First Language Acquisition and Development
When reading the first part of this chapter, I really enjoyed learning about the different stages in which babies acquire language.Ā I have a 4 year old nephew and before reading this I didnāt put much thought into how he was learning language.Ā Itās interesting to read the examples and remember incidents that occurred in real life.Ā The most frequent one is asking āWhy?āĀ Maybe a reason why children acquire language so quickly and effectively is because of their immense curiosity. They are new to this world and therefore want to learn more about it.Ā Although there is probably some physical growth element to why children learn so well, I think as we get older we lose some of our child-like curiosity and our information absorption slows as we become unconcerned, uninterested, or just distracted by other things in life.Ā
The next part of the chapter explained the three main theoretical positions that explain language development.Ā I think all three perspectives work together to explain language acquisition.Ā We need the behaviourist perspective because imitation is important when learning anything, especially language. Ā The innatist perspective, because I believe to survive as humans, communication and interaction with others is necessary, making us predisposed to language.Ā And finally, the interactionist/development perspectives, where exposure and interaction with people and objects, gives children the necessary understanding of language.Ā I donāt think language development can be achieved through only one of these perspectives but all of them together.Ā
One thing that I found funny was the comic on page 26.Ā I realized that people do use that way of speaking to babies even though we should use our best grammar when language absorption is at its peak.Ā Another thing that shocked me was how in Papua New Guinea and traditional Inuit society, children arenāt really talked to or encouraged to speak in conversation.Ā Based on my personal experience, I try to talk to my nephew as much as possible, asking him everything from what color his shirt is, to what he did that day.Ā I think itās interesting how different cultures see language acquisition so differently, but end with similar results.Ā Ā
