VALE, GALE MONIQUE S.

BSED ENGLISH 2

Module 6. Language Development in the Early Years

Assessment:

Answer these questions:

1. How is the ability to communicate developed in infants?

Ans. Infants' abilities to communicate grows as they interact and communicate
with others. In fact, the sounds, tones, and patterns of speech that an infant hears early
on sets the stage for learning a specific language. Moreover, infants have
communicative abilities that underlie language, long before they say their first words.
Babies are intensely social beings: they gaze into the eyes of their parents and are
sensitive to the emotional tone of the voices around them. They pay attention to the
language spoken to them; they take their turn in conversation, even if that turn is only a
burble. Midway through their first year, infants begin to babble, playing with sound much
as they play with their fingers and toes. Early in their second year, for most children, the
babbling of the prelinguistic infant gives way to words. There has been considerable
controversy over the relation between babbling and talking, but most researchers now
agree that babbling blends into early speech and may continue even after the
appearance of recognizable words. Thus, once infants have begun to speak, the course
of language development appears to have some universal characteristics.

2. What is the role of prelinguistic communication in the development of language after

infancy?
Ans. The role of pre-linguistic communication in the development of language
after infancy is that it paves the way for the acquisition of the ‘arbitrary’ linguistic
conventions that infants use, initially, in exactly the same kinds of situations, for exactly
the same kinds of communicative motives, as their early gestures. Moreover, it helps
the child to comprehend or produce an utterance and words. An utterance is the
smallest unit in which a person expresses a complete communicative intention –that is,
an intention that another person attend to something within the joint attentional frame
and so do something as a result – and it thus corresponds to prelinguistic
communicative acts such as pointing. This way, it emphasizes the role of pre-linguistic
communication in the development of language after infancy.
3. Recall your observations of very young children or one very young child whom you
are currently in contact with and the way they develop language. Fill in the chart with
your observations.

Age Instances of child Sample response Instances of

directed social to caregivers childdirected
interaction (caregivers communicational
include parents or interaction
anyone who
provides care to
the child)

4 Dancing with her Hey baby, look at So, the little girl
mother. me and follow follows her mommy
mommy. dancing.

3 Playing a ball with Hey little sister, give The little sister
his brother. me that ball. gives the ball to his
brother with teary
eyes.