LANGUAGE ACQUISITION – 201

WEEK 9

What I learnt was functional approaches.They deal with the functions,

forms and meaningful interactions.According to Piaget, what children learn
about language is determined by what they already know about the world,
it is an overall development as the result of children’s interaction with
their environment.According to Slobin, cognition affects the language,in
other words, what children know will determine what they learn about the
code for both speaking and understanding messages.In addition to
functional approaches, I have learnt some issues in first language
acquisition; competence and performance,comprehension and
production,nature and nurture.

What I had difficulty in figuring out was nothing.At least I hope so.

I suppose I need to focus more on how I can use the knowledge of first
language acquisition effectively in my teaching.

I believe I am going to use the knowledge of functional approaches in my

teaching.I am going to teach my students meaningful forms and some
functions to use the language.For my young learners, I am not going to
ask for competence, I know they don’t care about competence and they
are more concerned with performance so I am going to prepare my
classes according to them