Essay on The Development of Language Acquisition

“Oral language is a skill that is acquired naturally by the young. The importance of its development in early childhood cannot be overemphasised. It underpins the whole scope of learning and is employed to question, to seek information and to proffer ideas. A child who has a well – grounded ability in oral language will usually be nicely poised to cope with reading and writing. Anyone who lacks this will be at a disadvantage.” (J.Fellowes & G.Oakley, 2010, pp4) It is a vital component of every human beings life as it is a means of communication and interaction with their family, friends and

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.

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.

This study will require almost 40 children, aged 6, to participate. The reason for this is many children at this age they are on the ongoing process of learning and are on the verge to still develop their English vocabulary as well as the capacity to hold large amounts of vocabulary. Participants will be put into two groups, those who have English as a second language and those that have English as their native language. It is essential to have 20 participants in each group to avoid any biases.

Throughout a child’s early stages of life, language is used primarily for communicating with parents in order to get what they need. From as early as birth babies communicate through crying in order to tell parents what they want. Parents soon learn to distinguish between the hungry cry, the wet/dirty cry and the tired cry. According to Halliday, 1975, children begin to learn their first language from between six – eighteen months old. He believes children are learning a ‘system of meanings’. He looks at language from a functional point of view and suggests there are seven functions that language serves for young children. The first four of these functions ensure that social, emotional and physical needs are catered to, they are called, Instrumental, Regulatory, Interactional and Personal. Instrumental refers to a child using language to ensure they get what they need or want. The Regulatory function tells others what to do in order to control their behaviour. The Interactional function relates to the use of language in order to interact with the people around the child particularly those seen as important such as parents and siblings or close friends. The personal function relates to how the child uses language to explain feelings, and their own identity. The other three functions are used as children become older and want to know more about the world, tell stories and pass on information.

Yana is starting to attend a setting, however, she speaks little English (appendix one). This language barrier could affect Yana in all areas of development, particularly her social development as it will limit her verbal communication skills (Davies, 2011). As Yana has English as an additional language (EAL), she may find it difficult to communicate her basic needs with limited vocabulary- Schaffer (1926) views this as a crucial barrier as it will prevent practitioners from successfully meeting children’s needs (Schaffer, 2004). Schaffer (1926) believes that EAL is a barrier to learning, however, Vygotsky (1896) along with Chomsky (1928) believe that language is a skill that can be learnt (Graf & Birch, 2009). Therefore, if language is modelled by the practitioners then Yana should learn new words and soon form sentences which will support Yana in all areas of

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.

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.

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

Children acquire language since they were born. They communicate with their parents. Furthermore, children and parents interact with each other using a language that we often call the first language or mother tongue. At an early age, children are only learning one language that is the mother tongue. By age and speech development, children improve to acquire a second language from the school or the environment around them. In terms of speed of langgauge acquisition, children are factorized by both the child and the child’s learning environment. Therefore, it is important to understand how children acquire second language. This paper is provided

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.

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).