Читать реферат по английскому: "Language Acquistion Essay Research Paper Language acquisition" Страница 1

(Назад) (Cкачать работу)

Language Acquistion Essay, Research Paper

Language acquisition is the process of learning a native or a second language. Although how children learn to speak is not perfectly understood, most explanations involve both the observation that children copy what they hear and the inference that human beings have a natural aptitude for understanding grammar. Children usually learn the sounds and vocabulary of their native language through imitation, and grammar is seldom taught to them; that they rapidly acquire the ability to speak grammatically. This supports the theory of Noam Chomsky (1959). that children are able to learn the grammar of a particular language because all intelligible languages are founded on a deep structure of universal grammatical rules that corresponds to an innate capacity of the human brain. Adults learning a second language pass through some of the same stages, as do children learning their native language.

In the first part of this paper I will describe the process of language acquisition. The second part will review how infants respond to speech.

Language Acquisition

Language is multifaceted. It contains both verbal and non-verbal aspects that children seem to acquire quickly. Before birth virtually all the neurons (nerve cells) are formed, and they migrate into their proper locations in the brain in the infant. When a baby is born, it can see and hear and smell and respond to touch, but only dimly. The brain stem, a primitive region that controls vital functions like heartbeat and breathing, has completed its wiring. Elsewhere the connections between neurons are wispy and weak. But over the first few months of life, the brain’s higher centers explode with new synapses. This helps an infant to be biologically prepared to face the stages of language acquisition.

According to the textbook Child Development: A Thematic Approach, 3rd Edition (D. Bukatko & M.W. Daehler, 1996, p. 252) there are four main components to language acquisition. These components are phonology, semantics, syntax and pragmatics.

Phonology is the study of how speech sounds are organized and how they function. It is the main linguistic accomplishment during the first year of life. The phonology of language refers to fundamental sounds units and the rules for combining them. Each language has a certain number of sounds called phonemes. Phonemes are the smallest unit of sound that affects the meaning of a word. Infants are able to identify hundreds of variations of sounds. For example, an infant who is six months old can detect the difference between ma and pa.

An infant?s first year is mainly receiving messages but also working on being able to produce messages. As they physically develop infants form the ability to make sounds. Some of these initial sounds are cooing, vowel like utterances occasionally accompanied by consonants and babbling which are consonant-vowel combinations. During the first 6 months of life, physiological changes, such as the shape of oral cavity, tongue development, motor control of lips, and tooth eruption, also take place that contribute to speech development. One of the infants task is to identify phonemes. According to the textbook (D.Bukatko & M.W. Daehler, 1996, p. 202) infants show an early sensitivity to prosody, which is patterns of intonation, stress, and rhythm that communicate meaning in speech; the fluctuations of the voice. For example, raising your voice to ask a question or lowering it to let the infant know you are serious. This helps infants to learn the phonology of their language and prepares them for the next stage of learning which is semantics.

Semantics is the meaning of words or combination of words. Shortly before babies have their first birthday, they begin to understand words, and around that birthday, they start to produce them (Clark, 1993). Words are usually produced in isolation. This one-word stage can last from two months to a year. Children’s first words are similar all over the planet. About half the words are for objects: food (juice, cookie), body parts (eye, nose), clothing (diaper, sock), vehicles (car, boat), toys (doll, block), and household items (bottle, light, animals (dog, kitty), and people (dada, baby). At this time children usually start to use gestures to call attention to an object or event defined as protodeclarative communication. Protoimperative communication is the use of a gesture to issue a command or request. For example a child throws his bottle down to show that they no longer want it or they point at specific objects they want the parent to see.

Around 18 months, language changes in two ways. Vocabulary growth increases and the child begins to learn words at a rate of one every two waking hours, and will keep learning that rate or faster through adolescence (Clark, 1993). Primitive syntax begins with two-word strings such as all dry, all messy, all wet, I sit, I shut, no bed, no pee, see baby and see pretty. The child utterances in this two-word stage are described as telegraphic because they contain only the elements necessary for getting the message across, leaving out modifiers and prepositions. Syntax is important because the child learns to combine words correctly or grammatically. It is at this stage the child learns to express internal states and also to direct the actions of others.

Pragmatics is the rules for using language effectively within a social context. For example when a preschooler yells out ?Give me that book!? she may be unaware that this ?order? to her teacher is socially unacceptable. Parents play a significant role in teaching the child what is socially acceptable and what is not. They do this by reminding the child to always say ?Thank you? and ?Please? and to use other socially acceptable manners. They also act as models by acting out what they are requesting from the child.

Normal

Похожие работы