LANGUAGE ACQUISITION – 201

WEEK 8

What I learnt was how a child acquires her/his first language and the views
of different approaches. There are some stages that children follow while
they are acquiring their first language.Firstly, babies babble and coo and
cry.As they reach the end of their first year,babies make specific attempts
to imitate words and speech sounds they hear around them.Then, they
begin to telegraphic utterances, such as “allgone milk” and “gimme
toy”.By about age three, children can comprehend an incredible quantity
of linguistic input.At school age, children internalize increasingly complex
structures and they both learn what to say and what not to say because
they learn the social functions of their languages.

According to behavioristic approaches, the minds of babies are tabula

rasa.Linguistic behaviors are publicly observable responses and an
effective language behavior is the production of correct response to
stimuli.They take into accounts Skinner’s operant conditioning for
language acquisition( rewarding increases the linguistic behavior whereas
punishing extinguishes the linguistic behavior). Osgood’s mediation theory
is attempted to account for abstract objects.

According to nativist approaches, babies are born with a language

acquisition device,in other words, they are born with an innate ability to
acquire language.They say that there are Universal Grammar rules.
Language is an integrated system and cannot be broken into pieces as in
behavioristic approaches.The early grammars of child language are
referred to as pivot grammar: the child’s first two-word utterances seemed
to manifest two separate word classes, and not simply two words thrown
together at random.

What I had difficulty in figuring out was almost nothing.Everything seems

clear for me

I believe I am going to use the knowledge of first language acquisiton in

my teaching.I can take into consideration how my students acquire their
first languages while teaching their second language.For example:
children don’t speak until they feel they are ready to speak while they are
acquiring their first language and I should also wait until my students feel
ready to speak in the classroom,there must be a silent period.