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Nexus Builds Language

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At Nexus, children learn to be language users; they learn a linguistic practice. 

At Nexus, children learn to 'do things with words' such as to make promises, invite, explain, assert, negotiate, ask, tell, etc. Therefore, they learn the practice forms of a language. They learn a social technique(s). Our goal is that children learn to do the things we do in language, not to accumulate verbal operants. 

At Nexus, children learn the conventional use of symbols (words and gestures) and how to appropriately manipulate them across a multitude of circumstances, transactions and contexts.

At Nexus, we clarify the ways expressions are used and how to teach them.

At Nexus, we employ an ‘ordinary language’ approach, which is to say that  learning a language is to learn a linguistic/cultural practice informed by cultural norms for the use of words and expressions. Language is an anthropological phenomenon which is accounted for descriptively not theoretically.

At Nexus, we use behavioral tools, strategies and procedures in order to increase learning efficiencies and to provide clarity during instruction. 

At Nexus, language learning is systematic, active and experiential. Words are introduced under highly contrived arrangements and then systematically traced out within experiences of doing, making, manipulating, using, asking, explaining, reporting, describing, instructing, planning, solving, seeing, searching, hearing, feeling, etc. so that word use is mastered progressively and congeals within a 'nexus of meaning and purpose'.

At Nexus, children do extremely well because the work is intensive, because it is informed by the appropriate conceptual framework for teaching a

language to children with related capacities, because it is constructional, because the instruction is behaviorally based and because of the expertise of Dr. Schnee.

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