Language Development and learning - ALMASI

Language Development and learning

Ø  Language is a central feature which differentiates people from animals.

Language is a unique ability to Human beings other than creatures. Only human beings are able to produce infinite sounds associated with different languages and be able to learn different languages at the same time.

This lecture addresses the following issues

i.                    What language is and its use

ii.                  Theories of language development

iii.                Language development throughout life span

iv.                Language and school learning

The meaning of language and its functions

Ø  Language is a specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication,

Ø  language can generally be defined as the use of arbitrary sounds, gestures, symbols and other signs that can be systematically combined and transformed to produce different sounds that carry distinct meanings in a given language community.

Ø  Human language is highly complex in that it is based on a set of rules relating symbols to their meanings, thereby forming an infinite number of utterances from a finite number of elements

Ø  Origin of Language; when ancestors started cooperating, adapting earlier systems of communication.

Ø  Production of language; in brain, specifically in Broca’s area (speech production) and Wernicke’s areas (meaning production).

Ø  Uses of languages

·         Used for social identity

·         Used to express ones culture

·         A tool for communication

·         Social stratification

Theories of language development

Ø  There are four schools of thought which try to explain how language is developed among human beings

i.                    Behaviorism school of thought

ii.                  Nativism school of thought

iii.                Cognitivism school of thought

1.      Learning school of thought (B.F Skinner) / Behaviorism school of though

Ø  Skinner view on language development in humans as an association, imitation, practice and reinforcement.

Ø  For example, suppose a child is to be taught the word ‘mahindi’ (maize) first the child would be show maize and told to look at it. Then, the child would be told that it is called ‘maize’ and made to repeat the word.

Ø  This would be done until the child has mastered the word. When the child says well the word is rewarded (eg. clapping hands, smiling etc).

Ø  When the child fails to pronounce well the word it is punished through correction or other means of punishment(eg. lack of smiling, not clapping hands etc) explain how classical conditioning can be applied in language development

2.      Nativism School Thought (Chomsky) and Sapir worf

Ø  Chomsky views on language development are that, all humans have innate capacity to acquire language as result of biological inheritance. That is human beings have predisposition for language.

Ø  Inborn Universal Grammar: Chomsky (1959, 1987) opposed Skinner’s ideas and suggested that the rate of language acquisition is so fast that it cannot be explained through learning principles, and thus most of it is inborn.

Ø  According to him the child is born with language acquisition device (LAD) which permits the interpretation of the language it hears and the generation of an infinite number of utterances.

Ø  That means, LAD predetermines the way in which a child is likely to use language.

Ø  Chomsky argues that children can acquire language to the extent of beings able to construct sentences which are grammatically correct.

3.      Cognitivism models

Ø  Cognivism view of language is that language is just one facet of human cognition. Other facet include  all mental process such as memory storage, remembering, thinking, reasoning, information retrieving, problem solving, and decision-making etc.

Ø  According to this model all the mental processes can well perform their duties with a certain amount of the code of language. Mental structure comprises different concepts processed by mental processes.

Ø  That is Learning language is pairing words with concepts we already know

Centers of Language and language components

i.                    Hearing- is located in the appropriate sensory organs that is, Ear which has minutes of hair like structures that respond in mechanical energy in the form of acoustics.

ii.                  Comprehension- is located in  the lower part of the brain

iii.                Speech production – is located in the cerebral context where thinking takes place.  

The above three parts (hearing, comprehension and Speech production) work together in coordination with a mental picture in mind. The mental picture helps individuals with impairments to understand speech and use sign languages.

Language Structure

Morpheme: The smallest unit that carries a meaning. It may be a word or part of a word. For example:

Milk = milk

Pumpkin = pump. Kin

Unforgettable = un · for · get · table

Structuring Language

1. Phonemes - Basic sounds (about 40) … ea, sh.
2. Morphemes- Smallest meaningful units (100,000) … un, for.
3. Words - Meaningful units (290,500) … meat, pumpkin.
4. Phrase - Composed of two or more words (326,000) … meat eater.
5. Sentence- Composed of many words (infinite) … She opened the jewelry box.

Language rule systems

Language is highly ordered and organized. The organization involves five systems including

i.                    Phonology which is the sound system of language; including the sounds that are used and how they are used. The basic unit of sound is phoneme, for instance, /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/.

ii.                  Morphology which refers to the units of meaning involved in word formation. Morpheme is a minimal unit of meaning, can be a word or part of a word that cannot be broken into smaller meaningful parts. For example from the word helper morphemes are help and –per

iii.                Syntax which involves the way words are combined to form acceptable phrases and sentences, for instance, Juma slugged Joseph and not Slugged Juma Joseph

iv.                Semantics which refers to the meaning of words and sentences. Every word has a set of semantics features or required attribute rerated meaning. For example a girl and women posses deferent though they share.

v.                  Pragmatics which refer to the appropriate use of language in different contexts. For example the use of polite language to your senior.

