Learning Concepts and Language

Learning concept and language is something that is not easy to understand. When we were young, it is easy to connect the concepts to the word itself. “I create a family of meanings by means of other concepts interrelated with that of dog, such as animal, furry, muzzle, paw, tail, and so forth.” (Pg 32 Paul and Elder 2005) When it comes to young kids, concepts are basically how you describe the word you are trying to tell. When we do that, we tend to over- generalize the word, and we could use the word “pets” can you imagine how long the list can go on under that word. I am not going to start on that list.
When I read the “Learning Concepts and Language” I totally said ah, yeah, that is exactly what I did. Sometimes I use concept to describe something such as appearance or something that I do not recall the word to. I am sure everybody has done that before. Language is one of the confusing stuff to understand especially when you have to describe it correctly; you cannot use wrong concepts because then you will give out wrong idea. “Unfortunately, nothing in the way we ordinarily learn to speak a language forces us to use concepts carefully, or prevents us from making unjustifiable inferences while engaged in their use.” (Pg 32 Paul and Elder)
When we learn a new word, we have to adjust our concepts to combine it with our new word and to make sure that our mind “digests” the word and understand it. When we happen to forget the word when we need it, we try to remember and use the concepts that we made some connections to the word itself. “Each word has a home in at least one established system of meanings. To learn the meaning of any one word in a system of words, we have to learn something of other (interwoven) meanings.” (Pg 33 Paul and Elder)
When it comes to critical thinking, it requires a lot of concepts to clash together in order to get the big picture. It is like you have to think the concepts out of the concept.