Language in Educational Childrens Television Shows

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Introduction This paper is a study about language in educational childrens television shows. I primarily examined three different television shows across three different channels. The reasoning for this study was to show the features used to teach and reinforce language as well as determining what difference, if any, the channel had on educational value especially public television versus cable or satellite channels. This topic was chosen because television is a large part of the modern childs life, and as a future educator I am interested in its effects. My hypothesis is that regardless of channel the television shows will have the same level of educational value. Methods I looked at three different television channels: PBS, Disney Junior, and Noggin, which is primarily owned by Nickelodeon. These channels were chosen because they are the three main childrens television channels aimed at the preschool age group. Within these channels I watched a variety of shows but focused mainly on Sesame Street from PBS, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse from Disney Junior, and The Wonder Pets from Noggin. I narrowed it down to the previous three shows because they each feature an ensemble cast, are geared toward the same age group, and are not marketed towards only boys or only girls. To ensure that the three shows ultimately chosen were the best shows to exemplify the language features I was examining I also watched a variety of other shows from PBS, Disney Junior, and Noggin. The other shows I watched from PBS were Cyber Chase, The Cat in the Hat, Arthur, and Clifford. Further shows I examined from Disney Junior were Doc McStuffins, Sofia the First, and Handy Manny. The additional shows I looked at on Noggin were Dora the

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Explorer, Blues Clues, and Veggie Tales. While some of these shows were very educational I chose not to focus on them because they did not fit one of the other criteria I was looking at. When I watched the three shows I kept notes of the different dialects and speech features used by the characters. I also recorded the use of repetition in each of the shows as well as their use of music as a teaching tool. To make keeping records easier and less repetitive I examined a two to ten minute segment from each show at each time. Also to keep things somewhat even I took notes on three non musical segments and two musical segments from each of the three shows. For the non musical segments I looked mainly at repetition but also noted any unusual speech features. For the musical segments I looked at repetition and rhyming. The show I examined was Sesame Street from PBS. This show has a wide cast of male and female characters both human and Muppet. There are also frequent celebrity guest stars. One of the non musical segments I looked at a clip just over two minutes long with Jason Bateman and Elmo exploring the word comfort. In this short time the word comfort or one of its forms was used 17 times. For the second non musical piece from Sesame Street I examined at a 5 minute long Hunger Games parody segment about patterns and self discipline. In the segment the phrase Stop and Think was used three times and the word pattern was used five times. The final non musical segment I chose from Sesame Street was about Arachnids and was just over one and a half minutes long. In the clip the word arachnid was used eleven times. It was clearly explained what an arachnid is.

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For the first Sesame Street musical number I chose a song about pride. In the song some form of the word pride was used eight times. Also almost every line followed an a/b rhyme scheme. The song also explained what the word pride meant and gave numerous examples. The second song from Sesame Street I examined was called 1,2,3,4 and was about counting. Each line ended with the word four or a word that rhymed with four. The word counting or count was used sixteen times in the two and a half minute song. The Disney Junior show I focused on was Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. The main cast consists of Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Daisy and Goofy. Some episodes include other characters from traditional Mickey Mouse cartoons or some made just for this show. In the first segment I watched called Aye Aye Captain Mickey there was evidence of different accents. Mickey, Minnie, Daisy and Goofy have a more standard American dialect while Professor Von Drake has an Austrian accent. Donald Duck also has an extreme speech impediment with most of his lines being difficult to understand. Repetition is used in this segment as well with the phrase aye aye being used multiple times. The second Mickey Mouse Clubhouse nonmusical segment I focused on featured Minnie and Daisy and their bow shop. They have standard accents but the customer that comes in had a more stereotypical upper class sound. Unlike the other segments this one did not feature noticeable repetition. The final non musical segment I watched from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse featured Daisy and Minnie. The segment revolved around Minnie and Daisy running a pet salon and there was a lot of repetition when talking to the pets. They also repeated the phrase oh Tools when they

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needed the toolbox gizmo to deliver them a tool. Because Minnie and Daisy were the two characters the accents and dialect were standard American English. A song about bubbles was the first musical segment I watched from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. The song had extremely repetitive lyrics with most of them being bubble bubble down down. The song also had a typical a/b rhyme scheme. The second musical segment I focused on from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse was The Hotdog Song which plays at the end of most episodes. The song features a large amount of repetition mainly saying the word hotdog over and over. The song also rhymes. It is interesting to note that this segment is also meant to be interactive with the children watching dancing along with the characters. For the Noggin channel I watched The Wonder Pets. The show centers around three classroom pets, a guinea pig named Winnie, a turtle named Tuck, and a duckling named Ming Ming who has a lisp. Because each episode of this show is only twelve minutes long and includes music and nonmusical parts in one episode I decided to focus only on one episode instead of multiple segments like from the longer shows. The episode I watched was called The Wonder Pets Save The Rock Lobster and it begins with the theme of the show which is very repetitive. The pets sing about a ringing phone and an animal in trouble with both phrases being repeated multiple times by each character. Ming Ming also has her catch phrase of This is serious repeated many times throughout the show. Another phrase that is repeated throughout is Whats gonna work? Teamwork!. Discussion

