all of them to have at least one horrible day, which comes true and brings along a full day of chaos.

 In the film there is tons of color within the wardrobe using similar colors of orange on each character throughout one day, and then using different shades of blue the following day. The wardrobe in this film is well thought out and comes together nicely especially because the four children are dressed in similar colors while the parents are in shades of gray or khaki. There is use of special effects within the movie particularly at the end during Alexander’s Australian themed birthday party. All of the lighting in the film was very realistic especially in the Asian restaurant that the whole family attended for different reasons. The scene was depicted as both a romantic and low light area as most “cook in front of you” restaurants are.

        
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day has many young actors that the regular movie goer hasn’t seen before along with well-known parents played by Jennifer Garner and Steve Carell. The main adult actors bring together the whole film with a consistency and humor that is familiar and genuine. Dylan Minnette who plays the oldest brother Anthony consumed by teenage life and his popular girlfriend. His character was realistic for the most part despite in the beginning of the film when his younger brother needs his support, Anthony instantly blew him off and made him feel horrible. Kerris Dorsey who plays Emily, Alexander’s older sister is a hilarious character that is obsesses with theatre and has a few quirks about her. Kerris Dorsey also has more acting experience than the other kids in well-known films such as Moneyball and in the television show “Brothers and Sisters” from 2006-2011.

This film is based off of the book “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day” by Judith Viorst first published in 1972. The film was an adaptation of this children’s book which did include no dessert for his birthday as well as waking up with gum in his hair. While exiting the car to get a ride to school from a friend and her mother, Alexander tripped on a sprinkler in his front yard also similar to the book when he is described as tripping on a skateboard. The film ends with Alexander getting his dream party which is Australian themed just as it is in the book, and the family becomes less interested with their hobbies and obligations, becoming a whole united family. This film should be valued for the themes it provides in a day and age where technology and distractions are unavoidable, showing that a good time with your family is better than being with people who do not want the best for you. Lastly, what should be devalued is bullying; something that has been going on for ages. The film shows how kids are bullied using technology, and how even though it may ruin your day, there are better things right around the corner. 

Final Case Study of 2 1/2 year old Logan Language Acquisition

(see my previous post about specifics for my study)

My Plan:

• Get Logan to incorporate the word "No" into his vocabulary
• Teach Logan new words, those new words may be incorporated as we go along with the study.
• New word repeat practice in different settings, on different days, during a different time of day.

Starting off, I had Logan introduce himself, as well as his age. 

One of the first things he did was play a game using a new word he learned: "Zombie(s)". The chairs...and eventually myself became the zombies. As long as he is using a new word, I can take a hit!

Logan was struggling with asking to get onto the couch, so I had him repeat "up please". You can hear, the first time he says "up" he does a little bit of a grunt after (a common occurrence within Logan's every day speech. He uses it to establish something he is trying to say or get across. That grunt at the end makes his statement established. 

In this video, I have captured an example of the mother translating for the child. In this case, I helped Logan add into his short story the word "sting", in which you will see in the next few videos. 

After teaching Logan to use 3 words because his use of telegraphics has been increasing, he can now tell his story and convey what happened. He says this phrase clear enough so anyone who hears it will know what he is saying. 

For our next activity, I decided to test Logan's ability to distinguish letters. Considering children remembers letters on places they commonly go, I decided to choose "K" for Kohls. After some time, Logan finally found the K. After re-watching the video of himself afterwards, he found the "K" right away. 

During this time, Logan was struggling with understanding the concept of naming objects in the same way people have names. When I asked Logan what the name of the squirrel was, he distinguished it as being from the Easter Bunny (which it was).

Reverting back to what Logan and I had discussed before about the bee sting, he remembered the story again and used the word sting each time. I think this is a great word to implement because it is one he can easily pronounce.

While showing me his new Darth Vader shoes, I asked Logan to distinguish what color they were. Logan usually knows his colors, but they maybe have not been practiced recently. He seemed to struggle with the naming of color.

Many times when Logan doesn't know the word for something, he will agree with what you are saying by answering "Yea". I taught him the word for fence, and he seemed to use it. I hope I will have more luck in the future days by getting him to use this word. 

