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Language Acquisition and Teaching

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15 views

Language Acquisition and Teaching

Uploaded by

antaramukherjee312
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Pedagogy:Language Acquisition and Teaching

Language Acquisition

The process by which we acquire the competence to perceive, produce and


use language skills to understand and communicate in an effective way.

It is majorly acquired through speech.

It involves knowledge of vocabulary,syntax and phonetics.

Language Acquisition is primarily concerned with how native language is


acquired by an infant.

The structure of language:

Listening

Speaking

Reading

Writing

Approaches to Language Acquisition

The innate ability in a human infant to acquire knowledge.It was first pointed
out by Greek philosopher Plato.

Innateness Hypothesis-was proposes by Noam Chomsky that states that


humans are pre-wired to acquire language.

It was antithetical to John Locke theory of “Tabula Rasa.”

Egyptian Pharoah Psammetichus in the 7 th BCE also supported the


hypothesis

King James 1 of England also performed experiments to support the


hypothesis.

Social Interaction ism

It suggests that infants acquire language not only by some innate skills but
also by social interactions with other members of the speech community that
they are born in.

George Herbert Mead iis considered to be the “father of interactionism”

Herbert Blumer expanded on the theory and coined the term “symbolic
interactionalism”
Behaviourism

Proposed by American psychologist B.F. Skinner

The theory believes that language is acquired and developed by means of


environmental influence.

Language Acquisition-Behaviourist enforcement

Correct utterances are positively reinforced by reward or incorrect utterances


are paired with corrective measures.

Generativism

Chomsky in his 1980 “Lectures on Government Binding” postulated the


theory of Genarative Grammar

It proposes that language acquisition is guided by innate language-specific


learning device (Universal Grammar)

He believed that language acquisition is free from stimulus control.

A child acquires knowledge by the age of 3. By 5 he picks upon grammar.

Hence,he proposes that it should be called “Language Growth”

It is a rejection of Skinners Behaviourism.

Stages of Language Acquisition

Phase Time Explanation


Babbling 6-8 months The child produces
sound such as “mama”
or”dada” which don’t
count as actual words.
The child says their first
singular words

One-word 9 months-1.5 years The child says their first


singular words
T

Two words 1.5-2 years The child form mini-


sentences with plain
semantics relations
(Vocabulary expands
beyond 50 word.He
may use 2-3 words for
various purposes)

Early multiword 2-2.5 years The child creates


telegraphic concise
sentence structure
using morphemes that
don’t hange the
meaning of the word,
but alter it to fix the
sentence.
Later multi-word 2.5 years onward The child uses
functional
strucures(functional
structures are
morphemes that
change the meaning of
the word.

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