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And considering every primary school in England teaches phonics, that seems like a conversation we should be having, says professor Julia Carroll who is a r at Coventry University and one of the world's leading authorities on phonics.

"Pretty much all schools in the UK teach phonics and we've known for at least 20 years that phonics is the most effective way to teach early reading and early literacy," Carrol tells this week's Tes Podagogy podcast (listen below) . "The government guidance has been pretty consistent on that as well: it is very explicit and very specific, that we should be teaching phonics.

Listen to the podcast below
Read more:
Watch the interview here:
To listen to the podcast use the player above, watch the video above, or type 'Tes Podagogy' into your podcast platform.

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And considering every primary school in England teaches phonics, that seems like a conversation we should be having, says professor Julia Carroll who is a r at Coventry University and one of the world's leading authorities on phonics.

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By Steve Hirschhorn

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is the result of work by 19th and early 20th century phoneticians such as Henry Sweet, Otto Jesperson and later Daniel Jones to create a visual taxonomy of human speech sounds. Each sound is represented by a symbol with additional symbols for adjusting sounds to show or represent, for example, nasality.

The IPA can be used to show how an utterance can be sounded or how an utterance actually has been sounded in a specific example. For our purposes, we'll focus on the notion of showing how something might be pronounced because that's where language teachers and students will find the most benefit. So, the IPA is a tool, often in the form of a chart (see fig 1), which teachers and students can use to guide pronunciation.

This chart, based on Adrian Underhill's well-known chart and using my own IPA font, represents the sounds of English; there are other symbols which apply to other languages.

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Let's start by examining one of the major objections to using the IPA: it is said to represent a prestigious variety of English known as Received Pronunciation and therefore doesn't represent "my" accent or "my" variety of the language. The chart above is a simple graphic denotation of phonemes, or sounds. Phonemes, it can be argued, are an imaginary concept given that we all pronounce sounds slightly differently since our articulatory equipment is slightly different, just as our faces are slightly different.

The phoneme doesn't really exist, it's just an idea so I, as a teacher, can invest the symbols of the chart above with almost any sounds I choose! Of course I can only do that within reason; this means, investing /t/ with the sound /n/ would be clearly absurd but a variation of a vowel sound or a consonant to account for regional accent is completely fine. So we can use the IPA to show sounds from whatever accent or variety we choose.

And now, to some advantages!

Most of us these days will be working towards a student-centred classroom in which teacher becomes a guide or facilitator to support students in their learning rather than the somewhat old fashioned idea of teacher as 'giver of information'. As a guide then, we can expect to offer useful information which will enable students to arrive at their own conclusions within certain parameters. What I mean by this is that the information we provide will allow students to find a pathway to their own learning rather than simply to listen to the teacher and follow mindlessly. The same principles apply in teaching pronunciation. We know these days that no variety of English has automatic primacy and therefore we no longer drill students to try to reach some sort of native-like reproduction but rather, we work towards intelligibility.

The IPA chart then, is a way to challenge students to 'discover' the pronunciation of items, not necessarily single words but also connected speech through using an internal model combined with the teacher's guidance. Most teachers who use a chart, also use a pointer of some sort for practical reasons of visibility and also, perhaps on a slightly more esoteric note, to distance oneself from the language, as Caleb Gattegno suggested.
This being the case, pronunciation can be shown simply by pointing out the item needed, not saying anything at all but encouraging students to invest in their own learning by accepting the challenge to work it out.

In my experience of using a chart for the last 40 years or so, students love the challenge of doing that rather than simply 'listen and repeat'.
As well as the chart itself, teachers can also use the IPA for a variety of additional purposes, amongst them: giving written instructions, setting homework tasks, jigsaw sentences in IPA, having students write notes to each other in IPA and writing classroom information such as 'rules' and so on. Indeed, the number of uses for the IPA is determined only by the imagination of the teacher and students!
But first, of course, students need to know what those squiggly symbols stand for!

There are many IPA charts around with words underneath each symbol to epitomise the sound represented by the symbol but personally, I don't like those.

Let's imagine that a student sees this:

"/ i:/ sheep" but the student's L1 doesn't contain that long 'ee' sound. Our students then will probably attach the nearest available sound to that symbol and that sound will almost certainly be /I/ meaning that from here on, 'sheep' will be pronounced 'ship' and so on. Not a disaster, I hear you say but this lack of differentiation could affect intelligibility as could other examples of words being misinterpreted through having been linked to L1 sounds rather than L2 sounds.

