Learning The Native Language

Learning The Native Language

Most of the child language acquisition theories all have the same

general idea, that language is acquired through repetition and

imitation.

The behaviourist approach states ‘that children learn to speak by

imitating the language structures they hear’. Covering both aspects of

the statement at the beginning which is ‘hearing English and trying to

speak it yourself are the only tools’.

The interactive approach states ‘recent studies have shown the

importance of interaction’ which again is the tools of listening and

speaking in order to acquire the language.

All of these approaches support the statement at hand. However some

approaches disagree with it all together.

The cognitive approach believes ‘language acquisition is directly

linked to intellectual development’ in other words that as the child

matures so does the language somehow.

At the extreme end of the scale we have the nativists. The nativists

believe that ‘children are born with an innate capacity for language

development’. Meaning that children are though to be born already with

the capacity to learn language. But this approach does not cover all

the aspects of humans such as deaf people.

So how does language acquisition work in the first place?

First language acquisition is remarkable for the speed at which it

takes place. All normal children, regardless of culture Develop

language at roughly the same time, along much the same schedule.

However there are some general ‘basic requirements’ such as the first

two or three years are vital and require the interaction between the

child and other language users to help with t...

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a book.’ This is called a holophrase. If a baby wants a bottle and

is just beginning to learn to use language to manipulate, he may point

to his bottle, say (or scream) ‘ba’ or ‘baba,’ which obviously means,

‘give me my bottle, now!’ Of course this becomes problematic when a

child yells ‘BA!’ and the parent do not know whether he wants a bottle

or a ball or a book, or if he just feels like yelling.

So in conclusion, I believe that the opening statement ‘Hearing

English and trying to speak it yourself are the only tools you have at

your disposal when you are learning your native language.’ Is a true

statement. This is because of all of the theories and known facts

about child language acquisition all say basically that hearing and

speaking English is all that a child will use in order to acquire that

language.