Language Development Paper

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.

It is believed that babies develop language when they are in the utero and it continues throughout their lifetime. By twelve weeks old, babies may register the sounds they can hear and at the same time make basic visual, auditory and tactile mind maps (Karen Kearns, 2013, P.105). This allows the infant to turn towards any familiar sounds and noises. Babies begin to communicate with people around them quite quickly. By two months old, babies begin to make ‘cooing’ and other noises; this indicates the phonological component of language development. By six to nine months babies begin to experience with a mixture of sounds, and often you will hear a baby babbling. Babbling development is similar across many different languages and even hearing impaired babies will go through this stage. They may copy the sounds they are introduced too or beginning to recognize familiar

Four year-olds can tell simple stories with an expressive vocabulary of 1,500 to 1,600 words (Owens, 2004). Toddlers at this age have increased mastery of consonants and can produce sentences that are four or five words long. Language transitions to a tool that is used to explore the interrogative “why?” which helps the toddler ask abstract questions and learn more about their environment. Five year-olds use more adult-like language, but aspects of their syntactic structure may be missing. Expressive vocabulary encompasses about 2,200 words by age five (Owens, 2004) and schemas for their vocabulary become more complex. Five year-olds still have difficulty with a few consonant sounds and with consonant blends, but most of the phonemes of the child’s language are fully developed. In early childhood through school-age, the child’s language development will plateau; however, the interaction with social development increases the child’s pragmatic skills, which feeds into more refined expressive and receptive language.

According to Hutchison (2015), around age four, children expand their vocabularies at an ever increasing rate and are able to incorporate new words into eight to ten word sentences, “but the most remarkable aspect of language development in early childhood is the understanding of grammar rules. By age four, young children in all cultures understand the basic grammar rules of their language. They accomplish this mostly by a figuring out process.

Referential language is when children start to speak using one-word speech such as mama, dog, and baba, thus children with referential vocabulary “were learning to talk about and categorize the objects in their environment.” (Gleason/Ratner 2013, p. 244). As their vocabulary increased, “children moved predictably from single words to a two-word state.” (Gleason/Ratner 2013, p. 243) By combining words they have a “sudden spurt of new words near the fifty-word level often preceded the appearance of word combinations.” (Gleason/Ratner, 2013, p. 243) Toddlers use referential language to label things in their environment.

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.

There are several theories regarding language development. Work by Chomsky, Piaget and Kuhl are critical. Studies by Chomsky, as examined by Albery, Chandler, Field, Jones, Messer, Moore and Sterling (2009); Deloache, Eisenberg & Siegler (2003) argued for the innateness of language acquisition due to its complexity. Development is assisted by a language acquisition device (LAD) and universal grammar both of which holding the propensity for commonalities throughout all languages. LAD is the key to the Syntax rule. The knowledge to master the rules is held unconsciously. Chomsky concludes exposure through auditory channels as being the only requirement for learning. Arguably Kuhl (2010) writes infantile exposure to language through auditory channels only, does not contribute effectively to learning indicating the importance of human interaction. Piaget, as discussed by Ault (1977) postulated language as not being part of the earliest stages of development. Signifying within sensorimotor stage, between birth and two years, the child’s development is too reflexive. Gleitman, Fridlund and Reisberg (2004) discuss the critical period hypothesis and suggest the young brain being more suited to acquisition than the adult brain. Lenneberg (1967) (as cited in Gleitman et al 2004) advocates, brain maturation closes language acquisition capacity window. Kuhl (2010) identified, within the critical period babies develop

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.

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).

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

In this essay, we will discuss the different stages of language acquisition. There are five main stages that any child passes through to acquire the first language and these stages are:

There is a common mistake that individuals make when discussing if someone has learned a language or not. Most people believe that learning a language is about speaking, but it is also about understanding and comprehending language itself as well. For humans, majority talk about when their child first starts to speak as the moment they accredit them with learning the language. In actuality, the learning starts well before that. The research suggests that language is a complex system that starts with language distinguishing at only hours old and progresses to using semantics effectively at about 2 years old. These early years are a sensitive period in the child’s life, where the capacity to learn language is at its all time high. To properly illustrate this process, we must go in chronological order starting from before the child even emerges into the world.