Carol Chomsky

High school (ages 12+)
Thinking & Learning

Name:

Date:

Step 1 · Read the article

Open the article and read it at the level above. Then answer the questions below in your own words.

https://smallwhale.org/articles/carol-chomsky

Write what each word means, using the article.

Do not copy the article. Write two things you learned, the way you would explain them to a friend.

Answers below are taken from the article’s stored facts, so they match what the student read.

1. When was Carol Chomsky born?July 1, 1930
2. When did Carol Chomsky die?December 19, 2008
3. What is the career?Linguist and education specialist
4. Who is Carol Chomsky?She is a smart scientist who studied how kids learn to talk. She was born July 1, 1930 and helped us understand language.
5. What did she discover about how children learn language?She found that kids have a built‑in ability to understand grammar and can make new sentences that follow rules, even if they make funny mistakes.

Child Language Acquisition: The scientific field dedicated to understanding the processes by which children learn to speak and comprehend language.
Linguistics: The scientific study of language, encompassing its structure, history, and the cognitive processes involved in its use.
Syntax: The set of rules, principles, and processes that govern the structure of sentences in a given language.
Overgeneralization: A common phenomenon in language acquisition where a child applies a learned grammatical rule to an exception, revealing their learning process.