Chapter 1 Language learning in early childhood LANE 423 Chapter 1 Language learning in early childhood

Outline of Chapter First language acquisition (children milestones & developments) Explaining 1st language acquisition Behaviorist perspective Innatist perspective Interactionist/developmental perspective Language disorders and delays Childhood bilingualism

1st Language Acquisition Language acquisition: It is the process in which humans are able to perceive and comprehend language. In addition to being able to produce words and sentences to communicate. There is a high degree of similarity in 1st language acquisition in babies all over the world. (ex.)

1st Language Acquisition Researchers have shown that the developmental sequences in children from different parts of the world are similar. Developmental sequences: The order in which different features of a language (negation) are acquired in language learning.

The 1st three years: milestones & developments Through research it has been shown that infants have the ability to do the following: Distinguish the voice of their mothers from other speakers. Recognize the language that was spoken to their mother (around them) before they were born. Capable of very fine auditory discrimination. (pa & ba) Stop making distinctions between sounds that are not phonemic in the language spoken around them. (babies in Arabic speaking environment)

The 1st three years: milestones & developments Auditory discrimination: The ability to distinguish language sounds. (pa & ba) Phonemic: Small changes in language sounds that can change meaning. For example, the sounds p and b are phonemic in English but not in Arabic.

The 1st three years: milestones & developments By 12 months: Babies begin to produce a word or two that everyone recognizes. (ex. agga = bottle) By 2 years: Babies produce at least 50 different words, and they can combine words into simple sentences. (ex. Mommy juice) In the first 3 years of a babies life there are predictable patterns in the development of their language. These predictable features are called developmental sequences or stages.

The 1st three years: milestones & developments Roger Brown’s 1960 research on the grammatical development of three children. Results showed that 14 grammatical functions were developed in similar sequences.

The 1st three years: milestones & developments Examples of the sequence of the grammatical morphemes acquired: Present progressive – ing (Mommy running) Plural –s (2 books) Irregular past forms (Baby went) Possessive –s (Daddy’s hat) Articles the and a

Results of Brown’s 1960 Research Roger Brown’s 1960 research resulted in two important points: A child who mastered grammatical morphemes at the bottom of the list also mastered the ones on the top. However, the reverse was not true. Children did not master the grammatical morphemes at the same age rate, but they did master the grammatical morphemes in the same order/sequence.

Brown’s 1960 Research Many hypotheses have been studied to explain why these grammatical morphemes are acquired in this specific order. The frequency in which the morphemes appear in parents’ speech. The cognitive complexity of the meanings represented by each morpheme. The difficulty in perceiving or pronouncing the morpheme. In the end however, there is no simple satisfactory reason for this specific order.

The Pre-school Years The most important linguistic aspects of children in this age group are: They have the ability to differentiate between how adults talk to other adults and how they talk to babies. They develop metalinguistic awareness. (Treating language as an object)

The Pre-school Years An example of metalinguistic awareness in children: 3 year olds (Drink the chair – silly) (Cake the eat – wrong but without understanding why) 5 year olds will understand why each of the previous sentences is wrong.

The School Years The most important linguistics aspects of children in the school years are: Incredible growth of vocabulary (due to reading) 2. Children understand that there are different language registers. (style/way of using the language) For example, language spoken to the principle is different than that spoken to friends. Written language is different than spoken language..etc.

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