Practice Reading: The significance of children’s play

Moments later, Alice abandons her kingdom to play school with her younger brother. Assuming the role of ‘teacher,’ she practices emotional regulation through make-believe. Later, as they tire and settle into a board game, she learns the importance of rules and turn-taking with a partner.

‘Play in all its diverse forms is among humanity’s greatest achievements,’ asserts Dr. David Whitebread of the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge, UK. ‘It forms the foundation of our development as intellectual, problem-solving adults and is vital to our success as an incredibly adaptable species.’

Recognizing the importance of play isn’t a recent revelation: more than two millennia ago, the Greek philosopher Plato extolled its virtues as a means of cultivating skills for adulthood, while concepts of learning through play have evolved since the 19th century.

However, we currently reside in a period of transformation, and Whitebread remains mindful of a global decline in play. He notes that over half of the world's population now lives in urban areas. ‘The opportunities for spontaneous play, which characterized my childhood almost daily, are becoming increasingly rare,’ he remarks. Outdoor play is restricted by concerns regarding traffic risks, as well as parents’ heightened desire to shield their children from crime, and by the prevailing ‘earlier is better’ ideology which fosters intensified competition in academic learning and schools.

Global organizations such as the United Nations and the European Union have started formulating policies regarding children's right to play, and are contemplating the implications for recreational facilities and educational programs. However, what often remains lacking is the empirical evidence to support these policies.

‘The kind of play that piques our interest is spontaneous, child-initiated, and unpredictable – but the moment you instruct a five-year-old ‘to play’, you as the researcher have intervened,’ explains Dr. Sara Baker. ‘Our aim is to uncover the long-term impact of play. It's a genuine challenge.’

Dr. Jenny Gibson echoes these sentiments, highlighting that while some aspects of the puzzle concerning the importance and mechanisms of play have been examined, there exists very limited data on its long-term effects on a child’s life.

Thanks to the establishment of the university's new Centre for Research on Play in Education, Development, and Learning (PEDAL), Whitebread, Baker, Gibson, and their team of researchers are now poised to furnish evidence on the role that play plays in a child's developmental journey.

‘There is a strong likelihood that play contributes to the early development of children’s self-regulation,’ explains Baker. ‘This involves our ability to become aware of our own thinking processes – it affects how effectively we approach challenging tasks.’

In a study conducted by Baker with toddlers and young preschoolers, she observed that children with better self-regulation solved problems more efficiently when dealing with unfamiliar situations that required scientific reasoning. ‘This kind of evidence suggests that providing children with opportunities to play may enhance their problem-solving abilities in the long run.’

According to the researchers, if playful experiences do indeed foster this aspect of development, it could have significant implications for educational practices, as self-regulation has been identified as a crucial predictor of academic achievement.

Gibson adds: ‘Playful behavior also serves as a critical indicator of healthy social and emotional development. In my previous research, I explored how observing children at play can provide valuable insights into their well-being and can even aid in diagnosing neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism.’

Recent research by Whitebread has focused on developing a play-based approach to support children's writing skills. ‘Many elementary school children struggle with writing, but our previous study demonstrated that a playful approach was significantly more effective than a didactic one.’ Children produced longer and better-structured stories after playing with dolls representing characters in the story. In the latest study, children first created stories using Lego bricks, yielding similar results. ‘Several teachers noted that previously, children often claimed they didn’t know what to write about. However, during the entire year of the project involving Lego building, not a single child expressed this sentiment.’

Whitebread, who heads PEDAL, underwent training as a primary school teacher in the early 1970s, a time he recalls as ‘a quiet backwater for teaching young children, untouched by any serious intellectual debate or controversy.’ Today, the landscape is vastly different, with contentious issues such as the appropriate age for starting school.

‘In recent decades, the significance of play seems to have been overlooked. It is often viewed as something trivial, or even negatively contrasted with ‘work’. Let us not forget its merits and the substantial contributions it makes to human accomplishments in the arts, sciences, and technology. Let’s ensure children are enriched with diverse play experiences.’

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* Lego: colorful plastic building blocks and other pieces that can be interconnected

Questions 1-8

Complete the notes below

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer:

Write your answers in boxes 1-8 on your answer sheet.

Children's play:

Uses of children’s play

· building a ‘magical kingdom’ may help develop 1 ………………..

· board games involve 2 ……………….. and turn-taking

Recent changes affecting children’s play

· populations of 3 ……………….. have grown

· opportunities for free play are limited due to:

– fear of 4 ………………..

– fear of 5 ………………..

– increased 6 ……………….. in schools

International policies on children’s play:

· it is difficult to find 7 ……………….. to support new policies

· research needs to study the impact of play on the rest of the child’s 8 ………………..

Questions 9-13

Are the following statements consistent with the information provided in the reading passage?

In boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE   if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN   if there is no information on this

9.  Children with good self-control are known to be likely to do well at school later on.

10.  The way a child plays may provide information about possible medical problems.

11.  Playing with dolls was  found to benefit girls’ writing more than boys’ writing.

12.  Children had problems thinking up ideas when they first created the story with Lego.

13.  People nowadays regard children’s play as less significant than they did in the past.

Response

1. Creativity (Đoạn 1, “Although she isn’t aware of it, this fantasy is helping her take her first steps towards her capacity for creativity…”)

2. Rules (Đoạn 2, “Later on,…she’s learning about the need to follow rules and take turns with a partner.”)

3. Cities (Đoạn 5, “But we live in changing times, and Whitebread is mindful of a worldwide decline in play, pointing out that over half the people in the world now live in cities.)

4 & 5. traffic, crime (Đoạn 5, “The opportunities … crimes”)

6. Competition (Đoạn 5, “and by the emphasis on ‘earlier is better’ which is leading to greater competition…”)

7. Evidence (Đoạn 5, “But what they often lack is the evidence to base policies on.)

8. Life (Đoạn 7, Dr Jenny Gibson agrees, …on the child’s later life.)

9. TRUE (Đoạn 11, “In a study,…in the long run -> Trẻ em biết kiểm soát bản thân tốt sẽ làm tốt hơn ở trường học trong tương lai).

10. TRUE (Đoạn 13, “Playful behavior…autism -> Quan sát cách chơi đùa của trẻ cũng sẽ giúp phát hiện bệnh lý (tự kỷ)).

11. NOT GIVEN (Không có thông tin so sánh việc viết bài của trẻ trai và gái)

12. FALSE (Đoạn 15, “Children wrote longer … similar results.” -> Trẻ không gặp vấn đề gì ở việc chơi Lego).

13. TRUE (Đoạn cuối, “Somehow … contrast with “work”” -> Việc chơi của trẻ bị xem nhẹ hơn so với ngày xưa).