Children
Acquire a Language
Young children have the ability to communicate effectively in language
like ‘ English language’ since their early stage of their life, and communicate
in different ways. As people use
language to get things done, to build a relationship and to share idea or
information. Also children try to communicate with us for the same reasons.
Moreover, because they want to join the adult world. However acquire language is far of being an easy specially in English
language, on the contrary acquire a language is consider as challenge
specially as a child. We will see how
children acquire the language and the process of development of children
communicative in talk since they were infant
stage of they become four to five years. Also discussing the development
of their vocabulary and grammar.
“Approximately one in three of
the world’s population are now capable of communicating to a useful level in
English” according to Crystal (Crystal, p, 91). However English is far of being
an easy language to learn but actually it is a challengeable for children to
learn language, and that because these are the rules that these children must
know to acquire the English language. Crystal gives the main ideas of children
that they have to know the requirements of English language and in our case is to acquire
English language, so they are able to talk in a successful communicating
ability when using English language.
First, they have to know the 26 letters of English those letters include 44
sounds (twenty vowels and twenty four consonants).Third, they have to be
familiar with more than 300 ways to blend them together. After that the
children have to know around 50000 words and a thousand sides of grammatical
construction, but before that how infant learn to communicate in any language,
according to Chomsky the language is innate every human ability which
biologically determined (Chomsky, 92). Also children
should be familiar with enough number of what calls prosodic features. Prosodic
features means that it is beyond the meaning of talk like for example, ‘’ did
you break the glass?’' which could say be many ways to give different meanings.
That make the language more difficult on children to learn because they have
to discover the
spoken language that if the prosody
change, the meaning will change. Crystal also talked about the function
features of combining the sentences, for example, when children have to know
when and where they have use ‘of, but, because, although’ and so on. Although
they learn in them in the beginning of
learning the language that sentences consists of ‘subject, verb and object’.
Child has to know a huge number of how and when they have to break the grammar
when they talk like in poetry they do not follow the basic structures, the same
thing happens when we are telling them a story. However, even before infant
learned the language they are able to communicate with us. According to
Chomsky, language is an innate human ability and child development follows a
predictable patterns. “The baby has an innate ability to make finer
distinctions among speech sounds than among other sounds (Locke 1993:84, 94)
(cook, p. 15). It is important to mention that babies know that they can get
things done by communicating and the first communicating with infant happens by
crying to tell us if its hungry or wants to change diaper. Children should be exposed to
human language which means the melody and sounds of the language so, they get
to be able to pronounce the sound properly. It is important to mention that if
the child did not expose to the type of melody that do not exist in its
language and exist in other language, the child will not be able to pronounce
the sound later. Child move from crying to babbling different sounds that they
expose to it while they are being raised, and from babbling to speech act which
presented for the first time by Ochs and Schieffelin. Speech acts happens when
babies say something and also do something like when babies cry because of hungry
they cry which is act and hunger which is speech, also when the baby sees his
father leaving the house waving its hand, speech act also can be eye gaze,
pushing away.(Ochs,p13)(Mayor, 93). Wells related this to a “conversation without words”. He argued
that, because infants being treated as if they could already have express
communicative intentions they came to be able to have and express them.(Well,
p.24) (Allington, Mayor, 2012 p. 93). In many cultures, babies
experience the language for the first time in a way of dialogs with their
caregivers. The caregivers are adults who usually take care of children for of both sexes. (Allington, Mayor, 2012, p.
93).
Second, “from the earliest months of
life a child’s caretaker will systematically respond to the child’s utterances
as if these utterances were intentional, and the child will thus come to learn
that there are contingent relations between his or her own utterances and the
behavior of other people” (McShane, 2010 p. 145) Which make the caregiver who
only understand what babies need. The caregiver effect on babies in many ways.
One point is that they make them have
social skills like when they look to each other, it makes them focus on
something. Second point is that, it helps them to turn talking in conversations
and that happens when the caregiver changes the tone of their voice, the way they talk in
speech, using simple words and sentences and overstated intonation by
using a simplified style to the baby it
calls Child Direct Speech (CDS) also calls “baby talk”. Although child directed speech has three features on,
CDS is not occurring in every culture like African-Americans culture. The first
feature is it helps the children match their ears and get used to the
distinctive stress patterns, and babies start to produce one word, for example,
‘mommy, daddy’. When adults talk to
children in general they focus on the content words, as a result,
children learn to focus on content words as well. For example, words, ‘the
weather is cold’, ‘this is big’ or ‘come on honey drink a cop of milk’. The
third feature is when the adult use a high and low pitch; children learn turn
talking. “It is not yet language, though it will become more like language each
time the child hear it” (Cook, p. 15). Children from a young age know that by
language they can reach and persuasion adult to do something for them, and as
we mentioned before the expected sequence. Start when babies become 18 months they will be able to
produce one word. This word could be a lexical word like ‘cake, iPod’ and it
also could be an action world like,’ sleep, play or drink’. The environment
plays a main role in appear of the appearance.
