Theories of Language Development
Modeling & Reinforcement Theory: B.F. Skinner’s theory that a child simply learns through observing and imitating the speech of others; children occasionally imitate specific sounds and general sound patterns and as they get older continue to pick up on words and expressions. Skinner suggest reinforcement also plays a role, praising or rewards increase mature language. Adults must be mindful that they are rewarding proper grammar.
Nativism: Noam Chomsky theorized that we develop language through a language acquisition device that is implanted in our biology, he explains that the brain is structured to focus on language, finding the left hemisphere to focus on controlling language functions such as producing and understanding speech. He expresses how early exposure is vital to a child’s development.
Cognitive Process Theory: This theory expresses that children have an innate skill that progresses to make sense of language. We are not born with a capacity to learn language but instead with the skills to understand language patterns. This theory states that children’s progress relies on their ability to pay attention and have infant directed speech so they connect and stay actively engaged in language. Children often develop a level of reasoning, and though may not have the right answers can begin to do process of elimination.
Sociocultural Theory: This theory places an emphasis on social interactions to foster language, which involves explicit instruction and indirect means of communicating. Vygotsky views can be seen in examples like “I do, We do, You do”. Allowing an adult to demonstrate proper language, allow the child to model with them, and provide opportunities for the child to apply the skills.
Functionalism: The functionalism theory expresses that we develop language because evolution has motivated us to learn. It’s useful to us, language helps us: acquire knowledge and exchange information, have social interactions and establish relationships, control our behaviors and mentally represent things in our head, and influence other’s behaviors.
Trends in Language Development
Children’s language develops in building blocks. Starting in early infancy with phonemic awareness, then progressing to phonology, semantics, syntax, and then pragmatics.
Semantic Development: Starting very young, you can see an understanding to semantics at three to four months, where they begin to categorize words and sounds. At 8 months they say their first words, 12 months they know about 50 words and at 16- 18 months they have an explosion of development in vocabulary, knowing over 50,000 in oral development. Children have many ingenious strategies for learning meanings of words, fast mapping is a great example. They progress on their language, two types of language they work on is receptive which marks their comprehension and expressive which is producing emotions or statements. They do focus on lexical words which somehow connect to the physical, social, and psychological world. Overtime, they focus on the grammar aspect and continually refine their understanding of lexical words. Often times, they overextend or under extend when learning words, because they have learned the word but not fully understood its meaning; that is when we can redirect them and help them comprehend words.
To foster this development, talk regularly to the child, they pick up on patterns and sounds and are able to develop a categorization of the sounds. Also, as mentioned above, provide definitions to new words, so they learn the context of it and have examples of when to use it. Take those moments as teachable opportunities not just for the words but for the syntax and examples of when to use them. Providing them with positive feedback and encouraging them to read also aids in their development.
Syntactic Development
“Rules of syntax- the rules we use to combine words into meaningful sentences- are incredibly complex” (e.g. N. Chomsky, 2006)
Complex yet most of our knowledge about syntax is subconscious. Early syntactic knowledge builds on awareness of patterns in speech. Children rely heavily on word order to interpret and comprehend sentences. Once a child begins the process, they begin to semantic bootstrapping to form their syntactic categories. They will begin to increasingly incorporate syntactic rules to their questions and sentences. Beware of overregulation, where they haven’t grasped an awareness of endings yet. For instance, with word tenses, plurals, or word irregularities they may use common terms and not understand certain sentences need a different form of the word. An example is instead of saying “I went to school” they may say “I goed to school” because they know go but not the past tense of went.
To foster this development expand on their telegraphic speech, giving gentle feedback and proper modeling of the syntax. Expansion requires you to repeat a child’s short utterances in more complete and grammatically correct forms. Providing direct instruction and teaching word irregularities and providing lots of opportunities for the child to practice.
