Miss. Mona AL-Kahtani

 Basic assumption:  Language acquisition is one example of the human child’s remarkable ability to learn from experience and there is no need to assume there are specific brain structures devoted to language acquisition. Miss. Mona AL-Kahtani

 Developmental psychologist have focused on the interplay between the innate learning ability of children and the environment in which they develop. - They emphasized the importance of the environment and the powerful learning mechanism in the human brain. - They link language acquisition to the acquisition of other kinds of skills and knowledge. Dan Slobin (1973) has emphasized the close relationship between children’s cognitive development and their acquisition of language. Miss. Mona AL-Kahtani

 One of the first proponents of the view that children's language is built on their cognitive development.  He observed infants and children on their play and interaction with people and objects. Miss. Mona AL-Kahtani

Sensorimotor stage (birth - 2 years old) - Recognizes self as agent of action and begins to act intentionally: e.g. shakes a rattle to make a noise - Achieves object permanence: realizes that things continue to exist even when no longer present to the sense Preoperational stage (ages 2-7) -Learns to use language and to represent objects by images and words. - Thinking is still egocentric. - Classifies objects by a single feature: e.g. groups together all the red blocks regardless of shape or all the square blocks regardless of color. Miss. Mona AL-Kahtani Stages of cognitive Development according to Piaget

Concrete operations (ages 7-11) - They can think logically about objects and events. - Achieves conservation of number (age 6), mass (age 7), and weight (age 9). - Classifies objects according to several features and can order them in series along a single dimension such as size. Formal operations (beginning at ages 11 and up) - The child’s cognitive structures are like those of an adult and include conceptual reasoning - They can think logically about abstract propositions and test hypotheses. Miss. Mona AL-Kahtani

 As a result, he concludes that children’s cognitive development would partly determine how they use the language. For example, they are not going to use “bigger” or “more” till they understand the concept they represent first.  So, we can say that the developing cognitive understanding is built on the interaction between the child and the things that can be observed or manipulate. Miss. Mona AL-Kahtani

 Piaget’s view of the language acquisition: He suggested that language is one of a number of symbol systems that are developed in childhood. Language can be used to represent knowledge that children have acquired through physical interaction with the environment. Miss. Mona AL-Kahtani

 He observed interaction among children and between children and adults also.  He concluded that language develops primarily from social interaction. Miss. Mona AL-Kahtani

 He stated that in a supportive interactive environment, children are able to advance to a higher level of knowledge and performance. He called this place in which children could do more than they would be capable of independently as “Zone of Proximal Development” ZPD.  In other words, ZPD is the difference between what a learner can do without help and what he or she can do with help, or the level of development attained when children engage in social behavior Miss. Mona AL-Kahtani

 In other words, Vygotsky stressed out the importance of conversations that children have with adults and with other children and saw in these conversations the origins of both language and thoughts. Miss. Mona AL-Kahtani

 They have different views.  Piaget believed that language is a symbol system that could be used to express knowledge acquired through interaction with physical world.  Vygotsky believed that thought was essentially internalized speech that emerged in social interaction. Miss. Mona AL-Kahtani

 It is said that full cognitive development at the age of 11 may support or interfere with language learning. Explain? Miss. Mona AL-Kahtani