Title: What is encompassed by the phrase ‘Meaning Making’ within early childhood?
Young Children and Meaning Makers
Module Code: TE0673
Student Code: w14007309
Word Count: 1,394
This assignment seeks to explore and discuss the phrase ‘meaning making’ within early childhood using contemporary and historical sources. The focus of this essay will be the theme, language acquisition, because this is one aspect of how children make meaning of their world. However, there are other factors that need to be considered, these include Language and thought, attunement and attachment. Language acquisition is the process in which humans develop a language to be able to produce words and sentences to communicate with others. The discussion of how children learn language and if adults have an impact on the child’s language development will also be argued throughout.
Meaning making is the process which children go through when making sense of the world around them, discovering how and why things happen. Wells (2009) suggests infants are born with a drive to make sense of their experiences and have successful strategies for doing so. The meaning making process involves the child having the opportunity to receive information and to be listened to. Adults have a key role in helping the child develop a good language development, allowing the child to practice and to gain new information. Penn (2008) argues children are ‘Meaning Makers’ but they can only take their meanings from experience
Theoretical Perspectives and Contexts of Language Developments are discussed in this chapter of Beverly Otto’s Language Development in Early Childhood Education (2014).
They consider a child’s daily routine and activities highly influence an important role in their language development. Their theories focus on exploring how children socially interact within environments. They explain how children start to explore how language and communication works by inevitably adapting themselves to environments (Orfano F, 2015). This process confirms children are socially persuaded to be pragmatic. Depending on the context of the situation children listen to sounds and look at symbols movements and expressions from things around them. It acknowledges the importance of the environment in that it purports that children learn language as a result of communicative needs, in social contexts, and with social support. This evidence persuades them to deem nurture as the dominant
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.
Language is a system in which sequences of sounds make up words to signify a person, place, idea, or object and eventually becomes a tool through which we communicate. Language development starts at birth with crying. Infants cry to communicate their needs are not being met. At around six months infants begin to form consonant- vowel chains; this is the start of babbling, an essential pre-linguistic skill and milestone in language development. Around the age of eleven months the child will say begin to say their first words, and language continues to develop throughout life. Like many other areas of development language development is influenced by the culture the infant grows up in.
I must commend you on a very well put together analysis. It took me a while to get the hang of APA formatting which I still have not perfected, but I would refrain from referring to a reference as “the article” when paraphrasing; I would refer to the author or sources, not the type of source.
There are numerous diverse roles that language can participate on a child’s life and development, whether it be throughout the roles that persuade their growth and knowledge of language, the way they are able to establish the many dissimilar forms of language, their knowledge of diverse and standization of their own language as well as others and the impact culture has on a child. The countless roles that language may have on a child could be their understanding of the structural system of language, and they why this shapes their personal and social outcomes. We are able to determine the many different varieties and forms of is through both written and spoken words and having the ability to be able to understand Australians contextual language.
They are mostly due to birth defects for example, for example there could problems with the structure or development of the brain or spinal cord may be the reason for a child having GDD; Other causes can include prematurity (being born too early), childhood infection (for example meningitis) or metabolic diseases, such as having an underactive thyroid gland (hypothyroidism) or other problems affecting babies before they are born.
Everyday we are developing no matter our age, but it is how we develop children that will tell a tremendous amount an individual. How a child developments is fundamentally important at a young age as it affects all aspect of their lives once the child matures. Throughout the class, we looked at many theorists during the course of the semester as well as looked at many articles pertaining to the concepts of the development of children. The theorists and articles opened up our minds to a world that we have never seen before and concepts about child development we have never been taught but have seen in the practical work we do every week. What makes humans unique is the ability that we have to interpret the language being used, as Lois Bloom
Language is a communicative system of words and symbols unique to humans. The origins of language are still a mystery as fossil remains cannot speak. However, the rudiments of language can be inferred through studying linguistic development in children and the cognitive and communicative abilities of primates as discussed by Bridgeman (2003). This essay illustrates the skills infants have that will eventually help them to acquire language. The topics covered are firstly, the biological aspects, the contribution of the human brain to language development? Secondly, key theories of language development will be considered. Is the development innate? Is there a critical period? Thirdly, what must be learned? What are the rudiments infants must
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.
At 18 months, the virtual child had over 50 words at her command that she was able to use to make two-word sentences such as “Mama up” and “Doggie outside.” In their effort to further encourage the child’s development of her language skills, the parents applied B.F. Skinner’s operant conditioning theory (Berk, 2012). They would respond, using slightly longer sentences such as “Yes, the doggie is outside” before introducing descriptive and useful new words. The parents would encourage imitation and respond with positive reinforcement, which would further enthuse the child to develop her language skills (Berk, 2012). When the child was 2 years old, the parents would converse with the child at any given opportunity and would read books of her choice which further influenced her language development. Research has found that when mothers are more responsive during the first few years of a child’s life enable their children to achieve language development milestones at an earlier stage than children whose mothers were less responsive (Leigh, Nathans & Nievar, 2011). The mother had a more influential role in the virtual child’s language development as she would allow the child to explore the surrounding environment through daily walks and teach the child new words as they did. It was due to parental involvement and an encouraging, safe environment, the virtual child developed her language skills not only due to influence but to a desire to learn new
There are many different variations of language, language that is seen, such as sign language, body language and written language, then there is the language that is heard, such as people speaking. There are over 7,000 spoken languages in the world alone without taking into consideration nonverbal languages. For adults and children alike, this can be overwhelming because in each language there are different behaviour patterns, different registers, different age groups and what is acceptable in one language may not be considered acceptable in another such as how close is too close to stand to someone else. For children who come from families whose first language is not English, this is even more difficult when trying to live somewhere that doesn’t predominately speak their first language, which is just one of the many differences people have to be aware of when considering diversity. This essay will examine the different environmental and circumstantial factors that may influence the development of children and the role that language can play in their lives as they grow, such as what and who children are exposed to, positive and negative influences such as adults and other children and the lifelong impact these surroundings have on the child.
From a baby 's first word to their first complete sentence, there 's a lot to debate with their language development. The average child has a vocabulary of up to six-thousand words by the time they turn five years old (Brighthubcom, 2016). Language development is one of the most critical roles for an educator in both early childhood and primary settings. It is this ability of language development that is particularly interesting in the nature vs nurture debate. In order for educators to provide effective communication, it is important that they have the knowledge and understanding of the four key concepts of language, such as phonological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic development and the underlying theoretical perspectives that explain the processes of language acquisition and development.
Children encompass the ability to learn whichever language system they are introduced to, therefore a newborn would learn the fictional Klingon language (Hoff, 2006). Klingon is not a natural language such as English or Spanish, and does not adhere to all the rules of a natural language. Due to this issue, the child would encounter problems in saying everyday terms in Klingon. Also, since Klingon is a fictional language and not spoken in society the child would not be able to communicate with others, which may cause the child to reject this fictional language. This rejection may be related to the lack of acceptance of this fictional language in society. This could constrain the child’s ability to learn a new language in which he/she
According to Zukowski (2013), language development refers to the process of learning in early life where infants acquire various forms, meaning and word usage. In addition, language refers to the different utterances in regards to linguistic input. Language development in childhood focuses on major arguments in