Logan refers to me (aunt) as Yaya. Here, I asked him if he knew what the swing was. He knows this word and uses it frequently, but I had him build upon that request by using more than one word. 

His most common use of telegraphics is when he asks someone to push him on the swing, up high. I taught him here to say "Go up high". 

I've explained in the description of my Case Study the way mothers and family can assist with language comprehension. Here, Logan commonly tells stories about the garbage man/truck--one of his favorite activities during the day. As you can see, I know what he is trying to say, and I assist him in conveying what he wants. Afterwards, we worked on saying more to his garbage man stories. 

This was a very exciting documentation for me; Logan repeated a word I said without any prompting. He cannot say the full word but only two parts of it. This was great progress in him learning to repeat words that are longer than words he commonly says. 

This word Logan was saying was a bit of a challenge for me. I saw where he was pointing, but based upon what he was saying, I couldnt connect it to any real word. After talking to my sister/his mother-- she informed me that he was saying "dirty" referring to the wood that had been dirty. This is a word that we will further work on on order to pronounce the "d" and "t" sounds. 

Teaching Logan the uses of the word "no" was an interesting task. Instead of using the grunt "un uhhhh" as his form of saying "no", he actually said the word "no" when I re-asked the question. I see a lot of potential for him to start using the word "no", mostly because it takes a shorter amount of time than grunting.

Once again, Logan remembered days later to say the phrase "bumble bee sting". Progress is made!

 Logan learned a new word after I could tell he was struggling to find the means to say what the object was. Logan learning the word "camera" is important because he always wants to look at videos of himself on it. making the struggle to ask to do so, easier. Usually he will point to the object and say "me".

Once again, the word comfortable is re discovered.

While watching one of his favorite shows, he would always laugh at a specific character, that being the chinchilla. My attempt at getting him to repeat it was good, but the second time, no such luck.

While teaching him how to say a new word--butterfly (based off of an object he saw), I also reinforced the other new word "comfortable".

I noticed that teaching him words while he was in a calm state was the best for his memory. I then introduced another word, flag. He sees this object daily right by where he swings, reinforcing the probability of him remembering and using the word.

  

Logan's new phrase has been "right now" either in the form of a statement of a question. In the first video, you can see how he repeats that he wants to go to the park (when it was too wet and he could not), which is sadly frustrating. Also, since he speaks through his nose, he cannot say the "p" sound which gets confused with the "f" sound for fruit snacks. In the second video, he tries to tell me that he wants me, his brother, and his mom; all to go to the park.

This section of my vlog is where Logan is in a frustrated state, and the sound of the grunt is after each statement, used for reinforcement.  The frustration may also increase from not being able to enunciate the words the way he hears others speak, so the lag in getting his point across also creates possible discouragement within himself.


Throughout this Video Blog/Journal with Logan, I have learned what new words are the easiest to incorporate, the hardest because of the way he speaks through his nose, having trouble with glottal pronunciation. His use of holographic terms is very low, while telegraphics is high and increasing into using between 3-6 words in a statement. I am proud of my work and I plan on using my research to help mothers or family members how to get their child to progress exponentially based upon environment whether is is physical location, people around, time of day, and even if they are hungry or have to go to the bathroom. I definitely believe Logan's knowledge will incorporate the new words that I taught him as well as repeating new phrases that both parents speak. By his third birthday in October, I hope to do an update. Thank you for reading my blog and research (which is in a previous post).

I Are a Cat

Language Assistance in Childhood Development: Two and a Half Year Old, Logan

I will be preparing a blog/vlog about my nephew Logan. He is a 2 and a half year old very social and interactive toddler. I have taught him new words and phrases up to this point, but I am going to try to get him to incorporate telegraphics and implement the word "no" into his daily vocabulary. I will also focus on getting Logan to stop repeating phrases over and over when he wants something. For example, "chuck-e-cheese now" and making a specific grunt sound after statements. 
Logan also tells mini stories about his day, may it be months ago, days ago, or a week ago. I will count the amount of times he repeats a story(s).  The use of technology Logan uses on a daily basis is staggering. I am going to make sure he "uses his words" versus gestures and one word answers to get his point across by using an adult (family member) to translate his story. 