So I don't use those lists but instead, I use techniques which originated in the practice of Silent Way, by showing how the sounds are produced, silently! Teacher points at a sound and mouths and gestures so that students can produce the sound. Then the teacher either accepts their production or indicates how they need to adjust it.

This process is simpler than it sounds here and much easier to show than to describe in words! I have used this technique with students of all ages and L1s and also with hearing impaired students. As a matter or interest, I'll be demonstrating this technique at EdYOUfest 2019 in Street, Somerset, so come along if you'd like a practical view of how all of this works!

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The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is the result of work by 19th and early 20th century phoneticians such as Henry Sweet, Otto Jesperson and later Daniel Jones to create a visual taxonomy of human speech sounds. Each sound is represented by a symbol with additional symbols for adjusting sounds to show or represent, for example, nasality.

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Speech is a wonderfully complex skill, and children need lots of practice to learn how to do it. As with any motor skill, children make plenty of mistakes as they learn to speak clearly.

In English, we hear several common patterns of error in children's speech as they grow up. Here are 10 common types of error pattern, and the approximate age by which we expect them to be "fixed" (gone) in typically developing children:

1. Assimilation:

Lala wants the lellow kuk. (Lara wants the yellow truck.)

It's human nature to do as little work as possible, and our tongues, lips and other "articulators" can be just as lazy as the rest of us! Often one sound in a word will affect one or more other sounds in the word. This is called assimilation (or consonant harmony). Sometimes, the first sound in a word will change later sounds, e.g. if the child said "beb" for "bed". This is called progressive assimilation. Other times, later sounds in a word affect earlier sounds, e.g. if a child says "lellow" for "yellow". This is called regressive assimilation.

When to consider seeking help: if assimilation is still a feature of your child's speech at the age of 2½-3 years of age.

The taitai needs wawa. (The tiger needs water.)

When children repeat a syllable twice, rather than pronouncing both syllables of the word, they can sound a bit like babies babbling (e.g. mama, dada). When we hear it in 3-5 year olds, we call this error pattern reduplication. It almost always happens when the child repeats the stressed syllable twice, at the expense of the weak syllable, e.g. as in tiger and water above.

When to consider seeking help: if your child is 2½-3 years old or older and reduplicating syllables more than occasionally.

I fount a pek for the bram. (I found a peg for the pram.)

The sentence above makes no sense whatsoever. But it allows me to illustrate voicing errors. In English, we produce some of our sounds with our vocal chords apart. These are called unvoiced sounds, which include sounds like p, t, k, s and sh. For other sounds, we bring our vocal chords together to "turn on" our voices. These are called voiced sounds and include b, d, g, z and n. It takes a lot of control to turn your voice on and off during speech, and it's not unusual for some children to make errors like not voicing sounds when they should (e.g. pek instead of peg) or voicing sounds when they shouldn't (e.g. bram instead of pram).

Age at which you should you consider therapy: 3 years (or younger if your child is being teased for it).

4. Final consonant deletion:

Gi me my du ma ba. (Give me my duck mat back.)

Young children often omit the final consonants in their words. This is called (appropriately enough) final consonant deletion. It can have a big impact on how easy your child is for others to understand - could you understand the example sentence above without the translation?

When to consider seeking help: if your child is regularly omitting final consonants in words at the age of 3 years, 3 months.

Sorn tan't find any eds to teep. (Sean can't find any eggs to keep.)

This type of error is called fronting. It occurs when sounds normally produced with the tongue positioned at the back of the mouth (e.g. k, g and sh) are instead produced with the tongue positioned towards the front of the mouth (e.g. like t, d, and s).

Age at which you should you consider therapy: 3½-4 years of age (or younger if your child is hard for others to understand or being teased for it).

Da ban crac into dit debra. (The van crashed into this zebra.)

This ghoulish sentence illustrates stopping. In English, many speech sounds can be stretched out and held continuously until you run out of breath. Sounds like s, z, f, v and th, are good examples. Other speech sounds can't be held continuously, e.g. p, b, t, d, k and g, which are all examples of "plosives". It's common for young children to substitute plosives for continuous sounds. We call this "stopping" because the children are "stopping" the sounds, e.g. turning the "this" with its nice continuous "th" and "s" sound into "dit".

