Writing Analytically: Exercise 5.2

1. Vegetables cover the earth, except for areas covered by ice or scorched by heat. Plants grow the most richly in fertilized plains, river valleys, and on the edges of snowy mountains. Dense vegetation populates the ocean and its edges, as well as in and around lakes and swamps. Plants grow in the cracks of city sidewalks and on seemingly barren cliffs. Vegetation will still continue to inhabit the earth long after humans have been swallowed up by evolutionary history.
2. Animals do not naturally have the power to create and communicate a new message to fit a new experience. The number and kind of messages that they can communicate are limited by their genetic code. For example, bees can only communicate information regarding the distance, direction, source, and richness of pollen in flowers. In all significant respects, only animals of the same species can deliver a selection of messages in the same way.
3. In his paper on children’s thinking, Jones (1985) stressed how important language skills are in the ability of children to solve problems. He reported that when children improve their language skills, they can also improve on solving nonverbal problems. Jones thought children performed better when they use previously acquired language habits to articulate and activate knowledge previously learned though language. He, therefore, concludes that if children practiced to formulate words, they can learn to solve problems better.