LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IN CHILDREN.

Introduction

 It is difficult to imagine what our world would be without language as a tool of communication. It is important to bear in mind that irrespective of culture or Geographical location, all children of all culture seem learn their language in the same way an at about same time. Language is general defined as the use of arbitrary sounds, gestures, symbol and other signs that can be systematically combined and transformed to produce the sounds that carry  districts meanings in a given language community. Language is used to transmit knowledge from one sub group to another, one individual to another and one generation to another. Transformation of knowledge such as when we change from “Juma is eating food” to Juma ate food, sharing experiences across groups etc.

According to Mwamwendo, S .T (2004) in the study of language there are four major components can be identified as;

Phonology

Is the use sounds to form words, which consists phones, phonemes and morphemes.

ü  Phone, smallest unity of a language which is a single vocal sound that can be represented by a single letter of the alphabet.

ü  Phoneme, it is made up of vowels and consonants such as “sat”, “sit”, “fat” and “fit” and phonemes are single words that emerge as a result of combining phones.

ü  Morpheme, whole words or parts of words that have meaning. For example endings such as –er, -ed, -ing. As in word “older” can be said to have two morphemes, that is “old”, showing age and showing comparison.

Syntax

Is the grammar of a language or the manner in which words are put together to form a clause or sentence. Each sentence is made up of a noun or pronoun, a verb or noun phrase and a verbal phrase. So understanding a language calls for the understanding of its syntax.

Semantics

Is the meaning of words or the relationships between words and ideas. The speaker must understand what he means when he speaks.

Pragmatics

Is the ability to participate in a conversation or to use language in a socially acceptable manner.

                  LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IN A CHILD

A miracle occurs from birth to 5 years of age. Born with a limited ability to communicate children enter school with an impressive command of language. As with all forms of development, experience with language is essential for language development. A long and consistent line of research examining success in school suggests that early language experiences in the home lay the foundation for later school success.

      THEORIES OF LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

Theories of language development differ, and these differences reflect varying emphases on heredity and environment.

Nativist theory; focuses on heredity and asserts that all humans are genetically “wired” to learn language. Exposure to language triggers its development. Noam Chomsky (1972) the father of nativist theory, proposed that an innate, genetically controlled language acquisition device, predisposes children to learn the rules governing language. When children are exposed to language the language acquisition device (LAD) analyzes patterns for the rules of grammar_ such as the sub jet after a verb when asking a question that governs a language.

Social cognitive theory; emphasizes the role of modeling and children imitation of adult speech (Bandura, 2001) Children grow up in a language rich environment; research suggest that 1-to 3 years-old children hear an average of 5,000to 7,000 words per day. As children practice language, adults provide corrective feedback to help direct their development speech. for example

          “Give Daddy some cookie”

          “Cookie, Dad”

Vygotskys sociocultural theory; provides an alternative perspective on language development, children learn language by practicing it in their day-to-day interactions, and it appears effortless because it’s embedded in everyday activities. In helping young children develop language, adults adjust their speech to operate within children’s zone of proximal development. Baby talk and motherless use simple words, short sentences, and voice inflections to simplify and highlight important aspects of a message.

Skinners theory is not only an attempt to explain the development of language on a selective reinforcement model, but is also significant for a classification of speech behavior which can be used on both normal and abnormal populations. A baby expressed to a wide range of human speech sound learns to associate certain regularly recurring patterns with perceptual or other situations. Thus a conditioned stimulus (example dog) is associated with the unconditioned stimulus ( a real dog or picture of a dog) and come to evoke the same conditioned response in the child .This has been likened to a classical conditioning paragliding, where as the child’s own speech is explained in terms of ope rant  conditioning, the strength of the ope rant responses being a being a function of the strength of the positive reinforce mantis.

  STAGES OF THE LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IN A CHILD

For the child to develop in language there are some stages which should be passed and become more familiarly to that language those stages are;

PHONATION STAGE

What happen in this stage?

 Infants tune into the speech they hear and immediately begin to discriminate distinctive features, they also seem to be sensitive to the context of the language they hear that is they identity the after birth. New born vocalize by crying and fussing which are forms of communication, the term is known as vocalization.

  Vocalization

 In early monitor the baby always cries.

  Crying Is not simply a noise made by babies to express something which is bothering them but is rather to say?

Crying is a powerful communication with environment and people. Through crying, the baby may be indicating that they are hungry, painful or calling for attention.

During 2_3 months of age,

The baby language is mastered by cooing sounds sequels and even laughing. The child sounds begin to resemble adult speech that is known as bubbling.

  Bubbling Is the struggle of the child to master speech which resembles like adult.

