Tom's Second Language Observation

The piece is a conversation between a four year old (Tom) and his teacher, they are discussing drawings Tom has made. While Tom only makes few mistakes in his speech it is obvious that he is still developing the ability to speak.

The teacher communicates with Tom using child directed speech, this can been seen with him often emphasising certain words such as “YOU” in sentences. This ensures his point is clear to tom who might not understand that it is his choice and not the teachers. The teacher also utilises a large amount of voiceless pauses when talking with Tom. By speaking slowly he makes sure TOM is following his conversation and understands what he is talking about. The teacher also repeats Tom’s utterance back to him at one point asking wether he is “drawing a dinosaur”. Tom stated he was going to “build” a dinosaur. Through repeating his sentence with the correct word inserted he ensures Tom knows of his mistake and
Tom is not yet at that age where he properly understands formality and he being polite. He issues imperative statements to his teacher such as “close your eyes”, Tom also chastises his teacher stating “I can see you”. Tom also does not use please or thank you during conversation.

Tom could be placed into piaget’s pre operational stage of language acquisition which he is in the right age group for. Tom is also on track for Jean Aitchison’s ideas for at which ages language is acquired as they are expected to be able to use complex sentences at age 5 with few mistakes and Tom is only 4. He is also conscious of conditionals, which could place him in stage five of David Crystals theory on child language acquisition. Tom understands that he will only be able to properly draw a house if his teacher shows him.

While Tom has moved on from making lots of mistakes and using simple four word sentences he still makes some of the more common mistakes such as under extension or utilising