Steps in language production

i.                    The image or thought comes to our minds, for example,. John is  going

ii.                  Mental translation of that thought into a sentence, example, John went, or John will come.

iii.                Organization of system of sounds involved that express the sentence.

iv.                Hearing of sounds(phonemes) which are separately distinct sounds but with no meaning yet, h, a, j, u

v.                  Attaching meaning to the combination of sounds morphemes –which are smallest unit of language which carry meaning su=oiytch a word like, go, un…

vi.                Combine words to form sentences and clauses, example, Juma will come.

vii.              Extract proposition from the sentence that can stand alone carry universal meaning

Language Development in Children

Ø  Age by which children have acquired the major elements of the language spoken around them: 3-4 years old. Development process continues throughout our life cycle. Language in children develops in the following milestones

Ø  Children learn their native languages much before learning to add 2+2.

Ø  We learn, on average (after age 1), 3,500 words a year, amassing 60,000 words by the time we graduate from high school.

1. Crying – it should be borne in mind that crying at birth is not a simply noise made by babies to express that something is bothering them but rather a powerful and effective manner of communicating w/ith their environment and people around them.

Ø  It said that many children at a very early stage communicate with their caregivers through emotions. For example can cry to express hungry, fear, happiness, pain etc (see Santrock 2006, Life Span development chapter 7)

Ø  Through crying, babies may be indicating that they are hungry, experiencing something painful, or simply craving attention of some sort.

2.  Cooing- this happens at the age of 1 to 2 months. They are gurgling sounds made by children in the back of the throat and usually express pleasure during the interaction with the caregivers

Ø  At this stage a children reduce the fact of crying

3. Babbling – it happens at the middle of the first year. The infant spontaneously utters various sounds, like ah-goo.

Ø  Babbling is not imitation of adult speech. It includes strings of consonant-vowels combinations.

4. Two-Word Stage: Before the 2nd year a child starts to speak in two-word sentences. This form of speech is called telegraphic speech because the child speaks like a telegram: “Go car,” means I would like to go for a ride in the car.

Ø  The first word mentioned by the child is what used frequently by the caregivers. The word mentioned is accompanied with gesture with special sound.

5. Longer phrases: After telegraphic speech, children begin uttering longer phrases (Mommy get ball) with syntactical sense, and by early elementary school they are employing humor.

You never starve in the desert because of all the sand-which-is there.

Factors for language development among children

How language is acquired among children

1.      Innate understanding of language (Noam Chomsky)

Ø  Children are born in possession of an innate ability to comprehend language structures.

Ø  God has given young children a magical ability to learn new languages.

Ø  Human beings are prewired with language acquisition devices (LAD) Chomsky postulates that all human languages are built upon a common structural basis.

2.      Imitation from the Environment

Ø  Here the child is motivated to with the environment to learn language within a community.

Ø  This is common when parents or caregivers lead children in the string of words to be imitated, for stance – mama… ma. Mama, come…co..m.

Ø  The mothers smiles and gestures helps a child to maintain the activity being done which in turn, helps a child to continue learning with excitement.

Ø  This means that the support and the involvement of caregivers and teachers greatly facilitate a child’s language learning.

Ø  It is scientifically documented that infants whose mother spoke more often to them hard markedly higher vocabularies.

Ø  Generally, the language environment of the child is linked to their vocabulary development.

Ø   The parents and caregivers can help their children develop well their language through child-directed speech.

Ø  Child directed speech is the language spoken in a higher pitch than normal with simple words and sentences.

Ø  Child-directed speech has an important function of capturing the infant’s attention and maintaining communication.

Other strategies caregivers employ language acquisition among children

a.      Recasting- is the rephrasing something the child has said.

For example, this can be done rephrasing the statement sentence into question sentence.   The dog is barking the parents may rephrase by saying that, when was the dog barking?

b.      Expanding is the restating in a linguistically sophisticated form, what the child has said. Eg. doggie eat ----dog is eating

c.       Labeling is identifying the names of object. Young children are asked to identify names of objects.

3.      Conditioning/reinforcement

Ø  This is done when the parents or care giver in the language community systematically rewards and reinforces correct production of language

Ø  Also the caregiver will also frown, or reprimand incorrect language production.

Ø  This focuses the children on what is correct and what is wrong in classical operant conditioning sense.

