-CHAPTER 2-

THEORIES OF LANGUAGE
DEVELOPMENT
Learning outcomes :

By the end of the chapter, students should be

able to :
 
• discuss the theories of language
development
• explain the roles of environment in language
development
 WHAT IS LANGUAGE?

• Language is a system that relates sounds or

gestures to meaning.

• Language is expressed through:

- speech
- writing
- gesture.
 Behaviorist

THEORIES OF
Cognitive LANGUAGE Nativist
DEVELOPMENT

Social
Interactionism
BEHAVIORIST THEORY
  B.F. Skinner (Burrhus Frederic Skinner)
- Born and raised in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania

 Explains about the developing of verbal behavior

 The behaviorists focus on the importance of the language environment.

 Verbal behaviors are learned under appropriate conditions of

stimulation, response, and reinforcement

 2 conditioning under Behaviorist Theory

1. Classic Conditioning
2. Operant Conditioning
 Classic Conditioning
• a process that involves creating an association between a
naturally existing stimulus and a previously neutral one.

• Deals with reflexes or responses that are called from a

specific stimulus
EXAMPLE:
EXAMPLE:
 Operant Conditioning
• encourages reinforcement (+VE @ -VE), which can be applied in the
classroom environment to get the good behavior you want - and
need - from your pupils.

• Example +VE reinforcement:

How you are going to ask the kids to put the
books the book shelf?

What is the best method?

BY GIVING REWARDS!!!
One of the aspects important to human
behaviour, though, is the feelings associated
with behaviour that is controlled by
conditioning. When previous behaviours
have been rewarded, children are likely to
repeat those behaviours happily and
willingly, feeling that they are doing what
they 'want' to be doing.

-http://www.kidsdevelopment.co.uk/bfskinnersbehaviouraltheory.html
 Reinforcement
Controlled
drilling
Memorization
Repetition

Imitation
NATIVIST THEORY
 By Noam Chomsky
- Born in Philadelphia on December 7, 1928
- An intellectual prodigy who went on to earn a PhD in linguistics at the
University of Pennsylvania

 The nativist perspective said acquisition is innately determined, that we are

born with a built-in-device of some kind that predisposes us to language
acquisition. Humans are pre-programmed with the innate ability to
develop language. In other words, we are acquired the language naturally

 All children are born with a Language Acquisition Device (LAD)

 This is a specialized processor that is a physiological part of the brain

 Children have an innate/ natural capacity to acquire language

 Four innate linguistic properties of LAD

• Ability to distinguish speech sounds from other sounds in

the environment
• Ability to organize linguistic events into various classes
which can later be refined
• Knowledge that only a certain kind of linguistic system is
possible and that other kinds are not
• Ability to engage in constant evaluation of the developing
linguistic system
 How LAD functions

They discover it by
Once the LAD is
Children need to matching the
activated, they
access to samples innate knowledge
discover the
of a natural of language to the
structure of the
language to structures of the
language to be
activate the device particular language
learned
in the environment
 Sentence are formed in the following
sequence:

Primary
General
Linguistic Grammatical
language Child’s
Data Knowledge
Learning Speech
(Adult (Rules)
Principles
speech)
SOCIAL INTERACTIONISM THEORY
 Emerged as a response to Behaviorism.

 Interactionists argue that  language development  is both

biological and social.

 Interactionists argue that language learning is influenced by

the desire of children to communicate with others.

 Language develops as a result of children’s social interactions

with the important people in their lives

 According to Lev Vygotsky (Russian psychologist):

language knowledge is acquired through social interaction with

more competent and experienced members of the child’s culture.
• According to Vygotsky (1962) language plays two critical roles
in cognitive development:
– 1: It is the main means by which adults transmit
information to children.
– 2: Language itself becomes a very powerful tool of
intellectual adaptation.
• Vygotsky (1987) differentiates between three forms of
language:
– social speech which is external communication used to
talk to others (typical from the age of two);
– private speech (typical from the age of three) which is
directed to the self and serves an intellectual function;
– inner speech (typical from the age of seven) which is
private speech goes underground, diminishing in audibility
as it takes on a self-regulating function
Process of social interaction

Independentl
Seeing Jointly doing
y doing
• Vygotsky proposed a way by which the
responsibility for psychological functioning is
gradually transferred from the adult to the
child.
• Adults structure activities so that the child’s
role is within the child’s Zone Of Proximal
Development (ZPD). ZPD is the difference
between what a learner can do without help
and what the learner can do with help.
 Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
• ZPD is as a means of assessing children’s potential for
learning as an alternative to the static measures of IQ and
mental age.
• When inside the ZPD, an adult and child may in many cases
not have the same definition of a situation at first.
• For example: building block. A child may view a set of blocks
as objects to be thrown or used for anything he or she likes.
Whereas an adult may view them as building materials.
• The adult and child must come some agreement on how to
define the situation before they can achieve an end goal.
The child’s performance is at a higher level with adult guidance.
Eventually, through participating with an adult, the child becomes
more capable of carrying out similar activities on their own
because this joint problem solving has been internalized by the
child.
COGNITIVE THEORY
 By Jean Piaget
- Swiss developmental psychologist and philosopher known for his
epistemological studies with children

 Emerged as a response to Behaviorism.

