Carol Chomsky facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Carol Chomsky
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| Born |
Carol Doris Schatz
July 1, 1930 |
| Died | December 19, 2008 (aged 78) Lexington, Massachusetts, U.S.
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| Education | |
| Occupation | Linguist |
| Spouse(s) | |
| Children | 3, including Aviva Chomsky |
Carol Doris Chomsky (born Schatz; July 1, 1930 – December 19, 2008) was an American linguist and education expert. She studied how children learn language, especially how they understand grammar.
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Carol Chomsky's Early Life
Carol Doris Schatz was born in Philadelphia on July 1, 1930. She married Noam Chomsky in 1949. They had known each other since she was five and he was seven. Carol's mother was a teacher at a Hebrew school where Noam's father was the principal. Carol earned a bachelor's degree in French from the University of Pennsylvania in 1951.
The couple spent some time living in HaZore'a, a kibbutz (a type of community farm) in Israel. Carol was interested in learning skills like mechanics or driving a tractor. In 1953, they returned to the United States.
Carol Chomsky's Career in Linguistics
Carol Chomsky earned her doctoral degree in linguistics from Harvard University in 1968. She decided to get this degree to make sure she could support herself. This was important because her husband, Noam, was actively against the Vietnam War. He faced the risk of being sent to jail for his protests.
Understanding How Children Learn Language
Chomsky's most famous book is The Acquisition of Syntax in Children From 5 to 10 (1969). In this book, she explored how children learn the hidden rules of grammar in their native language. She also looked at how they use these rules to understand more complex sentences as they grow older.
Before her research, many scientists thought children finished learning grammar by age five. However, Chomsky's studies showed that children continue to develop skills to understand complicated sentence structures even after that age.
Developing Reading Skills with Repeated Reading
In the late 1970s, Carol Chomsky created a method called "repeated reading." This method helped children improve their reading ability. Children would read a text silently while listening to a recording of the same text. They would repeat this process until they could read the text smoothly without the recording.
Research showed that reading a text four times with a recording could greatly improve reading fluency for most children. More than 100 studies have looked at this technique. Most of these studies found significant improvements in how fast children read and how well they recognized words.
Teaching at Harvard
Carol Chomsky worked as a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She taught there from 1972 until 1997.
Death of Carol Chomsky
Carol Chomsky passed away from cancer on December 19, 2008. She was 78 years old and died at her home in Lexington, Massachusetts.