I am choosing to do this particular study to help parents understand how to help their young kids to learn and use language daily without the help of the parent dis ciphering/translating for them. 

Parents need to encourage toddler age children to use language that can be understood by most people, instead of being specific to their common language environment. Hence, accommodating the child by making language within the household "loose" instead of enforced, should be something parents focus on. Not only will they be able to understand their own child, but if their child needs something, they can effectively communicate with adults and older kids without so much confusion between understanding contextual evidence and gestures toddlers commonly use.

 

My Sources for this Case Study:  (Accompanied with Two Annotated Bibliographies)
Mother's Speech to Children Learning Language

Snow, Catherine E. Child Development, Vol. 43 No. 2 (June, 1972), pp. 549-565. Wiley and Society for Research in Child Development.  McGill University. Web. 22, April 2014.

Catherine E. Snow describes the importance of language acquisition and how it can be assessed in young children, based upon the type of language and the amount of dialogue they hear on a daily basis. The speech children are able to hear is exactly what they are able to learn, similar to the problems "feral child" Genie experienced. Within speech, the stutters, grunts, and also mistakes. Experiments
were performed in order to investigate:
(a) whether the speech of mothers to children just learning to talk differed from the speech of those
same mothers to older children
(b) whether speech-style modifications for
young children depended on the presence of the child with the mother, as
opposed to the mother's mere intention to address a 2-year-old
(c) whether the difficulty of the tasks for the child affected the mother's production of
speech-style modifications
(d) whether non-mothers differed from mothers in their ability to modify their speech for young children.

This research/article seems credible considering the 4 different tracks of studying the mother and child and language use. This article is considered to be slightly outdated since it is from 1972, with studies done in the late 60's. This study was especially helpful because it covered all the bases I was looking for such as : Intonation, incidence of third-person pronouns, and repetitions. The source also provides tables of evidence which is helpful to understand the study as a period over time. The main comparison was between a 2 year old and a 10 year old. The most useful thing I have gathered from the article is to get a 2 year old to want to speak, you have to find a meaningful verb for the child to want to use.  If I were to ever do another child study, I would definitely use this article again to validate my case-study research.

Toddler's Acquisition of Self

Pipp-Siegel, Sandra & Foltz, Carol. "Toddlers' Acquisition of Self/Other Knowledge: Ecological and Interpersonal Aspects of Self and Other". Child Development, Vol. 68, No. 1 (February, 1997), pp. 69-79. Web. 26 April, 2014.

"Toddler's Acquisition of Self" describes a research study that examined in the context  toddlers' of knowing others. The researchers describe, "[T]wo studies were designed to test whether toddlers' self-knowledge was different from their knowledge of others (e.g.,mother and inanimate object) or whether toddlers' knowledge of persons (e.g., self and mother) was different from their knowledge of objects." The concept of "self" is described in the way that a child can see themselves as a part of the world, while on the other hand, an infant cannot grasp the concept of self--they just are. By comparing themselves to objects and people to objects, it is easier to differentiate if the toddler does understand concept of self. The researchers also asked formulated questions such as "are you hungry/thirsty?" Most toddlers passed this area.

I find this study interesting, but almost too specific to use as a relevant source. I disagree with the aspect of the study that considers toddlers between 12-24 months. If I could change this study, I would make the age range from 18 months- 3 years. Language and comprehension is being built especially during the age of two. There were gender comparisons in comprehension studies, but I believe there should be further research in ethnicity/race aspects where language also may have a factor in language comprehension.

Before he was old enough to speak, he demonstrates the ability to understand questions and decode messages.

 

The first funny word I taught Logan was "booty".

Feral Child, Genie

             

Genie is a unique person; she was neglected and abused by her parents, and never taught how to speak. Genie was taken under the wings of numerous linguists, eventually learning new words each week. Studying Genie was an important way to gain further insight into the processes controlling language acquisition skills and linguistic development. Extensive observation of their new-found human subject enabled them to publish many works testing theories any hypotheses identifying critical periods during which humans learn to understand and use language.

