Language Acquisition And Language Development

The basis of language development theories revolves around the idea that, either nature or nurture are more influential than the other in the development of language in children. Language development as defined by, Menyuk, is the acquisition and growth of a societies chosen method of communication, which occurs due to a culmination of cognitive growth and environmental experiences (2005). Nature, is concerned with the biological makeup of an individual that influences their ability to acquire language including, genes and brain function, alternatively, nurture is environmental factors including, culture, family, and experiences (Fellows & Oakley, 2014). Nature and nurture both play vital yet highly diverse roles in the acquisition of language and its development. Analysis of the process of language acquisition will reveal that both nature and nurture are vital for successful language development of children.

Nature and nurture both play various roles in children’s language development. Nature is a child’s inherited genetics and characteristics. Nurture is the persuasive influence a child develops from their environmental surroundings. The two have created many debates on whether one has more influence on a child’s language development than the other. In this essay I will discuss, the roles nature and nurture play in children’s language development, how they structure communication and the theoretical debate of their impact.

Nature and nurture both play a significant role in language development. Language development refers to how children understand, organise, speak and use words in order to communicate at an effective, age-appropriate level (Karen Kearns, 2013, P.105). For centuries, theorists have been debating the roles of nature versus nurture. Although, each child’s language will develop at their own pace and there will be many individual differences based on culture, ethnicity, health and ability. As well as physical, social, emotional and cognitive development in which will contribute to a child’s language development.

Kara-lynn is a 3 year; 6 month old female presenting with a severe phonological disorder. Her results from testing indicate that her speech intelligibility is significantly reduced due to multiple phoneme collapses into /d/ of the following phonemes and consonant clusters: /p/, /g/, /k/, /s/, /z/, /θ/, /ð/, /tr/,and /gr/. In addition, the use of multiple phonological processes, including: final consonant deletion, initial consonant deletion, cluster reduction, vocalization, and deaffrication also significantly contribute to her reduced intelligibility. Her speech intelligibility in known context was calculated to be 64%, which is low for a child who is 3 years; 6 months(consider adding reference). Reduced intelligibility can impact a child’s ability to communicate wants and needs, making Kara-Lynn’s speech intelligibility an area of need.

Language is a code made up of rules that include what words mean, how to make words, how to put them together, and what word combinations are best in what situations. Speech is the oral form of language. The purpose of this study is to find out the developmental stages the child goes through in the acquisition of language from birth to 5 years.

Farrah has able to identify 186/220, or 85%, of basic sight words and 103/143, or 72%, of basic sight word phrases. Continually, Farrah attended to initial consonants making visually similar miscues, such as “one” for “on,” “gave” for “give,” and “these” for “those.” In addition, Farrah consistently substituted short vowel sounds for long vowel sounds, such as “cam” for “came,” “want” for “wait,” and “bring” for “bright.” . Farrah made similar miscues during the basic sight word phrase assessment, such as “can” for “came,” “use” for “us” and “cute” for “cut.” Both the reliance on initial consonants and the inconsistency of middle vowel sounds suggest that Farrah is unfamiliar with long vowel patterns

The participants were shown drawings of items expected to be within their vocabulary and asked to identify items with a common phonemes – in half of the sets, the common phoneme would also have a common grapheme, and in the other half, it would not – making reliance on phonological awareness, as opposed to orthographic, important for identifying the common phonemes. One could question the extent to which lack of world knowledge may have affected results for deaf participants in both studies. Overall, this test appeared to be used to gauge the orthographic and phonemic/phonological levels for each of the participants before moving on to the test which was more differentiated for the study. Having a common baseline for all student participants in Miller’s studies would seem to increase the extent to which the results of one study can be compared to another

Phonemic Awareness is the ability to hear, identify and manipulate sounds. Andrew and I have been working on adding, deleting and substituting sounds within words using manipulatives. Andrew has difficulty substituting diagraphs for blends. He is successful at this activity 85% of the time.

The researchers utilized 186 monolingual and bilingual kindergarteners, first graders, and second graders from Taiwan. The author’s hypothesized that the bilingual children (Mandarin & Southern Min) would be likely to learn experimentally manipulated phonotactic patterns more readily than their monolingual peers. The researchers provided the parents with a home language use questionnaire. The authors created two artificial languages with the same phonemes. The two artificial phonological systems consisted of four onsets (/p/, /ph/, /l/, and /n/) and eight rimes. The test phase involved a two-option forced-choice judgment

The tests for pre-test and post-test were similar. There were 16 words for first grade, 12 words for second grade, and 16 words for third grade. The tests were used to see the ability of the students orally say the sound and break the word into phonemes, not letters. The way of analyzing the data was following Yopp-Singer Test (1995). The students who got high scores by segmenting all the items correctly were considered as phonemically aware. The students who correctly segmented some items were considered as displaying emerging phonemic awareness. Students who were not able to segment the items correctly or none at all were included as lacking of phonemic

Rvachew, S., Nowak, M., & Cloutier, G. (2004). Effect of phonemic perception training on the speech production and phonological

Furthermore, segregating words through onsets –rimes patterns, and learning how to blend sounds through phonemic awareness all play a vital role

How do both nature and nurture interact in the promotion of language development in young children?

Numerous theories try to explain the process of language acquisition. These theories fall into one of two camps. The environmentalist (or connectionist) theory of language acquisition asserts that language is acquired through environmental factors (Halvaei et al. 811). Theorists in this camp believe that a child learns language by gaining information from the outside world and then forming associations between words and objects. The nativist (or rationalist) approach, on the other hand, asserts that it is innate factors that determine language acquisition. Noam Chomsky, often described as “the father of modern linguistics”, falls into this camp as he believes that speech is the result of hidden rules of language that are hidden somewhere in the brain (Rahmani and Abdolmanafi 2111). Steven Pinker, a colleague of Chomsky, is a renowned psychologist, cognitive scientist and linguist who discusses his own theories on language acquisition in his book Words and Rules.

To expand on Pinker’s (1994) argument about children’s ability to discriminate between phonemes of their mother tongue compared to a foreign language, it would be sensible to first note that Pinker conducted a lot of research on the recognition of phonemes by children. One of Pinker’s (1994) research projects included exposing native French infants to both Russian and French speech, and marking if there was any reaction or difference in the child’s state. Pinker (1994) noted that there was a marked