Mancuello Maria Agostina
Co-worker: Ramello Milagros
Language Learning in Early Childhood
Read chapter 1 in How Languages are Learned and complete the
following tasks.
1. Read pp. 6 & 7 in chapter 1 and summarize the language acquisition sequence
babies follow; what can babies understand and produce when they are 1 year old / 2
years old? You can watch this video to complement what you have just read: Talking
timeline: Your child's development https://www.babycenter.com/0_your-childs-
talking-timeline_10356902.bc
2. Read the section on Grammatical Morphemes (pp. 7 & 8). Even though not all
English-speaking children acquire the same features at the same time, they all seem to
follow the same sequence; why is this so, in your opinion?
3. Concentrate on the paragraph about the “wug” test in this section (before Negation).
Does it provide evidence for/against the belief that children learn languages mainly
through imitation? There are several videos of “wug” tests being carried out in YouTube;
here’s one Kayla Wug Test https://youtu.be/IeF33vu2K_M
4. Read about the Negation and Question acquisition sequences. If you can, compare
them to a Spanish-speaking child’s development (you can observe a child in your family
or ask a friend who has children).
5. Read the sections The pre-school years and The school years and make a summary
in terms of: INTERACTION, METALINGUISTIC AWARENESS and VOCABULARY
GROWTH.
6. Read the presentation of Behaviourism (conductismo) on p. 15. What are its main
tenets and the objections raised against them?
7. Read the dialogues involving children in this section. What conclusions can be drawn
from these samples? How compatible are these conclusions with the behaviourist belief
that languages are learned mainly through imitation and practice?
8. Read the presentation of the innatist perspective on p. 20 and make sure you
understand why it is called “innatist” and what is meant by “universal grammar”,
“principles” and “parameters”.
9. Why does the example of the use of reflexive pronouns (p. 20) seem to support the
innatist perspective? You can watch this video to complement what you have just read
https://youtu.be/MLNFGWJOXjA
10. What is the Critical Period Hypothesis? Do the cases of profoundly deaf children and
international adoptees confirm this hypothesis?
1. According to the text, when the babies are 1 year old/ 2 years old they can understand
and produce:
-They distinguish the voice of their mothers from those of other speakers, they also
seem to recognize the language that was spoken around their mother before they
were born.
Mancuello Maria Agostina
Co-worker: Ramello Milagros
-They can hear the difference between sounds as similar as “pa” and “ba”.
-By the end of their first year, most babies understand quite a few frequently
repeated words in the language.or languages spoken around them.
-Babies (at 1 year old) will have begun to produce a word or two that everyone
recognizes.
-Babies (at 2 years old) produce at least 50 different words and some produce many
more. They begin to combine words into simple sentences.
2.Children reflect on morphological processes and on how they conceive morphological units
and their relationships in the very process of word construction in writing. I think children are
reflecting on how a written word can incorporate various meanings in different segments and
also on how those meanings are linked. A paragraph in the text tells us that the acquisition
of other language characteristics also shows how children's language develops
systematically and how they go beyond what they have heard to create new forms and
structures.
3. Reading that paragraph of the text and watching the video, I think it provides evidence for
the belief that children learn languages through imitation. Since for example in the video, the
woman only had to say "wug" once for the little girl to imitate her and every time she saw
that animal, she repeated what she had heard "wug".
4. According to the text, in Stage 1 Denial is expressed with the word "no" which I consider
to be the same with a Spanish-speaking child; and, for example, in Stage 3, children can add
more complex negative forms such as "I can't." What also happens with Spanish-speaking
children; the text also talks about the developmental stages through which children learn to
ask questions, which . What happens in all languages, not just English and Spanish. The
identification and location of people and objects is within children's understanding of the
world. Development is not based on learning new meanings, but on learning different
language patterns to express meanings that are already understood.
5. PRE-SCHOOL YEARS
-Interaccion: in the preschool years, childrens interact more often with unfamiliar adults.
They begin to talk sensibly on the telephone, they show that they have learned the
difference between how adults talk to babies and how they talk to each other. In this way,
they explore and begin to understand how and why language varies.
-Metalinguistic Awareness: They develop metalinguistic awareness, the ability to treat
language as an object separate from the meaning it conveys (they will focus mainly on the
fact that they can understand what it means).
-Vocabulary growth worth: Language acquisition in the preschool years is impressive.
Although children acquire complex knowledge and skills for language and language use, the
school setting requires new ways of using language and brings new opportunities for
language development.
SCHOOL YEARS:
-Interaccion: the ability to use language to understand others and to express their own
meanings expands and grows.
Mancuello Maria Agostina
Co-worker: Ramello Milagros
-Metalinguistic Awareness: learning to read gives a major boost to metalinguistic awareness.
The language has form as well as meaning. The words and sentences can have multiple
meanings.
-Vocabulary worth: Vocabulary grows, the kind of vocabulary growth required for school
success is likely to come from both reading for assignments and reading for pleasure,
whether narrative or non-fiction. The importance of reading for vocabulary growth is seen
when observant parents report as a child using a new word but mispronouncing it in a way
that reveals it has been encountered only in written form. Children learn how written
language differs from spoken language, how the language used to speak to the principal is
different from the language of the playground.
6.Main tenets
- Children imitate the language produced by those around them, when they reproduce what
they hear d they received 'positive reinforcement'.
-Imitation and practice as the primary processes in language development. These imitations
are were not random.
-Children imitate selectively.
Objections
-Not all children imitate and practise too much.
-Many of things that children say show that they are using language creatively, not just
repeating what they have heard.
-Imitation and practice alone cannot explain some of the forms created by children. They
create new forms or new uses of words. Their new sentences are usually comprehensible
and often correct.
7. I think that Ican come to the conclusion that if an adult teaches the child a word, or
something, that child will repeat it whenever he sees that image, drawing, video that they
were shown. Those dialogues written in the text are very compatible with the behavioral
belief that languages are learned primarily through imitation and practice. Although, from my
point of view I would not agree so much, since for me, each child is different and each of
them has their own learning process, perhaps with some it will work to imitate, repeat and
practice, but for others it does not., Therefore, in my opinion, when being teachers, we
should try different methods in order to (perhaps) be able to teach our students another
language.
8. Innatismta
According to Taking into account Chomsky's research, children are born with an innate
capacity for language speech, since it language is something innate in of the human beings,
it is not something learned.
Principles
-Language learning is something specific to the human beings.
-Children's verbal emissions are not responses learned from other people.
Mancuello Maria Agostina
Co-worker: Ramello Milagros
-Imitation has little impact when learning the language.
Universal grammar
It is the set of rules that are present in all languages. But it does not mean that they all have
the same grammar. Rather, they have some common characteristics in their own structure.
9. It seems to support the innatist perspective because they argue that such complex
grammar could never be learned purely on the basis of imitating and practising. They
hypothesize that they must have some innate mechanism or knowledge that allows them to
discover such complex syntax in spite of limitations of the input.
10. Critical Period Hypothesis
It is a period that exists during childhood when the brain is more receptive to learning a
certain language; upon reaching puberty the ability to acquire language decreases. And it's
often linked with the innatist perspective.
According to the tex.it is difficult to argue that the hypothesis is confirmed on the basis of
evidence from such unusual cases. We cannot know what other factors besides biological
maturity might have contributed to their inability to learn language. It is not possible to
determine whether either of them suffered from brain damage, developmental delays, or a
specific language impairment, even before they were separated from normal human
interaction.