Language in Educational Childrens Television Shows

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From my own observations the trend seems to be that the PBS show Sesame Street is the most repetitive of the three shows I focused on. In addition Sesame Street covered the most themes, touching on everything from emotions to math skills. Mickey Mouse Clubhouse seemed the most interactive with the characters actually pausing for responses from the viewer. Also The Hotdog Song sequence encourages children to get up and dance with the characters on the screen. The Wonder Pets is also very repetitive but does not cover a broad range of topics choosing mainly to stick with rescuing baby animals from precarious situations. The show was also not as interactive as Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. The article The Beginnings of Sesame Street Research gives background on how Sesame Street was founded under a major grant given to create educational childrens television in order to improve childrens test scores. The article goes on to say that as the years of Sesame Street went on the focus of the show expanded from simple curriculum based topics to social areas as well. This is not to say that Sesame Street disregarded its original curriculum but rather found ways to incorporate it in to lessons about other topics such as self esteem. (Palmer & Fisch). This explains why Sesame Street covers so many topics in its episodes. The Handbook of Children and the Media also praises Sesame Street. Studies have shown that those children who watch Sesame Street are generally less aggressive and more tolerant of multiculturalism. However the book also points out that in some cases Sesame Street widened the learning gap between social classes with those people whose children could watch T.V regularly getting better test results than those who didnt watch T.V. or only saw it rarely. (Singer & Singer, 2001).

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Sesame Street, and much of the educational programs it helped inspire such as the other two shows I watched, has been proven to help children deal with social issues and improve on test scores. With that being said the question is does it help children with language skills? The answer is maybe. Studies have shown that curriculum based programming has long term benefits for children including language development (Anderson, 1998). Rices earlier work also found this to be true. This points to educational childrens T.V. being constructive to language skills. Another study done with three and five year olds also shows that television can help with language acquisition. During the fast mapping stages of preschool aged children the participants were able to learn new words after viewing a 15 minute television program featuring the new words in a repetitive fashion (Rice & Woodsmall, 1988). This study is a great example of why small amounts of educational television can be good for young children. However the other side of the research finds that television, even educational programs, is detrimental to children under the age of two. Rice and Anderson both came to this conclusion as well as numerous other researchers. Having the television on in the background is not helpful for children under 24 months because it is distracting from the other important activities going on. The problem is that with all the research in support of educational television for children some parents do not understand the detriments it causes for infants and replace interacting time with children with television time. (DeLoache, 2009). Babies learn language from interacting with other humans. The only time when a television might be helpful to a babys language acquisition is if it is the alternative to zero interaction with humans and no other stimuli (Rice, 1983).

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The knowledge that childrens educational television programs is beneficial for preschool aged children can be used to promote funding for public television as my personal observation seems to point that out as the most educational form. It can also be a useful tool for parents wishing to improve their childs test scores in a fun and enjoyable manner. Likewise the knowledge that children under the age of two should not watch T.V. or even spend much time with the television on as background noise should also be shared. Parents should know about this factor and hopefully adjust their lifestyles to be more supportive of their childrens language skills. To further validate my observations more research needs to be done about the newer childrens television channels such as Disney Junior and Noggin. Most research still revolves around the standard of PBS and the newer more popular shows like Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and The Wonder Pets are not given much consideration. With cable and satellite television being so widespread as well as internet television I think it is important to expand the research to cover more than just public television so that possibly all childrens television shows could become as effective a teaching tool. Conclusion In conclusion my own personal observations were not necessarily backed up by the articles I found. More research needs to be done in the area before it can be known for sure or not if my observations were correct. In the meanwhile my speculations about Sesame Street being highly educational and beneficial were correct. Personal Reflections

Language in Educational Childrens Television Shows

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The aspects of language I was interested in looking at such as dialects and repetition were evident in the shows I watched. However as I dove more in to the research side of things I noticed that the focus of other people looking at language wasnt looking at language features but language acquisition. After I realized that I tried to bring that mindset to my research while still keeping to what interested me. As a result I was not able to draw any crystal clear conclusions from my study but I feel they are a good stepping point for other research. In the future I would like to see more language diversity on childrens television shows. There are many different dialects in American English not to mention the rising number of children coming from other language groups. It would be nice and I believe beneficial to show more of these language differences to children at a young age so they are more used to it and more accepting of it when they are older. Also I feel it would help in social issues as well because being subjected to a broader version of English would give them one less reason to single a person out for being different. I grew up watching PBS every day after school. Every once in a while we would have some form of satellite T.V. for a few months or so, usually during football season, so my dad could watch more sports. I remember watching Sesame Street as a kid and I watched shows similar to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and The Wonder Pets. I was surprised that they were still entertaining to me as a college student. Not as entertaining as they would have been if I were a child, but they still had interesting enough plot lines and relatable characters. Of course by the end of the project I was very tired of repetitive singing and cartoons but Sesame Street stayed the least annoying to me. I think that was because they are constantly adding in new segments and refreshing old ones.

Language in Educational Childrens Television Shows

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As a future educator I feel like this project led me to some really great information. The age group I want to teach is preschool or kindergarten, so Ill be dealing with children that fit in to the pocket the studies focused on. This will affect the type of programming I will show in the classroom as well as allowing me to make better recommendations to parents and other educators. The additional knowledge about children and language acquisition will be especially helpful as the students will be in the fast-mapping stage and learning new words daily.