Age at which you should you consider therapy:

3 years of age for "f" or "s" (or younger if your child is being teased for it);

3½ years of age for "v" or "z" (or younger if your child is being teased for it);

4½ years of age for "sh", "j" or "ch" (or younger if your child is being teased for it); and

5-7 years of age for "th" (as in "thin") and "th" (as in "the") (or younger if your child is being teased for it).

7. Weak syllable deletion:

The efant needs a brela. (The elephant needs an umbrella.)

When we speak, we don't emphasise each of our syllables equally. For example, in the word "telephone", we usually place the stress on the "te" and "phone", leaving the "le" syllable in the middle un-stressed and weak. In "umbrella", we stress the "bre", leaving the "um" unstressed and weak. I'll spare you a lecture about Trochaic and Iambic stress patterns in English. Why I mention stress patterns is that it's common for young children to omit weak syllables. We call this weak syllable deletion.

Age at which you should you consider therapy: 4 years (or younger if your child is being teased for it).

8. Cluster Reduction:

There's a 'cary 'pider in my room! (There's a scary spider in my room!)

Many words in English contain combinations or "clusters" of consonants, e.g. squawk, crab or flower. It's common for young children to omit one or more of the consonants in a cluster (so called cluster reduction), and there are some clever rules of thumb speech pathologists use to help us predict which ones.

Age at which you should you consider therapy: 4-5 years (or younger if your child is hard for others to understand or is being teased for it).

I broke my wash on the frids door. (I broke my watch on the fridge door.)

This one has a fancy name - deaffrication. Let me explain: in English, "ch" and "j" are actually made up of two sounds each. Ch = t + sh. J = d + zh (as in mea sure or vi s ion). Affricate comes to us via German from the same Latin root as friction, meaning "rub together". Because they are made by rubbing together two sounds, ch and j are called affricates. It's common for children to drop one of the two sounds (i.e. to de-affricate them), e.g. the "t" in watch.

Age at which you should you consider therapy: 5 years of age (or younger if your child is being teased for it).

The wabbit woves wed wibbons. (The rabbit loves red ribbons.)

We call this error pattern gliding. It's most common with r and l. Two year olds who glide are often praised for their cuteness. Gliding is not so adorable when you're seven.

Age at which you should you consider therapy: 5-6 years of age (or younger if your child is being teased for it).

Other considerations

In reality, young children - especially 2 and 3 year olds - often make many of these errors in the same sentence, e.g. "dec a tary fwigt'n pider in my woo". This can make it very difficult for adults who don't know a child well to understand what he or she is trying to communicate.

The above suggested ages for considering seeking help are, of course, only guides. You are the expert on your child and you should always feel free to discuss your child's speech development with a speech pathologist.

As a general rule, if:

your child's speech is noticeably less developed or easy to understand than that of his or her peers;

your child shows signs of anxiety or frustration about his or her speech;

your child is self-conscious about his or her speech, or is being teased or bullied;

your child's childcare, pre-school or school teachers flag concerns about your child's speech;

you simply want to check that there's nothing to worry about; or

your child's speech features any of these error patterns at 5 years of age,

we recommend you contact a speech pathologist to discuss your concerns.

Principal sources: Dodd, Hua, Crosbie, Holm & Ozanne (2002); Grunwell (1987); McLeod (1996); Bowen (1998).

Related articles:

Image : http://tinyurl.com/neoc5by

Banter Speech & Language

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FAQ: 10 common speech error patterns seen in children of 3-5 years of age - and when you should be concerned

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Speech is a wonderfully complex skill, and children need lots of practice to learn how to do it. As with any motor skill, children make plenty of mistakes as they learn to speak clearly. In English, we hear several common patterns of error in children's speech as they grow up.

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Useful collection of resources

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Vygotsky's Theory

The work of Lev Vygotsky (1934, 1978) has become the foundation of much research and theory in cognitive development over the past several decades, particularly what has become known as sociocultural theory.

Vygotsky's theory comprises concepts such as culture-specific tools, private speech, and the zone of proximal development.

Vygotsky believed cognitive development is influenced by cultural and social factors. He emphasized the role of social interaction in the development of mental abilities e.g., speech and reasoning in children.

Vygotsky strongly believed that community plays a central role in the process of "making meaning."

Cognitive development is a socially mediated process in which children acquire cultural values, beliefs, and problem-solving strategies through collaborative dialogues with more knowledgeable members of society.

The more knowledgeable other (MKO) is someone who has a higher level of ability or greater understanding than the learner regarding a particular task, process, or concept.