Ø  For example, if a child happens to babble a word ma-ma, then a mother or caregiver rewards a baby with by hugs and smiles; the child then says mama more and more.

4.      Intuitive thought/observation

Ø  This is through deduction and inductive reasoning.

Ø   Children in a given language community will generates operating systems for their mastery of language.

Ø   For instance they will look for areas of generalizations such as

·         Systematic changes in the form of word formation and rule development ie. Book- books

                           Table- tables

                           Big- bigger- biggest

                           Tall- taller- tallest

Ø  Problem comes when there are exception words. A child will generalize though, wrong production of words.

·         Grammatical marker indicating change of meaning, for instance, she is/can/was/,

Language and Thinking

Language and thinking intricately intertwine.

i.                    Language Influences Thinking

Ø  Linguistic Determinism: Whorf (1956) suggested that language determines the way we think.

Ø  For example, he noted that the Hopi people do not have the past tense for verbs. Therefore, the Hopi cannot think readily about the past.

ii.                  Language Influences Thinking

When a language provides words for objects or events, we can think about these objects more clearly and remember them. It is easier to think about two colors with two different names (A) than colors with the same name.

Concept formation

Ø  Concepts are mental categories that are used to group objects, events and characteristics. Or

Ø  Is a mental grouping of persons, places, ideas, events, or objects that share common properties

Ø  Humans have special ability for creating categories to help us make sense of information in the world.

Ø  For example: we posses the concept of apples and oranges are both fruits, though they differ in their tastes and colours

Concept Formation

n  Prototype

w  Best representative of a concept

w  Ex: Sport: Football, Basketball, Golf , Chess

Ø  Some concepts are more closely related than others. So sunset was farther away from red than was sunrise, even though both are members of the same category.

Ø  We know that it takes longer to reveal connections between concepts that are distant than between those that are closely related.

Ø  Secondly, some members of a category are perceived to be more typical of that category than others. 

Ø  When people are asked to list properties of different concepts, the most typical members, called prototypes, have more of these properties than others.

Functions of concepts

Concepts are very important in several ways as follows

1. They help us to generalize ie. If we did not have concepts, each object and event in our world will be unique to us.
2. They allow us to associate experience and objects.  For example; basketball, netball, volleyball and netball are all sports.

Ø  The concept of sport gives us a way to compare these activities.

3. Concepts grease the wheels of memory making it more efficient so that we don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time we come across a piece of information.
4. They also provide clues about how to react to a particular object or experience e.g. if we are aware with the concept of food, given with a bowl of chicken chips you will be in the position of eating the food.  

Language and school learning

Ø  It is agreeable that there is no way a school can be run without language. The language here is that used for instructions in day to day school processes.

Ø  Language is also used as a means of communication among school stake holders.

Ø  Language policy in Tanzania stipulates differently depending on the level of education, for example, at the level of Secondary schools,

i.                    The general aim of language is equip learners with language competencies in different language skills

ii.                  English language should be used as a language of medium of instructions in all subjects except Kiswahili language.

iii.                Kiswahili is a compulsory subject from form one to form four and as a subject of specialization in advanced level.

Ø  Psychologically, whoever teaches is teaching language. For example a mathematics teacher is the teacher of mathematics language.

Ø  This means that many learners fail the subject matter because they are not competent in the language of the given subject matter.

Language debate in Tanzanian schools

Ø  There is an inherent debate in Tanzanian schools on the medium of instructions in schools.

Ø  Some people argue for English language and others for Kiswahili

Status of Kiswahili language in Tanzanian context

i.                    Mother tongue to many urban dwellers

ii.                  First language to some people.

iii.                Medium of instructions in some levels of education e.g. primary education

iv.                Official language in some offices

v.                  Second language to rural dwellers e.t.c

         

Status of English language in Tanzanian context

i.                    Second language to some people especially the illiterate

ii.                  Foreign language

iii.                International language

iv.                Language of Imperialism

v.                  Official language in some offices e.g. parliament, higher learning institutions, embassies etc

Those arguing for Kiswahili

i.                    They are competent in Kiswahili language both spoken and written

ii.                  Kiswahili is language of Tanzanian culture and identity

iii.                Most Tanzanians are competent in Kiswahili language. That is both Teachers and learners

Those arguing for English language

i.                    They are competent in English language both spoken and written

ii.                  The prestige of English language in International arena

iii.                The difficulties in Translating books in Kiswahili language

iv.                English language is associated with economic and intelligence status stereotype

Last word of psychologist regarding language of instructions in schools

i.                    Whoever is a teacher is teaching the language of the subject matter

ii.                  Learners are able to learn well when they use their vernacular/mother tongue language

ALMASI MICHAEL- 0758587116