 Focus on the inner mental activities of human beings to

understand how people learn.

 Emphasizes cognition, or knowledge and mental

processes  viewed human as rational beings
 Viewed the development of language as a complex interaction
between the child and the environment, which is influenced by
both social and cognitive development
- Cognitive development refers to the development of the ability
to think and reason

 Language acquisition is made possible by cognition and general

intellectual processes
- it is a mental and emotional process

 Jean Piaget believes that a child must have the understanding of

a concept before he can verbalize it
- “That car is bigger than that one” therefore children must
have the concept of size in his mind before commenting it
 THEORY CENTRAL IDEA LINGUIST
 

Behaviorist Children imitate adults. Language development is B.F. Skinner

reinforced when they get what they want or are
praised.

Nativist Language is an innate capacity. A child’s brain Noam Chomsky

contains special language-learning mechanisms
at birth
Social Language learning is influenced by the desire of Lev Vygotsky
interactionism children to communicate with others and as a
result of children’s social interactions with the
important people in their lives.

Cognitive Language is just one aspect of child’s overall Jean Piaget

intellectual development
 HOW DO YOUNG CHILDREN LEARN
THE LANGUAGE OF THEIR CULTURE?
THERE ARE FOUR DISTINCT ELEMENTS TO LANGUAGE

• Phonology refers to the sounds of a language

• Semantics is the study of words and their meaning

• Grammar refers to the rules used to describe the

structure of a language
• Which involves syntax or rules that specify how words are
combined to form sentences

• Pragmatics is the study of how people use language to

communicate effectively
 LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

• Infants are equipped for language even before birth

- partly due to brain readiness
- partly because of auditory experiences in the uterus

** Children around the world have the same sequence of

early language development

• Newborns prefer to hear speech over other sounds

- they prefer to listen to “baby talk”
- the high pitched, simplified and repetitive.

• The sound of a human voice, whether familiar or strange

always fascinates infants
 LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IN EARLY
CHILDHOOD

• Researchers have found that language development

begins before a child is even born, as a fetus is able
to identify the speech and sound patterns of the
mother's voice.

• By the age of four months, infants are able to

discriminate sounds and even read lips.
• Researchers have actually found that infants are able
to differentiate between speech sounds from all
languages, not just the native language spoken in
their homes.

• However, this ability disappears around the age of

10 months and children begin to only recognize the
speech sounds of their native language.
• Infants begin making sounds at birth. They cry, coo,
and laugh. But in the first year they don’t really do
much talking.

-It could be argued that infants DO communicate with

others, but do not have language
• Children must learn to hear the differences in speech
sounds and how to produce them; they must learn
the meaning of words and rules for combining them
into sentences and they must learn effective ways to
talk with others
 PHONEMES

• The basic building blocks of language

– The unique sounds that can be joined to create words
• The sound of “p” in pin, pet, and pat
• The sound of “b” in bed, bat, and bird

• Infants can distinguish many of these sounds, some

of them as early as 1 month after birth

– Can differentiate sounds they have never heard before

such as phonemes from a foreign language
• Infants use many tools to identity words in speech.
They do not understand the meaning of the word yet,
BUT they can recognize a word as a distinct
configuration of sounds.

-Parents and adults help infants master language

sounds by talking in a distinctive style
The language environment for infants is not solely
auditory. Much language exposure comes from face-
to-face interaction with adults
 Factors That Influence The Language
Development Among The Children:
• speaking to young children in complete and complex sentences,
rather than using “baby talk,” helps them to develop the ability to
understand and use complex sentence structures.
• “the degree of complexity in children’s language was directly
related to that of their parents,”
• preschool teachers have direct effects on the development of the
sentence structure and language of the children.
• correlation between socioeconomic status and a child’s
vocabulary.
• the quantity and quality of childcare directly affected a child’s
vocabulary and reading scores throughout early elementary
school.
THE ROLE OF THE ENVIRONMENT IN LANGUAGE
DEVELOPMENT

Development of language rests upon several major

variables that interact with one another

1. The child’s cultural and linguistic environment is a big

influence upon language learning

2. Each child has unique characteristics that she/ he brings to the

language learning situation