Language Acquisition Theories
- Created by: Livy
- Created on: 05-02-14 11:36
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- Language Acquisition Theorists
- Social Interactionist Theory (PIAGET)
- Parents conversations with children from birth familiarise children with conversation patterns.
- Parents speak more slowly to children and simplify their language or expand on the child's speech
- Feral children who grew up in the wild never learned speech despite adults actively trying to teach them
- Nelson found that children whose mothers actively corrected them in the one word stage advanced more slowly than children whose mothers accepted errors
- Argues that children learn best independently and when they are interested in something, rather than because of threats or punishment
- 'Jim' was the son of deaf parents. He watched a lot of TV but did not speak to his parents much. His speech did not fully develop
- Children need language to be appropriately sequenced to learn it EG built up steps of difficulty
- Genie was raised alone in a room until the age of 13 by parents who never spoke to her. Even once she was rescued, she never learned to talk.
- Parents introduce new words using familiar sentence frames. EG 'Whats this? It's a ...'
- Critical period- children learn language very well at a certain age - once this period has passed, it becomes more difficult
- We find learning a second language really difficult (especially if we don't live there)
- Dad : say 'please' Child: Peas Dad: Please Child: peas
- Parents place emphasis on children learning polite terms
- A study in 1973 showed that the more a mother speaks to a child, the higher the child's vocabulary will become
- Mothers and fathers seem to talk to their children differently. The child will still learn to talk.
- Nativist Theory (CHOMSKY)
- Cruttenden's study of intonation suggested that children can use intonation but not understand it.
- Children will construct sentences they have not heard before
- Children's sentences ususally follow a similary pattern of SVO initially (this is common to all language)
- Parents are more likely to correct the content than the way something is said.
- All children seem to pass through the same stages of language development
- Virtuous errors such as 'mans' & 'goed' etc
- Children are born with the ability to make all sounds; as we get older, we keep only the ones that are in our language
- Parents don't correct their children's grammatical errors ( but they learn the correct grammar anyway)
- Children who have learning difficulties often learn correct speech.
- Children learn to speak remarkably quickly
- Babies appear to respond to language even when they are in the womb
- In some cultures parents do not speak to their children until they reach a certain age. Despite this, the children still learn to talk.
- Cognitive Theory (BRUNER)
- Children learn words that are part of their environment
- Once a child can arrange objects into size order they will be able to use the language to describe this.
- One a child reaches 18 months they will understand object permanence
- The fis experiment suggests that children can hear errors in others' speech but not their own
- Behaviourist Theory (SKINNER)
- Parents smile and say 'well done' when a child says a new word
- Children develop regional accents
- Mum says : dog.d(1) og(2) Child: Dog Mum: well done (.) dog
- Child asks for 'orange' juice and gets it. After that they always say 'orange'
- Social Interactionist Theory (PIAGET)
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