Childhood

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Name: Estefania Espergue Date: Thursday 27 September

Review of "The Talk of the Child" by Jerome Bruner:
"... Their issues relate to the way the child acquires the uses of their native language ... the emphasis is on pragmatic, in learning how to do things with words ... in particular, how to achieve mutual care and management of shares in common with another person through language ... "

(Bruner, 1983, pp. 12.)

There are different theories about how language develops in humans,certainly, it is amazing that in a relatively short period, as may be three years, a child is able to handle a complex communication system like humans. Traditional behaviourists believed that language learning is the result of imitation, practice, feedback on success, and habit formation. At birth, babies are able to respond to the rhythm of language. They recognize the accent, rhythm and high and low tone. Children imitate the sounds and patterns which they hear around them and receive positive reinforcement for doing so. The learning process takes place when the child comes in contact with an environment that speaks the language in question, and thanks to the social interaction that language develops. Therefore, the learning process is an unconscious process where children learn to speak without explicit instruction.A childs language is constantly developing and changing. Children are actively engaging in communication as they are learning to communicate. The child is the active party in the language-learning process and in the process of making sense of language. His experience and interaction with others give him the background to relate language to the sound/meaning relationship and to the purpose it represents. Children naturally obtain a communicative competence,intrinsically understand the rules of grammar, and gain knowledge of the rules of using language.Linguistic structure comes through the childs own cognitive and social activity. Although there is great variation between individual children and the rate of their language acquisition, there is little variation in the pattern of development between languages. At the age of three years, about 90% of what children say is grammatically correct. The most common errors are to regularize irregular verbs. For example, they may say "I do not sabo" instead of "I do not know." They learned the grammar rule that verbs keep their roots intact and inflectional suffixes are added (in the first person,) as you want to say, but still did not learn the exceptions to the rule.Children learn many functions, but they learn very early the function of negation,in stage one negation is usually expressed by the word “no”,children distinguish between what is good for them and bad, what you like or do not notice and do something they do not like just know that using the word "no", the others understand their message, and they answer with things like this examples such as, "no cookie", "no sleep" etc. The stage 2 talks about sentences that express refusal or prohibition and and many times use “don’t”, “Don’t touch tha”t, then kids include more words, like in the stage 3 they start to include other words that means they same as “no”, like can’t and don’t. On the other hand due to to their little knowledge of grammar, they don’t differ the forms for different persons or tenses:
“ I can’t do it.”, “ He don’t want it”.
Relative to stage 4, children start to connect the negative element to the right form of auxialiry verb like “ do “ and “ be “. Although their language system is by now entirely complex, continue to have difficulties with the other forms of denial.
“I don’t have no more candies”
Referring to questions where and who is best known for the children is very easy to remember for children, as parents are constantly asking them things like "Where's Mom?, Who is this?, And things like that, then it is much repetition they know how to respond or be noted, also begin to ask "why" but have no idea what they are talking about, yet they ask any and every. Stage one talks about the first questions that children make, their question only have two or three words and generally indicates the object and say the name of who belongs in a questioning tone:
“ Cookie”?, “Mummy book?”
But at the same time they produce some “ correct questions”, and this is because they hear that and they learn by parts:
“Where is Daddy?”, “What is that”?
In stage two, they are a little more curious and start to do new questions, children use to word order of the declarative sentence:
“ You like this? “, “ I have some? “
Now, in stage three, little by little, children realize that the structure of questions is different and begin to procreate questions such as:
“ Can I go? “, “ Are you Happy? “
At stage four, some questions are formed by subject-auxilliary inversion.
“Are you going to play with me?”
At stage five, both wh- and `yes/no` questions are formed correctly
“ Are these your boots”?
Stage six, At this stage children are ready for all kinds of questions, including the most complex, children learn new vocabulary using send and facing different situations where they have to use all their vocabulary and ask to have the challenge of new and different things way.
In the pre-school years, at the age of 3 or 4 years when the child is going through a period of development and maximum language learning. Between the ages of 5-6 years organizes your ideas and can maintain or establish a conversation. This process ends or ends around age 7, when linguistic levels have been fully integrated.Recall that a stimulating social environment in which the child develops, this will act as favoring the development of language proper.

“In the school years acquired more complex structures of language, it comes to dominate the appearance and manner of verbs and construction began oral texts as comprehensive and coherent narrative. Language acquisition is one of the most difficult steps, while important in the child's life. It is essential for effective learning of language stimulation received from the environment and the people around you, this is also impacting on the overall intellectual or cognitive development (Eccles, 1999).”, The school is for children's language activator first magnitude, as the place of the need of having to continuously acquire and manage new words and concepts, helping them to assimilate a comprehensive understanding of the world, that is, of the natural and environmental social, and forces them to live with other children. Right now the talk begins to acquire vital importance to them, coinciding with a wealth of new learning, including the reading and writing, directly related to verbal function. Also through family relationships, school, early playmates, the child has a chance to start in various aspects of social life.