The MKO can be a teacher, parent, coach, or even a peer who provides guidance and modeling to enable the child to learn skills within their zone of proximal development (the gap between what a child can do independently and what they can achieve with guidance).

The interactions with more knowledgeable others significantly increase not only the quantity of information and the number of skills a child develops, but also affects the development of higher-order mental functions such as formal reasoning. Vygotsky argued that higher mental abilities could only develop through interaction with more advanced others.

According to Vygotsky, adults in society foster children's cognitive development by engaging them in challenging and meaningful activities. Adults convey to children how their culture interprets and responds to the world.

They show the meaning they attach to objects, events, and experiences. They provide the child with what to think (the knowledge) and how to think (the processes, the tools to think with).

Vygotsky's theory encourages collaborative and cooperative learning between children and teachers or peers. Scaffolding and reciprocal teaching are effective educational strategies based on Vygotsky's ideas.

Scaffolding involves the teacher providing support structures to help students master skills just beyond their current level. In reciprocal teaching, teachers and students take turns leading discussions using strategies like summarizing and clarifying. Both scaffolding and reciprocal teaching emphasize the shared construction of knowledge, in line with Vygotsky's views.

Vygotsky highlighted the importance of language in cognitive development. Inner speech is used for mental reasoning, and external speech is used to converse with others.

These operations occur separately. Indeed, before age two, a child employs words socially; they possess no internal language.

Once thought and language merge, however, the social language is internalized and assists the child with their reasoning. Thus, the social environment is ingrained within the child's learning.

Effects of Culture

Vygotsky emphasized the role of the social environment in the child's cognitive development.

Vygotsky claimed that infants are born with the basic abilities for intellectual development called "elementary mental functions" (Piaget focuses on motor reflexes and sensory abilities). These develop throughout the first two years of life due to direct environmental contact.

Elementary mental functions include -

Eventually, through interaction within the sociocultural environment, these are developed into more sophisticated and effective mental processes, which Vygotsky refers to as "higher mental functions."

Tools of intellectual adaptation

Each culture provides its children with tools of intellectual adaptation that allow them to use basic mental functions more effectively/adaptively.

Tools of intellectual adaptation is Vygotsky's term for methods of thinking and problem-solving strategies that children internalize through social interactions with the more knowledgeable members of society.

For example, memory in young children is limited by biological factors. However, culture determines the type of memory strategy we develop.

For example, in Western culture, children learn note-taking to aid memory, but in pre-literate societies, other strategies must be developed, such as tying knots in a string to remember, carrying pebbles, or repeating the names of ancestors until large numbers can be repeated.

Vygotsky, therefore, sees cognitive functions, even those carried out alone, as affected by the beliefs, values, and tools of intellectual adaptation of the culture in which a person develops and, therefore, socio-culturally determined.

Therefore, intellectual adaptation tools vary from culture to culture - as in the memory example.

Social Influences on Cognitive Development

Like Piaget, Vygotsky believes that young children are curious and actively involved in their own learning and discovering and developing new understandings/schema.

However, Vygotsky emphasized social contributions to the development process, whereas Piaget emphasized self-initiated discovery.

According to Vygotsky (1978), much important learning by the child occurs through social interaction with a skillful tutor. The tutor may model behaviors and/or provide verbal instructions for the child.

Vygotsky refers to this as cooperative or collaborative dialogue. The child seeks to understand the actions or instructions provided by the tutor (often the parent or teacher) and then internalizes the information, using it to guide or regulate their performance.

Shaffer (1996) gives the example of a young girl given her first jigsaw. Alone, she performs poorly in attempting to solve the puzzle. The father then sits with her and describes or demonstrates some basic strategies, such as finding all the corner/edge pieces, and provides a couple of pieces for the child to put together herself, and offers encouragement when she does so.

As the child becomes more competent, the father allows the child to work more independently. According to Vygotsky, this social interaction involving cooperative or collaborative dialogue promotes cognitive development.

To understand Vygotsky's theories on cognitive development, one must understand two of the main principles of Vygotsky's work: the More Knowledgeable Other (MKO) and the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD).

More Knowledgeable Other

The more knowledgeable other (MKO) is somewhat self-explanatory; it refers to someone who has a better understanding or a higher ability level than the learner, concerning a particular task, process, or concept.

Although the implication is that the MKO is a teacher or an older adult, this is not necessarily the case. Often, a child's peers or an adult's children may be the individuals with more knowledge or experience.