Third, when we look at the language we
observe at it from two different aspects. First is the Cognitive perspectives,
which means when understanding the language and assistant of what happen in the
mind, and how child figure it out. The
language and functions. Children start to develop their vocabulary by moving to
the next stage in between eighteen months to two years; to add other word so
they have two words and it is called mini sentences, it also called as
telegraphic language, like ‘Danny shoes’ or ‘want juice’ (Allington, Mayor, 2012 P.98). The most noticeably that, at
that age, children have a lack of
vocabulary resort to what Peter de Villiers and Jill de Villiers classify some
model over-extension like when’ ‘child used dad to every male’ or ‘catty to
every animal that have four legs’. The
most noticeable in those sentences that the function words like pronouns
(mine), auxiliary verbs (are or have) and so on, are missing in early
utterances but it will appear later. Grammatical development is other another
type of developments for child to understand the language. Children at first
must be familiar with that, language content a ‘subject, verb and object’ which
is called word order also called the structure of the sentences). Also there
are two types of sentences that also called as,’ noun phrases and verb
phrases’. As I mentioned before when children have telegraphic language the
function words at that age becomes absent. it noticed that children goes
backward and make more mistake when they speak. After that, in the early stage
of children’s life, children have what it called as linguistic performance and
it happened when children have the awareness of grammar, and the tenses of
grammar, if it is in the past it has to change and so on however, they do
not know the word, so if it is going to change like for
example, ‘mom goed to the shop’ or saying it said ‘dada buyed a new game for
me’ instead of ‘dad bought a new game for me’. Formulaic
language is basically deal with children when they do not analyze the grammar,
the content word or the function only by imitating the adult without
understanding’. “Children imitate a lot of adult speech and these imitations
are a critical component of language learning” (Hedley, Patricia, Mitchell, 1995
p. 128). More over that when child keep
imitating the adults it consider a bad learner not like other children who
start his conversation full of mistake but without imitating it consider a good
learner because it is analyzing the grammar and the language, unlike the first
child who imitate. After that child
became aware of the grammar and the correct changes that happened to the verb,
instead of just imitating this develop called, as the linguistic competence
like when ‘Susie said we went to play in the park yesterday’. In addition,
children stat to use what it call ‘expressive function’ is when a families have
their own words to specific thing and it plays
role in social interactions.
(Chomsky’s)( Allington, Mayor, 2012, p.99,
103).
The social perspective of
the child basically focuses on the role of the language in social context with
emphasizing on communicative function, and it came from the care giver as the
one who take regular care of the child when they teach the child things like
eye contact and they become a successful
in a cooperative conversations, in a
successful conversation. Holliday observe that children learn the social aspect
to do, ask, and serve to make contact in turn taking with people in
conversations, to join the adult world,
and that will make by the language, and to build a relationship.
Important point is that “it is often the social routines of language that
children learn first’. Moreover, when we put a child in group of people who are
strange to the child it becomes a challenge for the child to be cooperative in
conversation and talking to people. According to Hatch “most of the children
cooperate in conversations”. So,
children love to engage in conversations but the surrounding is highly
challenging for them as we mention before. After that comes the communicative
competence get that feeling of awareness of it, so they know ‘where, when, how
to speak and no to speak’ child use it to persuading the adults to get their
needs done, like ‘ boy convince his mother to buy lollipop for him’. It also
teaches the child the good manners in speech, and give them social identity.
Conclusion, although learning a language is a challenge for children
because of huge number of stricter that, they have to know so they can talk in
English, language is innate a human. What help children to develop their
language is by the caregiver who expose the child to the melody of the language
from early age. The stages that child
communicate with adult start with crying to go to speech act, then children
have their first word to two words. Then, they start to improve their vocabulary
and grammar. what make children want to
communicate and talking with adults it is because of their realization of how
important the language is as a tool, as in given an identity to the speaker. Other point is that, they want to joined the
adult world and convince so they can get their needs done. Their develop of
communication keep grow to include their
ability to talk in a complete and correct sentences. (Allington, Mayor, 2012 p.
103, 104, 105)
1) Allington. D. And
Mayor, B. (2012). Communicating in English. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon;
Routledge.
2) McShane, B. (2010). Learn to talk, pages 145
to 194
Cambridge University Press
3) Grahart, B. (2005). Use
Your Words: How Teacher Talk Help Children Learn. Redleaf Press, pages 105
4) Hedley, Carolyn N,
Patricia Antonacci, and Mittchell Rabinowtiz. Thinking and Literacy. Hillsdale,
N.J.: l, Erlbaum associates. 1995. Print. Page 128
5) Cook, Guy. Language
Play, Language learning. Oxford[England]: Oxford University press,200/print.
