Revision guide for the theories
of Language Acquisition
There
are 4 theories;
·
Behaviourist
(Skinner)
·
Cognition
(Piaget)
·
Innateness
(Chomsky)
·
Social/Cultural
(Vygotsky)
These 4
theories show how the language acquisition of a child developed.
Behaviourist
theory
Children
learn to speak by copying others and through positive and negative
reinforcement.
·
Positive
reinforcement results in increase of a repetition process. E.G. a child says
“Mummy” and the mum rewards the child in some way, then the child thinks that’s
correct so they do it again.
·
Negative
reinforcement results in a reduction of the repetition process. E.G. If a mum shouts “NO”
then the child would continue to say the thing they did before and the
correction will not have any impact.
Skinner
put forward the idea of the Operant Process. According to him language is an
activity a child acquires with external force, for example a child learns
whatever his/her environment teaches them.
·
Basically
the rat accidentally pressed a bar and this led to the rat getting some food,
therefore the rat did it again because they wanted the food again. And then the
same repeated with a flashlight in the box to get the food.
·
Therefore
this shows that a child imitates no matter what he hears from his parents, so
language acquisition is an act of imitation.
Limitations
of the Behaviourist theory
·
Language
is based on a set of rules ore structures, which can’t be worked out simply by
imitating individual utterances. The
mistakes that children make reveal that they are not just imitating but they
actively work language out and apply the rules.
E.G.
A child who says “drinked” instead of “drank” is not copying an adult but they
are over applying that rule.
The
child knows that past tense verbs should have letters added to the end so they
just add on anything.
·
Children
are often unable to repeat what an adult says, especially if the adult
utterance contains a structure the has not yet started to use.
For
example an American psycholinguist David Mcneill created this as an example:
Child:
“Nobody don’t like me”
Mother:
No say “Nobody likes me”
Child:
“Nobody don’t like me”
Eight
repetitions of this
Mother:
No, now listen carefully say “Nobody likes me.”
Child:
“Oh! Nobody don’t likes me”
However
in conflict to the Behaviourist Theory, Chomsky presented his ‘Mentalists
Theory.’ This theory had the view that a child acquires learning with his/her
cognitive ability whereas environmental factors are not disturbed in the
learning of language.
Cognition
Theory (Piaget)
The
first stage of development, starting from birth to until about the age of 2,
this is called the Sensorimotor stage.
In this
stage children’s contact with the world around them depends entirely on the
movements that they make and the feelings that they experience.
Whenever
they encounter a new object they shake it, throw it or put it in their mouth
therefore they begin to learn certain characteristics due to TRIAL AND ERROR.
The
second stage of development is called the Preoperational stage. This begins
around age 2 and finishes around 6 or 7.
Stage
3
The third
stage is called the Concrete Operations stage, this begins at 6 or 7 and
finishes around 11 or 12 years old. Due to the child experiencing a lot more of
the world now, children start to imagine events that occur outside their own
lives.
Stage 4
The
last stage is called the Formal Operations stage and this begins at age 11 or
12 years old.
The new
capabilities developed in this stage are things such as; the ability to reason
hypothetically and deductively this is normally by the age of 15.
By the
end of this stage the adolescents can use formal abstract logic, and think
about probabilities and moral issues such as Justice.
Innateness
Theory (Chomsky)
‘Children
are born with the capacity for language acquisition and that this ability makes
the task of learning a first language easier than it would otherwise be. ’
The
human brain is ready naturally for language in the sense when children are
exposed to speech, certain general principles for discovering or structuring
language automatically begin to operate.
A limitation
of Chomsky’s work was that it was only theoretical, he didn’t actually study
real children. His theory focused on critical grammatical explanations, and the
theory was mostly about children being exposed to a language. There was no
sufficient reference of interaction between children and their care givers, for
example if a normal hearing child who had two deaf parents and is exposed to
languages through making him watch television his knowledge of language will be
limited. Television is not going to help the child gain complete knowledge of a
language, because a child needs to interact with others to learn a language as well
however Chomsky didn’t acknowledge this.
Social/Cultural
Theory (Vygotsky)
According
to Vygotsky language acquisition involves not only a child’s exposure to words
but also an interdependent process of growth between thought and language.
This
theory is based on children acquiring knowledge as a result of engaging in
social experiences. Through social and language interactions, older and more
experienced members of the community teach younger and less experienced members
the skills, values and knowledge needed to be a productive member of the
community.
Through
the development of inner speech, children straddle the divide between thought
and language, eventually being able to express their thoughts coherently to
others.
Vygotsky’s
theory stresses the importance of communication with others as a major factor
in the development of a child’s language, which stimulates the development of
thought. Vygotsky’s theory views the important effect that an adult has on the
development of language.
