GABORONE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF PROFESSIONAL STUDIES

CERTIFICATE IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION

LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
ASSIGNMENT 1 & 2
DISTANCE EDUCATION
Lecturer: MRS. ELLEN

DUE DATE:
STUDENT NAME: ORTILIA GOMOLEMO FRANK

Assignment One

1. a) Define term early mental retardation (2 marks)

Early mental retardation is an intellectual disability that is common in young children.
It can range from mild to severe impairment in intellectual ability that can limit
children in social, practical, and conceptual skills.

b) How can dyslexia be diagnosed in children? (5 marks)

Dyslexia is diagnosed through an evaluation that determines an insufficiency in
reading ability and rules out other possible causes for the deficit, such as hearing
problems, or social, environmental or cognitive factors. Usually kids must wait until
they are school-aged (or have had significant early reading instruction) to get an
accurate assessment.

c) list four signs and four symptoms of stuttering or stammering in children

The common signs of stammering in children include;
 Rapid eye blinks
 Tremors of the lips or jaw
 Facial tics
 Head jerks
 Clenching fists

The common symptoms of stammering in children include;

 Difficulty in starting a word, phrase or sentence
  Prolonging a word or sounds within a word
 Repetition of a sound, syllable or word
 Movement of the face or upper body to produce a word
 Anxiety about talking

Assignment Two

1. a) Discuss the theories of Noam Chomsky and Jerome Brunner and their
implications towards children’s learning (10marks)

Noam Chomsky:
Avram Noam Chomsky born December 7, 1928 is an American linguist, philosopher,
cognitive scientist, and activist. In the 1950s, Chomsky began developing his theory
of generative grammar, which has undergone numerous revisions and has had a
profound influence on linguistics. His approach to the study of language emphasizes
”an innate set of linguistics principles shared by all humans” known as universal
grammar, the initial state of the language learner and discovering an account for
linguistic variation via the most general possible mechanisms. He elaborated on these
ideas in 1957s Syntactic Structures which laid the groundwork for the concept of
transformational grammar. He also established the Chomsky hierarchy, a
classification of formal languages in terms of their generative power. In 1959
Chomsky published a widely influential review of B.F. Skinner s theoretical book
Verbal Behaviour. In this review and other writings Chomsky broadly and
aggressively challenged the behaviourist approaches to studies of behaviour and
language dominant at the time and contributed to the cognitive revolution in
psychology. His naturalistic approach to the study of language has influenced the
philosophy of language and mind.

Jerome Bruner:

Bruner had made enormous contribution to the understanding of the education

process. He described language as lots of thoughts and demonstrated range of studies
in which a language enables children to develop their thinking and performance task
which would otherwise be impossible. He recognised the style of interaction between
adults and children, between pairs or small groups of children can be beneficial to
learning.

Bruner had organised his ideas in the process of education in to four key themes. That
is;
 The role of structure in learning and how it may be made central in teaching
 Readiness for learning
 Intuitive and analytical thinking
 Motives for learning