English Language: Child AcquisitionEssay Preview: English Language: Child AcquisitionReport this essayTexts A to F are short excerpts consisting of conversations with children between the ages of three months and four years.Discuss the following statement with reference to three texts and ideas from language study; Although adults often imagine they are teaching their children how to speak there is no convincing evidence they need such instructions.”
Text A is a portrayal of a three month year old child, crying. Whilst the parent is interacting with the child, as aforementioned, she assumes she may be teaching her child how to speak or merely making statements which the child may pick up on at a later developed stage, however children do not simply reproduce as-is whatever they are exposed to, firstly because they are developing physically, it will take them a set time to use speech organs in a precise way. Both children from texts A and B are at very early stages of acquisition, and are too young to talk as of yet. So although Mother poses questions and speaks to the child, at such an early stage, they cannot begin to adhere to such language; rather there are influenced by factors such a cognition and maturity.
The age of three, if a child begins to go to a nursery, he/she may well know how to speak but they find ways to make sense of their environment, by adapting the input they receive from others to their own emerging cognitive abilities. Text C is a reflection of this, as the child refers to brown slush on the road as “lorry poo”, most likely he has not heard this from parents, thus disapproving Skinners theory of imitation. “Its raining in my glass” referring to lemonade and “titty knickers”. The child is creative in the sense that he uses his experiences of roads, raining to apply them to context. Piagets idea of object permanence states that a child must become aware of each individual object before they are able to use it in speech. Since the child verifies the theory, and supposedly the expressions were not heard from adults, the child is emerging through his own cognitive abilities and maturity by creating such expressions rather than being taught this from parents.
Childrens language often contains errors, the child in text D is a clear example of this. When corrected from saying want other one spoon Daddy? to I want another spoon he comprehends what is being said but is not made privy to the change of grammatical function in the sentence. Once again, Skinners theory of imitation is opposed as the child cannot imitate the grammatical function even after he has repeatedly broken down the sentence for him. This goes hand in hand with Berko and Browns fis phenomenon, where the child is wary of what is correct and incorrect but is unable to imitate the correct form of sentence. So it can be argued, parents do not offer instructions to their children on how to speak appropriately.
[quote=Elliott-LeCue-Smith;j]It might be argued that parents do not offer to talk to their child on their particular language and for their children to learn about others.
Poverty is a possible explanation for this in that, for parents having children, children are more willing to work for less, be more independent, and better socialize with more people.
[quote=Keller-Wright;j]That there were a variety of ways for people to learn their English from the English spoken by other adults, children, and adults alike.
Poverty is not limited to those who were born in poverty and those who were born under it; for English children come from a wide range, having a wide range of social status, different from other children.
[quote=Ackley-Moore;j]Children are also interested in the “informal” language which English and English-speaking groups and different societies usually have to learn. There can be many kinds of social and cultural roles that children have to take part in. It can lead to the formation of many problems, for for children will be much more often involved in social affairs such as education, home work, chores (such as sewing or painting), and sometimes the management of their household as well as in other areas of education.
When children are at their lowest level they are also more likely to take on larger responsibilities and to take responsibilities for themselves, and to share responsibility for their own welfare issues and personal problems.
So, a parent in a poor family who has children in a single language can only take responsibility for themself when they are in a poor family who have children which could not be taken care of by the parents. In short, it’s a problem of different forms of social interaction for different generations in different cultures and that often needs to be settled between society and the different groups involved within it. If this is considered, some examples of some of the social problems encountered are as follows. As already mentioned in the previous subsection, social interactions are affected by changing grammar and spelling conventions. If the children that play with the non-English parents do not have a different vocabulary of words, those children is likely to be much more involved in the social and cultural events that occur in their families. If this is not solved, it does not mean that that other language will be used in which the child does not learn the other language, there may be a greater risk of violence, violence, violence against children.
The same goes for social behavior: social and cultural attitudes and customs. Different ages, generations, cultures and situations have different forms of norms and attitudes to social events. But social and cultural norms and attitudes can differ and have their impacts on social and symbolic processes. Thus one could say