Language learning Stages, Development Theories and Brain Damages

Language is our special means of communication. It is the first thing that children acquire,

then, they start to develop and enrich this great capacity thanks to their parent’s teaching

strategies. Much of this ability centralized our brain. The latter, is the first to control our

language. The brain helps humans in creating meaningful and comprehensible utterances as

well as other functions that may be provided. Henceforth, any brain fracture can result in a

human’s language loose.

Every child is exposed to specific language to learn first at home. He acquires this language

through four main stages. The first stage is called “Babbling” that is patterning one syllable first.

Then the number of these syllables will increase, and the child learns how to gather them in

order to form words and specially to utter it; and this is the second stage: “the production of

single words”. After that, as the child learning process carries on, this infant will try to use two

words, that is, to combine them; this stage is referred to as “two words combination”. Finally, the

child will make use of all the sounds, syllables and words that he did acquire in order to produce

a full sentence. This stage is called “Sentences Production”.

By now, the child has a great ability to produce full sentences. Yet, his language

development process will not stop at this step; he will proceed improving and enriching his

language. Dr. Honing in her short film described the development of spoken language in

infancy, toddler-hood and early childhood. She also detailed strategies caregivers should use to

nourish language development during the early stages of language acquisition.

Dr. Honing argued that: every young child is hungry for communication. They need their

parents to provide them with “neutering turn taking talk” and responses to their early language.

She claimed that: children learn the rules and vocabularies of their own native language in order

to put kneeing to their life experiences.

Many theorists such as “Jean Piaget” and “Vygotsky” believed that at birth language and

intelligence are separated, and they grew independently at first. But by the time of toddler-hood,
 intelligence and language inter-twined and boost each other development powerfully. They

grew together.

The Dr. Honing had also defined five basic aspects of language that researchers had

analyzed, how they are acquired by young children, then, she show the ways that adults nourish

child’s early language acquisition. Scholars used five terms to describe them. And they are

obviously interconnected and dependent upon each other.

1. Phonology: it is the study of sounds of language. For the first few month of life, infant

produces all the sounds of all the languages of the world. But by six months, infants produce

only those sounds that belong to their own family language.

2. Morphemes: are the molecules of language, the smallest separates units that create

meaning.

3. Syntax or syntactic: is the study of grammar of language; children start to construct

sentences that are sometimes grammatically correct and other time not.

4. Semantics: is the study of how words or language convey meanings. Children begin making

useful usage of their acquired words.

5. Pragmatics: is the study of how language changes from one social situation to another. The

parents have to teach their children how to speak in a various situations.

On the other hand, Dr. Andrew Johnson looked at four language development’s theories:

Behaviorist- Cognitive-Nativist- and Social interaction theory. Thought some of these theories

are bit right and wrong, they help to better understand the child’s language development

progression.

One: Behaviorist reinforcement: (Behaviorist’s theory)

Most theorists agree that children gain competence in their mother tongue language at a

remarkable speed and in a very short space of time. Some of them believe that language is just

like any other learned skill – that it can be developed through imitating others’ language and

gaining positive and negative feedback from adult care-takers.

 In its simplest form, a behaviorist approach to language would argue that: children learn

through positive and negative reinforcement. In other words, if children say something

accurately they are rewarded (with praise or attention), whereas if they get something wrong

they are punished (or more likely, corrected).Imitation is quite an attractive and workable

concept. That is a child repeats what an adult has said and appears to pick up new expressions

through imitation.

The most obvious problem with Skinner’s theory is that when children speak, they may be

speaking the truth, but in a way that appears wrong. Research on interaction between adults and

children tends to suggest that parents will correct the truth of their children’s statements more

quickly than their grammar.

Two: Cognitive perspective:

Followers of the cognitive approach see language acquisition as part of wider development of

understanding and knowledge in children.

The Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget’s work with children has led to a number of highly

influential elements of thinking in children’s psychological development. His cognitive approach

suggests that: language acquisition is part of a child’s wider development: language comes with

understanding. In other words, a child cannot articulate concepts that have not understood.