Development of Listening Skills
In the first year, infants learn to focus on primary sounds, or phonemes. A phoneme is the smallest unit of sounds in a spoken language that signifies different meanings. Phonemes make up our language, and one small change to a phoneme in a word can completely alter its meaning. For example, the word bite, changing the first sound to ‘f’ creates fight, changing the middle sound to a long ‘a’ creates bait, and changing the last sound to ‘k’ creates bike. Good listening varies in the mind of a child, so teaching them what your expectations are is important. A young child thinks good listening is just sitting quietly, a useful strategy to ensure the children are paying attention is comprehension monitoring, where every so often a teacher will orally ask questions to confirm they are paying attention. Helpful teaching tips to be mindful about is keeping an open positive mind. Some children may be scared to ask for help based on past experiences, don’t always assume they weren’t listening they just may not feel confident to ask, whether because of past experiences or cultures. Culture has a huge impact on the child’s manners and even their language, some native languages have different phonemes, because phonemes are particular to spoken language, some sounds don’t exist so be mindful as a teacher of the diversity in your classroom. In the later years, children begin to understand figurative speech or words with multiple meanings.
To promote good listening comprehension, provide developmentally appropriate opportunities for children to practice their semantic and syntactic skills and check frequently for progress and comprehension.
Development of Speaking Skills
In the first year, the infant will begin with cooing and babbling. As developing skills present information in small amounts so the child isn’t overwhelmed and can comprehend and make connections to the information. Discus expectations and allow them to progress with age. As they get older their pronunciation will improve and their conversations and narratives will increase in length, coherence, and depth. They also learn to adapt to their audience and listeners.
To promote these skills invite the child to conversations, ask lots of questions for clarifications and scaffolding, allow them to recall real events and encourage them to get creative with fictional ones, letting them exaggerate as long as they know they are stretching the truth and creating hyperbole stories.
Development of Metalinguistic Awareness
Metalinguistic awareness is the extent of which one understands the functions of language. You can see the development of metalinguistic awareness throughout a child’s life, even in early infancy. When the child begins to take interest in human voices, they begin categorizing sounds, creating cooing and babbling noises to repeat. This progresses to words, seeing a rapid increase in vocabulary at the age of 2. With that rapid increase in vocabulary, comes a miscomprehension of the words to its meanings. In middle school there’s an increase of temporal words and irregular words. Pronunciation is now mastered and they become better listeners and at sustaining conversations. Once learning the basics of language and communication, they begin to get linguistically creative. Around this time the best way to promote their development is encouraging them to read, preferably through books that promote figurative language so they can develop their metalinguistic skills.
Second Language Acquisition
Exposure to a second language in first few years is vital. Children’s minds are open and absorb all the information, though they may have minimal delays first few years once they sort out confusions and develop their languages they become proficient and are considered bilingual because they have mastered two languages fluently.
In teaching, students that come from another background that doesn’t speak English causes a barrier between content and comprehension. Never the less, there are many methods for teaching these English language learning students in bilingual education. The methods are on a spectrum from how much native language is included to English classroom. It ranges from submersion, structured English immersion, immersion, foreign language instruction, and subtractive bilingualism.
Bioecology of Language
All the plethora of factors that affect the individuality of language development.
Gender: Statistics show that girls are more verbally active than boys, because of this extra practice they develop younger and begin to use words and sentences at younger ages. Qualitatively, boys seek to be more information providers, thus their conversations are more blunt and direct, whereas girls seek to establish relationships so they speak more tactful and polite.
Socioeconomic status: Diverse backgrounds affect a child’s language development because their entire social network is changed by their surroundings, this stems off the ideas of nativism and nurture. High income family children tend to ask more questions, whereas low income families are such a high variable group that often times their language development is affecting but other times not as much. It depends on other aspects of their upbringing.
Ethnicity: Another factor that affects a child’s language development is ethnicity, depending on where you are from or what culture you believe in, may affect how you speak in terms of pronunciation, dialects, and even manners. Some cultures don’t allow children to look at adults when they are talking to them.
Exceptionalities of Language
Specific language impairment are disabilities characterized by abnormalities in producing or understanding spoken language. To the point where special education services are required.
If a child has trouble understanding receptive language, has trouble with articulation, fluency, syntax, semantics, or pragmatics, your child may need to be referred to for special education.
If working with children with SPL encourage them to speak often, patiently listen and ask for clarification on areas that were harder to understand in a positive way, and provide guidance on how to have and hold conversations.
Source: Child Development and Education by Teresa M. McDevitt, Jeanne Ellis Ormrod – Prentice Hall, 6th edition, 2010
Child Development 3273 