The study I will be talking about is "Speaking Volumes": a longitudinal study of lexical and grammatical growth between 17 and 42 months by F. Labrell (2014). The study focuses on growth rates of vocabulary components such as nouns, verbs and grammatical words, such as prepositions, in 34 French children aged 17 months to 42 months, and how the growth rate of these variables correlates with the growth rates of other variables. There are four goals of the study: the first is to investigate the dynamics of vocabulary growth of the participant children; the second is to examine the pattern of grammatical growth; the third to compare the patterns of vocabulary growth and grammatical growth; and the final goal is to examine the nature of …show more content…
At the core of the dynamic systems approach is that each step in a system of variables is a function of the previous step, and so it changes because the components of the system affect each other. The key part of this system to be emphasized is that the author not only looked at trends in the group, but also at the data of individual children to investigate the idiosyncratic nature of this area of language acquisition.
The methodology of the study is as follows: the participants were thirty-four French children, (16 girls, 18 boys) between seventeen and forty-two months old. They were French monolingual and had no serious health problems or impediments to language acquisition, such as speech or hearing. The DLPF measure was used, designed specifically for French. The procedure consisted on indirect data-taking, as parents completed a questionnaire once a month from seventeen to thirty-five months, and twice a month from thirty-six to forty-two. This resulted in twenty-three measures per child although most were missing values, the average of which was 6 (26%). Five had no missing values, and two had only one. The author corrected for this missing data by replacing the missing value with the preceding measurement. The results were collated into a graph, with the variables of: nouns, verbs, adjectives, grammatical forms and total vocabulary (the sum of all variables). A group curve composed of the average of all the children's
First, children¡¯s acquisition of language is an innate mechanism that enables a child to analyze language and extract the basic rules of grammar, granted by Chomsky. It basically states that humans are born with a language acquisition device that, the ability to learn a language rapidly as children. However, there is one important controversy in language acquisition concerns how we acquire language; since Chomsky fails to adequately explain individual differences. From the behaviorists¡¯ perspectives, the language is learned like other learned behaviors. It is learned through operant
The communication with your child starts way before the youngster can speak. From their cry, smile, and the responses they give you to help you understand his or her needs. Language developments have different stages that children pass through to assist them in the development of speech and languages. There are a plethora of factors which can inhabitants’ a child language development. However, these are amongst the top causes for language development such as a child’s inborn ability to learn language and the language the child hears.
Windsor et al. stipulate that the main idea for their study is the language abilities of children. Their specific target group are children who have been raised in a Romanian orphanage. They use this specific sample group due to the attention they have received from Romania’s “historical” physical and social deprivation (2007, p. 1366). Based on their literature review, Windsor et al. point
This study will require almost 40 children, aged 6, to participate. The reason for this is many children at this age they are on the ongoing process of learning and are on the verge to still develop their English vocabulary as well as the capacity to hold large amounts of vocabulary. Participants will be put into two groups, those who have English as a second language and those that have English as their native language. It is essential to have 20 participants in each group to avoid any biases.
Collecting a language sample addresses several weaknesses that norm-referenced tests hold, including: in-depth information of a child’s language use in “real world” situations, do not have specific rules for administration or behavioral requirements, and provide information on a child’s MLU (Ebert & Scott, 2014). A language sample also allows for the SLP to probe for lexical diversity, the ability to retrieve and use complex vocabulary, and problem solve appropriate for his age (Wolter, 2007). Asking Justin to provide a narrative would allow for him to be flexible in his response, provide valid information about his receptive and expressive language repertoires, and allow for comparison to his responses on the CELF-5 (Ebert & Scott, 2014). Also, language samples allow for clinicians to better develop goals, tailored specifically to the client rather than using general information collected from the standardized test
As this research was based on the Cross- Sectional design, only the information relevant to the age group the child belongs has been stated. The history of each subject’s language development from birth has not been discussed. The names of the participants have been changed to maintain their anonymity. All other details are accurate and factual.
Examines how language develops from infancy into adulthood. Focuses on the modularity debate of how language is organized in the brain. Some theorize that language is domain-specific in that the brain has processes dedicated to the task of language learning and comprehension. Others focus on a domain-general theory for language learning where the processes used to learn language are the same processes used in other situations such as problem solving.
During today’s evaluation, we used the Preschool Language Scale- Fifth Edition (PLS-5) and general observations of the way Z plays and interacts with others to assess her speech and language skills. The PLS-5 is a norm-referenced test, meaning that the creators of the test developed a set of “typical” or “average” scores based on a large sample of children, to help clinician’s determine whether a child, like Z, performs at the same level as other children her age that were included in the sample.
According to the study of Alba, Logan, Lutz and Stults (2002), this three-generation model of language shift was documented
The subjects of this study are children that solely speak English and have typically developing speech and language skills and children that speak only English and have a phonological delay. These children had to have a score greater than 85 on the CELF P-2, the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals Preschool 2:
Therefore, from the behaviourist approach, language acquisition can be seen as a stimulus-response process. Children learn language by immitation and analogy. The roles of imitation, repetition, reinforcement, and motivation are essential in learning the language. The First Language Acquisition is thus the result of nature which based on practicing.
The following language scales, dependent on each child’s individual age, were used over the course of the study:
This essay is about a child’s development and learning, focusing primarily on language development. It will describe the main stages of developmental "milestones" and the key concepts involved for children to develop their language skills, discussing language acquisition and social learning theory. The essay will also look into the key theorists involved in language development, primarily Vygotsky and Chomsky, and how these theories have had an impact on the way society views language and their implementation within schools. The essay will describe the factors affecting language development, both biological and environmental. While also discussing key arguments among
Children acquire language since they were born. They communicate with their parents. Furthermore, children and parents interact with each other using a language that we often call the first language or mother tongue. At an early age, children are only learning one language that is the mother tongue. By age and speech development, children improve to acquire a second language from the school or the environment around them. In terms of speed of langgauge acquisition, children are factorized by both the child and the child’s learning environment. Therefore, it is important to understand how children acquire second language. This paper is provided
Forty-two preschoolers whom had a primary language of Spanish and secondary language of English were recruited for this study. The participants included sixteen boys and twenty-six girls, with a mean age of 5.14 months. All participants spoke minimal English and were enrolled in an English-only classroom. The children were placed randomly in either the CLR group or the comparison group, ECR. Both groups used the same vocabulary instructional approach, with only the language of vocabulary instruction being different (Mendez et al., 2015).