Posts

Showing posts with the label child language acquisition

How We Learn Language?

Image
Are we born with the capacity to speak a language? Or do we learn exclusively through imitation? This is a quick guide to three key theories Behaviourism Sees language as the product of our interaction with our environment. We learn it  like any other skill through imitation and practice. Important aspects of the theory are: reinforcement (positive and negative), repetition, small sequenced tasks and consistency.  Many educational policies are based on social interactionism  - a more nuanced variant of behaviourist theory. Social interactionism focuses on the relationship between the learner, his/her environment and the context under which learning occurs. Key Theorist : BF Skinner Key term: operant conditioning : Put crudely, rewiring the brain to offer reward for successful language acquisition. Skinner saw this as a kind of mechanical process with four elements: motivating operations, discriminative stimuli, response, and reinforcing stimuli. Strengths :  some language elements -

How do we learn language?

Why are there so many languages?

Image
Leading linguist Noam Chomsky poses one of the central question in this short video here . The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics (Oxford Paperback Reference)

How do children learn language?

Image
Child Language: Acquisition and Development