Socioeconomic Status Of Children 's Linguistic Experience And Development

However, there is a critical period of learning a second language, “Many linguists believe there is a 'critical period ' (lasting roughly from birth until puberty) during which a child can easily acquire any language that he or she is regularly exposed to. Under this view, the structure of the brain changes at puberty, and after that it becomes

Cognitive development in stage two of lifespan development correlates to shifts in infant’s thinking, reasoning, and use of language, problem solving, and learning. A child’s linguistic abilities develop swiftly around three years old. Then take into account by four years old, most toddlers are verbal intellectuals speaking in their native tongue proficiently (Dyer J., 2002a. pp. 87-92).

All language theorists acknowledge nature and nurture both play significant roles in children’s language development. However, the theoretical debate to whether nature or nurture is the dominant tool during a child’s language

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.

* We do not always know the stages of development of the child’s mother tongue.

Socioeconomic status (SES) has an enormous impact on language development. As said by Erika Hoff, author of Language Development, “there is abundant evidence that” (102) there is a gap in language development when comparing children in high SES homes to children in low SES homes. An arguably more important topic is why the gap in language development exists. There are many potential reasons, but the main reason why the language gap exists is that parents in low SES homes don’t talk to their children to same way or the same amount as parents in high SES homes.

The development of children can depend on many factors, one of the important ones being socioeconomic status (SES). SES can be defined as a multidimensional construct, including measures of social factors such as power, prestige and hierarchical social status, and economic resources (Hackman and Farah, 2009). Child development can be studied from multiple dimensions such as physical, mental, social, and emotional development among others. For the purposes of this study, I will be focusing on how socioeconomic status affects child cognitive development.

It was such a pleasure taking this class. I was always interested in linguistics and wanted to dive deeper into the subject. Linguistics is a very broad topic with a lot of information to cover. While taking this class, the information provided refreshed my mind about many concepts and situations that I experience on a daily basis. It’s easy to wake up and take advantage of the day without acknowledging different uses of language. It’s imperative for everyone to become more aware of how everyone communicates; families, friends, employees, public figures, and even companies. Language is apart of who we are as a human race and it’s beautiful to break down the barriers and learn more about it.

Numerous studies have been done in this area as there are many children living in poverty in North America and all across the world. There are roughly over one billion children living in poverty around the world (United Nations Children’s Fund, 2010). The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United describes poverty as “Lack of knowledge and good skills in herding was widely given as a main cause of poverty.” Living in poverty can seriously affect a child’s life as the child would not be able to go to school or would do poorly because there was nothing to eat at home so they would not be able concentrate. The child when old enough would have to work all day to make money for the family and many other harsh realities throughout their lifetime. Throughout the course of this paper I will be explain how poverty effects language development of a child because of the reasons of parental education and having a low socioeconomic status. In this paper, I do talk a lot about school statistics a number of times but that is because I believe if one does not have their language skills fully developed the results will show in their work ethic and grades in school. It is important to understand that poverty does not have a direct consequence to language development but it is things associated with poverty such as parental education, health care, child care, low socioeconomic status and many other variables that play an influence in

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

Social disadvantage is hard to summarise in one single definition as there are a number of ways to measure it such as level of employment to health and life expectancy. However it is still problematic to solely conclude the existence of social disadvantage from measures such as these as Clegg and Ginsberg (2006:10) note how a family could have a good occupation and economic state, but If they reside in a poor neighbourhood it could have an effect on development. Due to the difficulty defining social disadvantage researchers have tried to distinguish between poverty status and SES (socio-economic status). Within this guideline three measures to determine it are taken into account: Occupation (often paternal), level of parental education (often maternal) and economic deprivation. The level of SES is therefore a useful way to determine the degree of social disadvantage, with low-SES being a useful way to define it. With this definition there has been an increasing level of focus on the issue of children from low-SES backgrounds displaying limited success academically than that of children from more socially advantaged backgrounds. In relation to language, this academic underachievement has been attributed to language skills inadequate for accessing the curriculum (Clegg

To begin with, socioeconomic status is categorized an individual’s or family’s social status regarding income and occupation. I believe children from a low socioeconomic status have a disadvantage in learning language as opposed to a higher socioeconomic status. Language acquisition is the process that humans can perceive, dissect, and understand language. Much research has been conducted on infants and children to support this. According to Spencer, Clegg, and Stackhouse (2012), many young children in that are from areas of social disadvantage learn words at a different pace than their peers that are more advantaged. Many studies have been published to support this. However, one

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 achievement of oral language is a normal development for the performance of most children. The child’s (ren) understanding to communicate will began to increase with age, however, it will not establish the growth increase process right away but it will contribute to the perfection progress as the children starts to read and transform into a more experienced reader. Learning and communicating more adequately

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