Manipulative Visual Language

What can MVL do ?

In one sentence
By playing with the MVL shapes, and doing the many enjoyable activities associated with them, students can develop a strong sense that nouns, verbs, prepositions, adjectives, conjunctions, pronouns, adverbs and articles are specific entities that have definite functions - with some, like verbs, having multiple functions - which contribute to meaning.

This appears to be a modest achievement, but for the many people who struggle with basic English grammar, it is a most significant one. The activities can be done at a very young age - starting with pre-schoolers - and this means that essential grammatical knowledge can be acquired in tandem with the earliest literacy activities of reading, writing, and story-telling.

Code breaking
MVL is a tool that provides visual and tactile models of the basic, but indispensable concepts of English grammar. Grammar is the code of language, and MVL is a simple code breaking device. Code breakers in war - real or Cold - intercept messages, which initially appear to be a pure jumble of letters. One of the basic tasks of the code breaker is to find patterns in this jumble. One cryptographer described teams of young people in the Second World War working over encrypted texts, trying 'to find its pulse.' Once the patterns are found, the cryptographers can move on and complete the deciphering process by using their existing knowledge of the language, and also their knowledge in general.

There are many children who see a page of text as a jumble of words and letters. MVL is a tool that helps them to break all these words down into different entities, each with its own function with regard to meaning, and to see patterns. Once this task is done, other approaches may of course be required to establish full meaning.

Exactly which grammatical concepts can students learn with MVL?
We can expect students to use MVL and to come to know the following:

• The function of nouns to name things and people.
• Nouns are subdivided into common nouns and proper nouns.
• Common nouns typically have an article, proper nouns typically do not.
• The function of possessive nouns.
• Adjectives describe people and things. The order of adjectives if 2 or 3 are being used.
• Verbs must be in every sentence. (No exceptions! In these early stages, anyway. )
• The functions of the verb to be in the following guises: is/was/were/are/will be.
• Simple verb tense, past, present and future.
• The verb have.
• Progressive or continuous verb tense, past, present and future.
• Passive voice past, present, and future.
• Perfect tense, past, present, and future.
• Negation of all these verb structures.
• Prepositions indicate position of persons and things.
• The function and placement of subject, object and possessive pronouns.
• Adverbs add information to a sentence.
• Conjunctions link a variety of these grammatical elements.
• The most common patterns - the word order - in English sentence structure. Subject Verb. Subject Compliment. Subject Verb Object. Subject Verb indirect Object direct Object. Prepositional phrases and adjectival phrases.
• The most basic question forms.

The preceding is a series of indispensable grammatical concepts, the very foundation of English. With MVL it is quite possible for a child with average intelligence to develop a strong intuitive sense of the real meaning of each of these concepts in the earliest grades. Many activities could easily start with pre-schoolers. It is now quite possible for example for deaf children to graduate from kindergarten with a strong sense of the role of the verb to be! 'Strong sense' meaning that they can see what a word like is does, what its function is, and why it is needed. If the activities possible with MVL are used in conjunction with reading and writing activities, then there is great hope that these students will attain high levels of literacy.

We speak here about the youngest children, because the earlier they get to acquire this knowledge the better. However, ANYONE of ANY AGE who still struggles with the grammatical concepts above would benefit from this visual approach to learning grammar. MVL has been used successfully in adult education programs.

What about more advanced grammatical concepts not mentioned so far?
MVL symbols and shapes can certainly be, and are used to analyze more complicated structures, but this becomes harder as the language becomes more sophisticated. This tool can start to get a little out of its depth. Remember, MVL has to have been used in conjunction with other literacy activities, reading, and yet more reading above all, and as a result a strong base of knowledge should have been developed.

The need for MVL should recede.
For example, you could use dozens of boxes of cuisinaire number rods to demonstrate to the uninitiated the meaning of quantum mechanics. But what would be the point? It would teach nothing, and would be a meaningless by-pass of the layer upon layer of knowledge that must first be accumulated and fully understood in the mind of the mathematician. However, the very first, indispensable layers of that knowledge could very well be put securely in place using cuisinaire number rods.

Codes again
(Bletchley Park was the de-coding center in England during the Second World War, and Alfred Knox was one of the leaders of the young women - among them Rob Gillies' mother - who had to toil over the cyphers.)

"Time and again, a code that had defied a systematic, brute force attack would yield to a foray from a totally unconventional angle. Knox became famous at Bletchley for quoting the Alice in Wonderland sort of riddle, 'Which way does a clock go round?', and anyone foolish enough to say 'clockwise' would be sternly told off, 'Not if you're the clock it doesn't!'"

With all its idioms, mannerisms, rules, then broken rules, and massive vocabulary with many words having multiple meanings, English must appear to have many Alice in Wonderland qualities to students who need to master it. MVL is an excellent device to analyze and construct sentences grammatically. It will help to develop literacy skills, but can not do the whole task on its own. English has to be 'attacked' from several angles.

MVL's unique and potent quality is that it allows students to develop a strong, intuitive understanding of the first few layers of grammatical knowledge, which is one of the weapons students must have in their arsenal if they are to succeed and become literate in this language.