Theories of language acquisition in relation to beginning reading instruction

The document is about language acquisition.

The purpose is to explain and evaluate the main theories of language acquisition and relate these theories with the initial teaching of reading.

The particular focus is syntax acquisition.

Language acquisition

McCarthy

Children's language has stages full of errors and deficiencies.

Brown and Bellugi (1964)

The case studies have a single phonological, grammatical or semantic distinction.

Klima and Bellugi (1966)

Sentence patterns, or the ability to combine words and patterns.

N. Chomsky (1965)

Language acquisition should focus on such as increasing complexity and development of competencies.

Menyuk (1969)

Certain stages can be observed such as babbling ends at around 18 months.

Verbal Behavior (1957)

Specific linguistic behaviors are acquired through conditioning.

N. Chomsky’s devastating review (1959)

Theories of language are inadequate for almost any purpose. Chomsky is particularly critical of Skinner’s.

Staats and Staats (1962,
1963, 1968)

Extinction, discrimination and generalization to explain how language is acquired.

Garrett and Fodor (1968)

Language facts are abstractions that children must acquire from masses of highly variable data.

Jenkins and Palermo (1964)

They propose that the child learns the stimulus and response equivalences that can occur in the frames.

N. Chomsky (1957)

Criticizes for being inadequate in that it does not account for the abstract nature of linguistic knowledge.

Weksel (1965)

The stages of language learning cannot be generalized.

Braine (1963a, 1963b, 1965)

This theory implies the principle of contextual generalization.

Lenneberg (1967)

Proposes a theory of language acquisition heavily buttressed by biological evidence.

McNeill (1966, 1968, 1970a, 1970b)

Developmental theories must be related to particular grammatical analyses.

N. Chomsky (1957, 1965)

LAD Language Acquisition Device: It is the ability to distinguish the sounds of speech from other sounds in the environment.

Fodor (1966), Slobin (1966a, 196613)

The child is not born with a set of linguistic categories.

McNeill

Uses such data to postulate the presence of innate linguistic principles.

Cromer (1968)

Provides further evidence of the role of cognitive abilities in determining the language the child can use.

Sinclair-de-Zwart (1968)

Linguistic universals exist precisely because thought structures are universal.

The child acquires a generative-transformational grammar.

Controversial issues

The relative frequency of stimuli must be important in any behaviorist theory of learning.

The child should first acquire the most frequently occurring words and structures in the language.

McNeill argues that the structure of language and of the child’s mind controls learning.

Slobin argues that the child’s cognitive and mental capacities at each stage regulate his ability to learn.

Imitation in the sense of modeling occupies an important place in behavioral theories of learning.

Menyuk points out that the ability to imitate depends on the acquisition of some prior ability.

Ervin shows that children's imitations are not grammatically progressive.

The language of the environment in which the child is found is important for language acquisition.

Parents correct and amplify their children's speech.

Expansions might be helpful in stimulating linguistic development

The frequency of children's speech expansion is related to variables such as social class and education.

When a child hears an adult expansion of his own speech, he learns something important about the structure of his language.

The semantic and conceptual aspects of grammatical classes are important.

Bloom indicates that semantic competence outstrips syntactic competence.

The child's semantic competence is more differentiated than the surface forms of his utterances.

The child's semantic competence is more differentiated than the surface forms of his utterances.

Cognitive-perceptual development,

Linguistic experience

Non-linguistic experience

Language acquisition theories are irrelevant with: the initial teaching of reading or even for designing models of the reading process.

Reading methods themselves are almost unrelated to theories of language acquisition.

Much of what is taught “about” language in such methods is antiquated and not very useful to anyone, particularly to six-year olds.

Some language skills apparently derive from the acquisition of literacy skills.

Language is acquired gradually and the acquisition process is probably never completed, for something always remains to be learned.

Reading instruction is very formal and deliberate.

Language, however, is learned informally and unconsciously from a widerange of stimuli.

No deliberate instruction is necessary

Language acquisitions after age six

Numerous investigators have shown that significant language development still occurs in all children after the age of five or six

Two linguistic abilities that children of about age six appear to have are those to over discriminate and to overgeneralize.

There is also some agreement that children do not interpret “same” and “different” in the way that mature adults do, nor are they able to work in a conscious analytic fashion with language, as many adults can.

The studies reported by McCarthy encompass massive quantities of data but lack clearly defined theories of language acquisitions

Concern for such theories is a fairly recent development in studies of language acquisition.

All such theories have weaknesses of lack of detail and lack of empirical validation.

Making a language component central requires postulating a strong innate predisposition.

Older behavioral learning theories hold that the environment is extremely important in providing linguistic stimuli.

Language acquisition is achieved through processes such as association and response generalization.