Language Aquisition: Theoretical Approaches Essay

Children’s language development usually begins in their first three months. They will begin by learning to use their voice and enjoying vocal play. Babies will watch faces and mouths to try and copy movements and sounds.

0–3 years – It is important that a baby is stimulated from when they are first born, because this helps them develop communication skills as they get older.

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.

Communication and Intellectual developments are closely linked together as a child requires the language in order to think and learn. If they have limited

There may be a recognised syndrome or disorder that causes language difficulty for the child and is not able to communicate with others. The child may have a lack of stimulation and support to provide the rich language experience necessary to develop speech, language and communication skills. For example at school, the setting may not have an enabling environment to stimulate the child’s different interests necessary for acquiring language. The books, music, songs and so on may not stimulate and interest the child.

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.

But “if there is a difficulty understanding what people say, difficulty speaking or forming sounds or words and using language in appropriate social contexts then this can affect a child’s behaviour and emotional development”. (Speech, Language Communication Action Plan 2011)

Babies learn to talk by hearing language and having language directed at them in "conversation." Between 6-12 months, babies begin to fine-tune

Language development is related to this stage because language learning starts at birth. They listen to the speech of those close to them, and startle or cry if there is an unexpected noise.

Without early exposure to communication individuals are at risk of linguistic deprivation, which can significantly impact an individual for life long hardships in language development. Deaf individuals who receive access to early communication through the use of Sign Language are able to acquire language, are able to communicate, and have a higher success rate to succeed academically in comparison to Deaf individuals who are not exposed to early communication. Therefore, access to early communication is essential for the development of language. According to Jerker Ronnberg a professor of psychology states, “The development of language is critical to the organization of memory, mastery of cognitive skills such as numeracy and literacy, and many other aspects of cognitive development” (Ronnberg, 2003). Early access to communication reflects an individual’s development of language. Without early exposure to language, such as Sign Language, Deaf individuals will become linguistically deprived, which will negatively impact language

The developmental stages of language are; pre-linguistic stage, one-word stage, two or three-word utterances, more complex sentences, further development between 3-4, and further development between 4 and 5. In the pre-linguistic stage from birth to 1 year, babies can tell the difference between voices and other sounds, they can start to use sounds such as ‘dadadadada’ or ‘mamamamama’. In the one-word stage from 12 to 18 months young children can have a variety of

Most young children develop language rapidly, moving from crying and cooing in infancy to using hundreds of words and understanding their meanings by the time they are ready to enter kindergarten. Language development is a major accomplishment and is one of the most rewarding experiences for anyone to share with a child. Children learn to speak and understand words by being around adults and peers who communicate with them and encourage their efforts to talk.

As a child develops along their journey to acquire language, they go through several steps, of which all are crucial to the successful mastering of their native tongue. There is debate over whether the period of acquisition known as babbling is the first or second stage – Berk (1991) mentions that they class babbling as the first stage, but note that there is a previous stage before that, known as the ‘cooing’ stage; following this, this essay will refer to babbling as the second stage of language acquisition. To introduce a general overview of this particular stage, Berk (1991) explains that cooing usually develops into babbling at around 6

Then, cooing appears when the child is between six to eight weeks old, where the infant demonstrates happy vowel like sounds (Hoff, 2006). At age sixteen weeks infants begin to demonstrate laughter and vocal play (Hoff, 2006). Between six and nine month old babies begin to produce babbling sounds, then they utter their first word around age one (Hoff, 2006). When children speak their first word it is usually as an isolated unit (Goldin-Meadow, 2006), and not considered a major step in phonological development (Hoff, 2006). Children then learn that their first spoken word is composed of smaller parts, which is known as morphology, and that the word can be used as a building block for larger sentences called syntax (Goldin-Meadow, 2006). A child’s first word goes farther then communicating a message between the child and communicative partner, the word retains symbolic meaning (Goldin-Meadow, 2006). At age eighteen months phonological processes develop, in which the child’s speech characteristics begin to transform (Hoff, 2006). Subsequent to eighteen months the child’s vocabulary grows and with this growth the child is able to phonemically represent a sound with the mental representation of every word that possesses a sound (Hoff, 2006).

The pre –language or the pre-speech stage is the period from about three months to six months. We can call this period the zero stage because in this period the child is only a listener and he does not produce understandable sounds. The only sounds that the child produces in this period are crying and screaming. At this stage, the child usually reacts to any speech