I observed two first grade students at Animas Elementary School. The setting in which they were observed was very casual. Both students were casually looking at a picture book about frogs as their conversation began. I chose this conversation because both students were so excited about frogs. They were jumping around and making frog noises. It was really an interesting assignment. I think that taking the time to pay attention to the different language systems is great because as speakers, we use every system countless times throughout the day. This conversation was great to observe because both students struggled with the phonological system. Though it was interesting, it was at the same time challenging for me to find the semantic system in their conversation. I think that the difficulty could be due to the fact that I have a hard time comprehending the semantic system. As a teacher you must pay attention to these systems because they can reflect how well a student is processing information.

System Development Observed Examples

Student 1	Phonological	Throughout the conversation the student used the w sound instead of the r sound.	Wibbit, Wibbit!
Student 2	Phonological	Throughout the conversation the student slightlty used the w sound for the r sound (but not as noticabley as student 1).	Fwoggy, Gween
Student 1	Syntactic	The student used umm to create longer sentences, instead of creating dependent clauses.	When I was little umm my Mom took me to the river umm and she let me find frogs.
Student 2	Syntactic	The student exampled the create usage of past and present	Last summer it rained and I went outside. I think that this summer when it rains I will go outside and see frogs again.
Student 1	Semantic	The student was asked a question and he hesitated, then answered with something that didn’t pertain to the subject matter of frogs.	Student 2: Do you jump in the river when your mom takes you to the river? Student 1: I really think that the small frogs are cute.
Student 2	Semantic	The student used content related vocabulary.	The frog used to be a tadpole.
Student 1	Pragmatic	He used slang words to describe the frog.	Cool frog!
Student 2	Pragmatic	He varied his language according to the energetic conversation that they were having about frogs.	The froggy went swimmy, swimmy, swimmy!