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Language Learning in Early Childhood

Language Learning in Early Childhood . Explaining first language acquisition. Overview. The behaviourist perspective The innatist perspective The critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) Interactionist/developmental perspective . The behaviourist perspective.

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Language Learning in Early Childhood

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  1. Language Learning in Early Childhood Explaining first language acquisition

  2. Overview • The behaviourist perspective • The innatist perspective • The critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) • Interactionist/developmental perspective

  3. The behaviourist perspective

  4. The behaviourist perspective → Say what I say • 1940s and 1950s Behaviourism: imitating and practising  → importance to the environment

  5. The behaviourist perspective → Say what I say • imitation and practice as the primary processes in language  development • Imitation • Practise • Children imitate selectively

  6. The behaviourist perspective → Say what I say • Patterns in language • Unfamiliar formulas • Question formation • Order of events

  7. The innatist perspective

  8. The innatist perspective • Noam Chomsky: • Languages are innate • Children are biologically programmed for language →They do not have to be taught

  9. Difference to behaviorist perspective • Children know more about structure of language than they could be expected to learn • Their minds are not blank slates to be filled • BUT: innate ability to discover underlying rules of language system

  10. Universal Grammar ( UG) • Human brain contains a limited set of rules for organizing language • Assumption that all languages have a common structural basis • No wrong hypothesis of how a language system might work • Only have to learn how language makes use of the UG

  11. Example • John saw himself. • *Himself saw John. • Looking after himself bores John. • Could not be learned simply by imitating and practicing sentences • There must be an innate mechanism!

  12. The Critical Period Hypothesis

  13. The critical period hypothesis • Particular time (critical period) to learn certain knowledge or skills • Genetically programmed • Prove in history: • Victor • Genie

  14. CPH: Victor • 1799: 12 year old boy found in the woods of France → feral child • Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard (doctor) worked with him for 5 years • Progress in most areas but not in language

  15. CPH: Genie • 13 year old girl from California • Isolated, neglected and abused by her parents • Was tied to a chair for 11 years and deprived from language • 1977: started to be educated and cared for • Social, cognitive progress but not in language

  16. The critical period hypothesis • Still not enough prove for CPH • Research with deaf children who are born to hearing parents → late access to language • 5 – 10% of deaf children are born to deaf parents • 1990: Elissa Newport’s research with deaf children

  17. CPH: Elissa Newport’s research • ASL (sign language) makes use of grammatical markers • Comparison of three groups • Native signers (children who learned ASL from birth) • Early learners (learned ASL between 4 and 6 years of age) • Late learners (learned ASL after the age of 12)

  18. CPH: Newport’s results • No difference in some aspects of their use of ASL BUT • Native signers were more consistent with grammatical markers than early learners • Early learners were more consistent with grammatical markers than late learners • Prove for CPH whether language is oral or gestural

  19. Interactionist/developmental perspective

  20. Interactionist/ developmental perspectives Overview • learning from inside and out → innate learning ability and interaction with environment: • powerful learning mechanism in the brain • learning from experience • connection between cognitive development and language acquisition

  21. Jean Piaget • development of children’s cognitive understanding: • object permanence • stability of quantities • logical inferencing • language = symbol system developing in childhood and expressing children’s knowledge

  22. Lev Vygotsky • language develops mainly from social interaction • “zone of proximal development” → high level of knowledge and performance • language = thought → internalized speech; speech → results from social interaction

  23. The importance of interaction • direct access to language • repetitions and paraphrases of adults • feeling of being understood through adults’ response

  24. Connectionism • language learning = learning in general • language acquisition = association of words and phrases with objects and situations

  25. Question What do you think about these different theories? Do they all work together or is there only one that is right?

  26. Thank you for your attention!

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