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The Language Acquisition Of Children

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It is a well-known fact that all children acquire language the same way, regardless of what the language in question is. For example, we can create an analogy by comparing the process of acquiring a language to learning how to play a new game. If one wishes to play a new game he must first go over some basic rules, which in our case would be: understanding sounds, words and sentences and how they can be combined into meaningful structures. Since language can be considered a highly complex game there are many rules which are divided into levels that depend on each other. Therefore, to understand some higher principles of language one must first acquire all of the lower ones that support them. Observing how a child acquires a language …show more content…

Secondly, the language and dialect of a particular environment in which the child grows up in affect the acquisition so it is very likely that the child will initially adopt that language and dialect naturally. Generally, they begin to converse using the language their parents employ, but soon after, as they start to integrate with other children, they start speaking like them. This usually begins at the age of three. Children will also pick up on the grammar mainly used within its community; whether it’s standard or non-standard grammar doesn’t matter to them. For example if a child grows up in a neighbourhood where the majority of people use sentences such as ‘I done it’, inevitably the child will also pick up this type of speech and use it since he doesn’t know the difference between correct and incorrect grammar. To them one rule applies always - as long as adults use this type of language it remains correct from the child’s point of view.
The process, by which humans reach the capacity to comprehend and perceive language, as well as to produce words and sentences to communicate, is called language acquisition. It is one of the traits of the human being as other species do not use language to communicate. Generally language acquisition is referred to as first language acquisition which studies acquisition of the native language whereas second language acquisition is the acquisition of languages learned after the native language.
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