It is dominated by the sounds commonly used in the language, the child will be speaking as he /she grows. At about 4 months child begin to babble that is to make sounds that approximate speech. For example you may hear an “eee” sound patterns are called vocabularies and seem to indicate that child have discovered that meaning in associated with sound, a child may hear the durbar as say “ell” the use of vocabularies may be link between babbling and the first in eligible words. Those speech like sounds increase in frequency until about 1 year of age, when child begin to use single words.

  Examples of bubbling;

Mama, Mamamama

 Baba, Babababa

Ba, Baba

Ma, Mama

  

 A child develops expensive, a child imaginary way of talk like adults is known as jargon.

  Jargon

Are words or expressions used by a child that is very difficult for others to know it.

 Melancholia

This is the repetition of speech that is made by the child from adults.

It is a repetition of speech that is made by a child who is learning to talk.  

ONE WORD SENTENSE OR HOLOPHRASTIC STAGE

During one (1) and a half year of age, a child may start using one word sentence, one or single word acquired by the baby is technically known as Holophrastic, these 1^st words are difficult to analyze. They are usually Nouns, adjectives or self inverted words, and they may represent multiple meanings.

Example;

The word Daddy can mean differently such as:

Come here Daddy is coming _Go out.

“Ball” may mean not only ball itself but also “Throw the ball to me”

 

Over extension

The child tries to utter the word or to say the word such as;

Choo to mean school

Tair to mean Stair

Ecort to mean Escort

Mooi to me

            Da to mean Dance

   

TELEGRAPHIC STAGE

 At about 2 to 5 years of age child vocabularies expand rapidly and simple sentences or telegraphic speech appear, research indicates that the amount of speech children hear from their care givers is closely related to the children vocabulary growth, although young children use primarily nouns, adjective, and verb rather than conjunctions, adverb or prepositions. So telegraphic speech like holophrastic speech contain considerably more meaning than the sum of its words , for example “ Milk gone” means “my milk is all gone”. In here the child tries to make good sentences but they are not well organized gram

Example

                                i.            Mummy dress ( no possessive)

Mummy’s dress

 Nguo Mama + Nguo ya Mama

                              ii.            Goed to mean went (no tenses)

  Leo ni jana + Nitakuja jana

                            iii.            No plurals

             Tumbua to mean Vitumbua

             Give pen to mean give me my pen 

                            iv.            No articles

                                      Some water become the water

                                       An egg becomes a egg

                              v.            No conjunctions

              Daddy come _Daddy is coming

 Normally telegraphically words sentences can have two to three words

Example

 Mama go _ Mama has gone

 Mama enda _ Mama ameondok

 Mama yangu hayupo

The child learning of language goes steps to steps towards speech and words. Noun, Verb, Adjectives, Adverbs, Preposition. That is to conclude that before a person or the child wants to talk about any speech he must grasp the idea of Noun fist.

CHILDREN'S LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

        Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language, as well as to produce and use words and sentences to communicate. Language acquisition is one of the quintessential human traits because non humans do not communicate by using language. Hence language acquisition is usually refers to first-language acquisition which studies infants acquisition of their native language. This distinguished from second language acquisition, which deals with the acquisition (in both children and adults) of additional languages.  However must concepts and theories have explaining how native languages are acquired? The goal of language acquisition research is to describe how a child becomes appetite to produce and understanding language, select the proper processing strategies and achieve language.

INDICATORS OF CHILD'S ACQUISITION OF LANGUAGE

     Language ability of;

Grammar; represents rules for forming sentences in most of the worlds languages, these rules are highly complex. The sentences themselves therefore are the basic unit of grammar. Examples of two grammatical conventions are to form past tenses and to ask question. After children start using two word phrases, they begin to learn common grammatical forms for asking questions, often beginning with the question. “What dat” and following soon after with “where” questions (“Where shoe?”), yes-no questions (“Go home?”) and questions involving doing (“What Nanny doing?”). Abbreviated questions grow over time into more grammatical ones.

 Meaning; between 12 and 18 months of age, children acquire a small vocabulary of single words, the most common are dada, mama, juice, milk, cookie, water, dog, cat, shoes, ball, car, bottle, and more. Because the difficulty of pronunciation limits the meaning that they express, toddlers usually speak in single words. But the single words usually convey meanings beyond the word itself.

 Communication; the ultimate purpose of language, using phonology, meaning and grammar to impart information, exchange thoughts and opinions, express intentions or needs and elicit reactions. Communication is also affected by visual access to ones communication partner. The kindergartners use more gesture when speaking to someone face- to - face than to someone sitting behind a curtain. As more and more communication is done by cell phone, visual access may become important factors.    

LANGUAGE THINKING AND LEARNING

Siegel (1998) raises the following questions about the relationship between language and thinking; “Does child’s learning of new words trigger the information of new concepts, or does ability to understand new terms demand that the relevant concept already be in place?” In other words, do you need the words to learn the concepts or do you need the concept to learn the words? Three alternative potions present themselves.

