Home >> About the Programme >> What are Basic Concepts?

What are Basic Concepts?

Basic Concepts refer to those words, terms and prepositions which assist us in the perception and description of the world.These concepts are usually learned as an integral part of the process of language acquisition within the framework of the home, kindergarten and school. The main concepts relate to the spatial and temporal dimensions of human reality. A child who learns the names of colours or the names of geometrical shapes, acquires tools by which he/she will be able to perceive stimuli in his/her surroundings in a more precise manner. In paying attention to these attributes the path towards the organization of the environment is laid.

Learning these concepts not only enriches the development of language in children but also equips them with some of the necessary tools to develop their thinking processes. Acquiring basic concepts helps the child to learn to perform mental operations (such as matching, comparing, classifying, inferring, perspective taking, seriation and conservation) which constitute the goals of cognitive development. Basic concepts are therefore an important indicator of children’s readiness for formal school learning and of their future academic success. Basic Concepts ultimately assist children to forge new connections, construct understanding and generate their own ideas.

 

Basic Concepts are a way of laying neural pathways that assist to develop awareness, understanding, and insight into learning – processes strongly associated with the coding of information into memory.

 (Louis Benjamin, 2010)