Piaget argued that children need to understand a concept before they can use the language

terms that refer to it. Once a child has realized that everything has a separate identity and life of

its own, even when they can’t see it, there seems to be a jump in conceptual understanding that

affects language development.

 On the other hand, The Russian psychologist, Lev Vygotsky put forward similarly influential

views on the connections between; language and thought. He viewed language as having two

separate roles: one for communication and one for the basis of thought. He saw language in this

second role as being a helpful tool for developing understanding, and believed that language and

thought became closely related after a relatively short time. So the two concepts – cognition and

language – do not seem to be as inextricably linked as Piaget and Vygotsky might have thought.

Three: The Nativist theory:

Noam Chomsky own ideas about child language have been picked up by many other

linguists and psychologists. One of his main arguments against “Skinner’s behaviorist stance”

was that: if children were imitating adult speech, they were being given very poor material to

imitate. In other words, the quality of the language they hear from parents and care-takers is not

high enough for them to simply copy it and produce ‘correct’ grammar. He argued that, as a

result, language can’t be simply a copying or imitating exercise.

Nativist theorists suggest that children have an in-built Language Acquisition Device (LAD)

which enables them to extract the rules of their particular language from the words and

structures they hear. Chomsky put forward the idea that all human languages share universal

grammar then similar features.

Children are ‘pre-programmed’ with the underlying rules of universal grammar and simply

need to be exposed to their own native language to allow the LAD to extract the particular rules

for that language.

Four: Social Cultural theory:

Language is central to the cognitive development. Language is learner by interacting with

older and more accomplished human beings; we interact with people little higher or more

higher than us. We learn language through cognitive modeling.

Social integrationists believe that input is vital in helping children acquire language. They

suggest that interaction with a child helps them develop a grasp of the practical realities of

communication: turn-taking, pragmatics and non-verbal communication.

 Furthermore, many theorists have considered the brain as their main area of analysis

study. The result was the discovery of several brain damages. But, only three of them are going to

be analyzed: that is, Dyslexia, Warwick and Broca’s Aphasia.

As had been previously seen in Dyslexia the struggle Through School video, Dyslexia is

having difficulties with language. People with dyslexia typically have average to above average

intelligence. They may have difficulty with reading, writing ( difficulties in expression, sentence

structure, punctuation, planning and structuring essays, sequencing and transition between

ideas, spelling each new word needs to be learned, may inhibit writing) understanding language

they hear, or expressing themselves clearly in speaking or in writing.

As seen in the video, Rynn was dyslexic when she was in the fourth grade that is; Dyslexia is

present at birth but is usually not evident until the child begins learning to read. At this stage,

the teachers called her Rynn’s parents and told them that their girl was profoundly retarded and

should be put in another school. The teachers believed that there is only a little hope for her

graduation from high school. So, the parent’s first solution was to go to different doctors such as

audiologists – clinical psychologists- then finally they went to a reading specialist.

Rynn in her turn, who is now a law student, school was really hard for her. The girl was

lacking courage and confidence since she thought herself less smart than the others. Usually

there is no cure for dyslexia but it can be treated that is: Dyslexics can get special education

where they are taught some techniques of learning and how coping with their Dyslexia. Rynn’s

parents decided to support their girl at home, and get her out of her shyness:

With two sets of books, the mother recorded the lessons for the next day while her girl is at

school. The other technique was to read particular chapters, once Rynn came home that day, she

will hear her mother’s voice and the typing recorder and read along her own book. This seemed

to facilitate her reading.

After this attempt, the parents started first to release that she can do something about her

Dyslexia. The summer after her fifth grade year (5 th grade) , the girl discovered the great

teenager’s novels by R.L. Stine. As she loved them, she started recognizing new words that she

would never hear before. By reading these novels, she improved her reading skills and became

little by a little faster. After her high school graduation, Rynn stood really organized to help

herself by writing in different colors either at home or in class. This method helps her

differentiate between courses. This helps her to do better in her classes.