The first alternative explanation is that language shapes thought, that a culture language shapes the way members of that culture interpret information about the word, and that cultural differences produce differences in the way members of each culture view the world.

The second possible explanation is just the reverse; that thought shape language. Piaget (1926) proposes that representational ability _ the ability to represent objects and events at the beginning of the preoperation stage _ make possible the development of language. Thus, Piaget believed that language development   required the necessary cognitive development rather that cognitive development requiring the necessary language development.

Finally, the third possible explanation is a combination of the first two that is language and thought influence each other. According to Vygotsky (1962), at first language and thought develop independently, but then they begin to influence each other. The child’s thoughts become expressed in language, and language begins to influence thought and actions with thought becoming internalized language. The evidence tends to favor the third explanation.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LANGUAGE AND LEARNING

Language is also essential for learning all subjects, and it occurs through listening, reading, and writing. A great deal of learning results from listening, students and especially young ones are not very good at it, however young children think that good listening means sitting quietly without interrupting. They don’t know that listening is an active process and they often don’t realize that asking questions is both permitted and necessary to promote understanding. Language facilitates learning through interactions with adults and collaboration with classmates, children learn things they could not accomplish on their own. Adults guide and support children as they move from their current level of knowledge towards a more advanced level. Russian psychology Lev. Vygotsky described these two levels as;

One the actual development level, is the level at which children can perform a task independently.

Two is the level of potential development, the level at which children can typically do more difficult things in collaboration than they can do their own, which is why teachers are important models for their students and why children often work with partners and in small groups.

                                           

       CONCLUSION

It’s true that development is a continuous and relatively orderly process affected by both heredity and environment and contributed to by learning, experiences and social interaction; all children do not develop at same rate especial in language development, this is due to the following reasons;

Heredity factor; this occurs on child harried from the parents but this depends on how parents smart are, if parents are more competent to the language also their children will heredity that situation of parents.

Environments factor; this is how you prepare a child to the become world user, the good environment to the child will help them to acquire language easily. For example Jean Piaget in stage two of human development he believe that child to develop in language the conducive and proper environment should be well prepared to help child to develop.

Social and emotion factor; when child is able to interact and socialize to others much help to the language development, also to socialize with adult help child to acquire some different vocabularies and make a child to develop in speaking.

A deficiency in language has been overwhelmingly reported by kindergarten teachers as the problem that most restricts children’s school readiness. But to overcome this deficiency among inner-city children is that the classroom designed to enhance the development of vocabulary and phonological awareness skill would show greater vocabulary development and phonological awareness and letter-sound association than children enrolled in two standard practices classroom. 

       

                                                                 APPENDICES

Accommodation Altering existing schemes or creating new ones in response to new information.

Assessment Procedures used to obtain information about students performance

Attention Focus on a stimulus.

Automaticity The ability to perform thoroughly learned tasks without much mental effort.

Autonomy Independence.

Basic skill Clearly structured knowledge that is needed for letter learning and that can be taught step by step.

Behavioral object Instructional objectives stated in terms of observable behaviors.

Behaviorism Explanations of learning that focus on external events as the cause of exchanges in observable behaviors.

Behavioral learning theory Explanations of learning that focus on external events as the cause of exchanges in observable behaviors.

Bilingualism Speak two languages fluently.

Brain storming Generating ideas without stopping to evaluate them.

Bubbling Is the struggle of the child to master speech which resembles like adult

Cognitive development Gradual orderly changes by which mental processes become more complex and sophisticated.

Concept A general category of ideas, objects, people, or experiences whose members share certain properties.

Conservation Principle that someone characteristics of an object remain the same despite changes in appearances.

Context The physical or emotional backdrop associated with an event.

Contiguity Association of two events because of repeated pairing.

 Crying Is not simply a noise made by babies to express something which is bothering them but is rather to say

Echolalia This is the repetition of speech that is made by the child from adults.

Grammar; represents rules for forming sentences in most of the worlds languages.

 Jargon Are words or expressions used by a child that is very difficult for others to understand.

Language acquisition Is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language.

 Nativist theory; focuses on heredity and asserts that all humans are genetically “wired” to learn language.

 Observation learning Learning by observation and imitation of other.

Pragmatics Is the ability to participate in a conversation or to use language in a socially acceptable manner.

Reinforcement Use of consequences to strengthen behavior.

Social cognitive theory; emphasizes the role of modeling and children imitation of adult speech.

Syntax Is the grammar of a language.

Semantics Is the meaning of words.                                   

Theory Integrated statement of principles that attempts to explain a phenomenon and make predictions.

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