By other way, if we talk about the best way to explain the first and second language acquisition, we have to know the different theories about learning one of the most popular theories is the Behaviourism, the best proponent of this theory was B.F.Skinner, based on the proposition that all things that organisms do including acting, thinking, and feelings can and should be regarded as behaviors, and that psychological disorders are best treated by altering behavior patterns or modifying the environment.We learn language through a process of stimulus (hearing, input) and response (our trials). Correct responses are rewarded, as is our correct language use, which increases over time, Children imitate sounds and practice what they hear. Correct structures are positively reinforced. Language acquisition is, thus, a process of habit formation.Also que found The innatist perspective and her proponent was Noam Chomsky and he proposed a completely different view of language acquisition, he said that every human child posseses innate knowledge of language structure to detect and reproduce language. That is, language acquisition depends on an unobservable mechanism called Language Acquisition Advice or LAD. The LAD is supplied to human childen with birth. The LAD contains language universals, that is, the structure and sounds common to all human languages and dialect. Language learning is distinct from other cognitive capacities, young children learn and apply grammatical rules and vocabulary as they are exposed to them and do not requiere initial formal teaching. Chomsky theorized that the child, from his/her birth is exposed to language that functions as a trigger for the LAD. The LAD has the capability to formulate hypotheses about the structure of the language to which the child is exposed. The child is of course quite unconscious about this process.

Is time to mention Interactionist. Piaget and Vygotsky are the principals in support this theory, that refer to the direct relation between first language acquisition with the cognitive areas, because kids can't use words that they don't know. They both believes that the language learning is better when the interaction between the person and her/his enviroment, thus the the word of the interlocutor will serve like a guide to the child and this one acquire knowledge from the another one, because children learn from experience

I think that the best way to explain first and second language acquisition is the theory of Innatism and the best way to show this is doing a comparison with Behaviourism, first behaviourism acquisition is an outcome of experience and Innatism is an outcome of condition.
According to behaviourism language is learnt in the way other habits are learnt. On the other hand, according to Innatism language develops in the same way as othe biological functions. The behaviouris theory mantains focus on the change in observable behaviours as the manifestations of learning. Innatism, on the contrary, focuses on an unobservable change in mental knowledge. The behaviourist theory asserts that any piece of information in the mind could be accessed by any other cognitive process. On the other hand, the innatism theory argues that language constitutes a species-specific and unique cognitive system, separate from other systems of systems cognition, and behaviourism knowledge is seen as constant, contrariwise, in innatism, knowledge is seen dynamic and the most importan is that behaviourism theory ignores completely the creativity of human beings, whereas the inn t theory views languages acquisition as a creative process. I think that for all this reasons and more points, Innatism is the best way to teach children, by the way, the first experiments of this theory were with children and considers the child as an active participant, which is great because most of the time we have the child's attention and is a very creative process.

Language delay are a number of difficulties in language acquisition that occurs at all levels: morphological, phonological, syntactic, lexical and pragmatic. It is mainly a problem expressive without understanding is affected. The child can fully understand orders given to them (and run properly) but can not express their ideas, thoughts etc. orally.I think this is a very big challenge for teachers.The classroom teacher has a key role in detecting changes in language. Since this will be one more time you spend with students in kindergarten and in the first years of primary education, first of all you have to know at least a little more frequent disturbances or potential that may arise, know each child and their evolutionary stages and most importantly pay attention to any signs that might warn that something is wrong, look at the behavior of children, in their language or ausenciaa ely on their way to express themselves, the teacher should be very aware of this type of children and have them patience and awareness so that this way we obtain the desired learning slowly but fulfill.

In think that Childhood Bilingualism is very beneficial for the human brain, learn languages since childhood is very advantageous because as we all know are learned more easily and if the child has the opportunity to learn a second language so very well, because unfortunately in our country there are not many opportunities to practice a language that is completely foreign to the life and environment of the school they learn. The additive bilingualism is when a person has learned a second language which is considered prestigious. Subtractive bilingualism is when you learn a second language for socio-economic causes and this new acquisition occurs away from the first language, i don’t like the idea of remoteness of the first language, but knowing more than one language clearly be beneficial not support the removal of the language, as I believe that there is an extreme risk necessary.

It is important to understand the processes of language acquisition and see the similarities with the processes of acquisition of the second language for teaching professionals implement more useful and beneficial practices with his students and obtain more satisfactory results. I seen despite having much in common, it is also important to consider the different circumstances and contexts in which learning a and another language, students either in childhood or adult, either natural or acquisition contexts classroom instruction, as these differentiating factors will make the results are different. However, the circumstances must be exploited to the maximum and adapted to the needs of learners for best results. As we studied, students will not get the same proficiency if they start their learning after the critical period, childhood still the ideal age to begin this task. For this reason must be applied early in the context teaching current educational.