If this situation were to happen again, I would suggest the linguists to prepare to study and work along with the "subject" for a longer period of time so funding doesn't run out. Also, since the subject would be from an abandoned household, being left by her favorite people that she has bonded with would be again traumatizing. The most important thing I would incorporate would to NEVER give the child back to the parent that caused this horrible condition and type of life. It is indeed no life for a child to live, with health issues along with not being able to communicate. As the "subject" learns more words and grows up, after learning how to speak for about 20 years or so, I would then try to get more information about her past. The child obviously needs a person or two to bond with in order to progress further and be excited to retain information. Hopefully this does not happen to any child, but with unstable parents as bad as Genie had, it is a sad occurrence. 

Should Programming be Considered a Foreign Language?

I believe language is the communication between people. I believe language was created in order to advance as a society and progress to create a better future. Language is a way people communicate, both verbal and non verbal, using body language and gestures. Language should be a dialogue, with either party having zero control or knowledge about the response of the other. There has to be a message that can be decoded and unraveled. Language also can be written and/or spoken to be considered a language. 

Scholars have had many discussions about whether Programming should be considered a language. I personally as an English Language student do not agree with those that believe it should be considered for a foreign language credit just as Spanish or French are. Language should be person to person, and also be able to be personal and unique. As much as I find Programming interesting and something I have learned a little bit of, it is more in the field of Math and Science if anything. I would even say that you use a different part of your brain when learning and retaining information on how to code. 

I learned something startling in class on Monday. American Sign Language was not allowed to be taken as a foreign language in some areas (at universities). I believe ASL is as unique and similar to learning any other language. ASL is versatile, personal, and fascinating. There is not a universal form of Sign Language, which makes learning it in other languages that much more challenging and intriguing. Sign Language also has a vast community, thus making others want to learn ASL and immerse themselves within the Deaf culture. 

People and Scholars need to stop letting their opinions get in the way of facts and evidence. Programming is not a language, it relies on the native language to operate. American Sign Language is indeed like other languages where it has a culture, community, and can be person to person.

Field Observation of Penny

As a student studying how to be a Linguist, I have since done an experiment with a one and a half year old. In the form of questions and statements, I tried to see how many words Penny would say along with the way on which she would say them. Shy at first, Penny only wanted to eat her Fruit Loops, so I asked her something easy. While holding out 2 different colored Fruit Loops, I asked her which one was blue and she grabbed the blue one which I would consider a success. Penny did not use any words, but the comprehension was indeed there.

She was indeed shy so there was not any babbling, mostly silence and looking around. Penny knows what a lion is, and it is also a yellow and orange figure, so she tends to overgeneralize calling "lion" to things that are the same color. She pronounces "lion" and "guy" flawlessly; most likely because they are short words and possibly her favorite objects in the group of toys she plays with. Penny also makes animal noises to associate with other animals such as a cat, lion, or dinosaur.

Let's preserve the "Baby Talk" language, no oppression!

One of the tough words Penny said almost perfect was alligator. She broke up the word into three different parts and said it slowly. Some of the letters in her phrases fade out at the end, such as "Kitty Cat", it turns into"Kitty Ca". Penny also conveys her knowledge of names of her toys by doing motions such as a monkey scratching under armpits motion, and a lion paw scratching motion.

As Penny became more comfortable with the class of college students, she started using telegraphics, for example, saying "a guy" and "a lion". She learned how to say "Peace Out" and rhino as well, which shows she was making progress towards the end of the 50 minute class period. When working with any toddler age child, there are things that factor into the results you are going to get. For example, if Penny ate breakfast, needs to go potty, the time of day, general mood, types of toys she had available, and the type of people in the audience as well as how they are seated. If she didn't get sick that morning, maybe she would feel better to be more cooperative, and also maybe she isn't on her "a-game" in the morning and the afternoon would be the best time to communicate.   My conclusion of this experiment is overall very good, Penny learned 2 new words/phrases, although she needs assistance with over-generalization and maybe more practice naming her toys to distinguish them that way instead of by color, and even then she would be able to incorporate telegraphics frequently.

Considering my nephew is two and a half, and commonly likes to use grunts and motions to explain what he is trying to convey, I would like to be able to teach him a few words that would be really useful in his daily dialogue. I would even consider getting him to use telegraphics on a common basis instead of him responding with one word at a time.