For example, who is more likely to know more about the newest teenage music groups, how to win at the most recent PlayStation game, or how to correctly perform the newest dance craze - a child or their parents?

In fact, the MKO need not be a person at all. To support employees in their learning process, some companies are now using electronic performance support systems.

Electronic tutors have also been used in educational settings to facilitate and guide students through learning. The key to MKOs is that they must have (or be programmed with) more knowledge about the topic being learned than the learner does.

Zone of Proximal Development

The concept of the more knowledgeable other relates to the second important principle of Vygotsky's work, the zone of proximal development.

This important concept relates to the difference between what a child can achieve independently and what a child can achieve with guidance and encouragement from a skilled partner.

Vygotsky consequently focuses much more closely on social interaction as an aid to learning, arguing that, left alone, children will develop - but not to their full potential.

He refers to the gap between actual and potential learning as the zone of proximal development (ZPD) - and argues that it is only through collaboration with adults and other learners that this gap can be bridged.

The zone of proximal development is the gap between the level of actual development, what the child can do on his own, and the level of potential development, what a child can do with the assistance of more advanced and competent individuals.

Social interaction, therefore, supports the child's cognitive development in the ZPD, leading to a higher level of reasoning. It is generally believed that social dialogues have two important features.

The first is intersubjectivity, where two individuals who might have different understandings of a task, arrive at a shared understanding by adjusting to the perspective of the other.

The second feature is referred to as scaffolding. Adults may begin with direct instruction, but as children's mastery of a task increases, so the adult tends to withdraw their own contributions in recognition of the child's increasing success.

For example, the child could not solve the jigsaw puzzle (in the example above) by itself and would have taken a long time to do so (if at all), but was able to solve it following interaction with the father, and has developed competence at this skill that will be applied to future jigsaws.

ZPD is the zone where instruction is the most beneficial, as it is when the task is just beyond the individual's capabilities. To learn, we must be presented with tasks just out of our ability range. Challenging tasks promote maximum cognitive growth.

As a result of shared dialogues with more knowledgeable others, who provide hints, instructions, and encouragement, the child can internalize the 'how to do it' part of the task as part of their inner or private speech. The child can then use this on later occasions when they tackle a similar task on their own.

Vygotsky (1978) sees the Zone of Proximal Development as the area where the most sensitive instruction or guidance should be given - allowing the child to develop skills they will then use on their own - developing higher mental functions.

Vygotsky also views peer interaction as an effective way of developing skills and strategies. He suggests that teachers use cooperative learning exercises where less competent children develop with help from more skillful peers - within the zone of proximal development.

Evidence for Vygotsky and the ZPD

Freund (1990) conducted a study in which children had to decide which items of furniture should be placed in particular areas of a doll's house.

Some children were allowed to play with their mother in a similar situation before they attempted it alone (zone of proximal development) while others were allowed to work on this by themselves (Piaget's discovery learning).

Freund found that those who had previously worked with their mother (ZPD) showed the greatest improvement compared with their first attempt at the task.

The conclusion is that guided learning within the ZPD led to greater understanding/performance than working alone (discovery learning).

Vygotsky and Language

Vygotsky believed that language develops from social interactions for communication purposes. Vygotsky viewed language as man's greatest tool for communicating with the outside world.

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 for intellectual adaptation.

Vygotsky (1987) differentiates between three forms of language:

1. Social speech, which is external communication used to talk to others (typical from the age of two);

2. Private speech (typical from the age of three) which is directed to the self and serves an intellectual function;

3. Private speech goes underground, diminishing in audibility as it takes on a self-regulating function and is transformed into silent inner speech (typical from the age of seven).

For Vygotsky, thought and language are initially separate systems from the beginning of life, merging at around three years of age.

At this point, speech and thought become interdependent: thought becomes verbal, and speech becomes representational.

As children develop mental representation, particularly the skill of language, they start to communicate with themselves in much the same way as they would communicate with others.

When this happens, children's monologues are internalized to become inner speech. The internalization of language is important as it drives cognitive development.

"Inner speech is not the interiour aspect of external speech - it is a function in itself. It still remains speech, i.e., thought connected with words.

But while in external speech thought is embodied in words, in inner speech words dies as they bring forth thought. Inner speech is to a large extent thinking in pure meanings."
(Vygotsky, 1962: p. 149)

Private Speech

Vygotsky (1987) was the first psychologist to document the importance of private speech.

He considered private speech as the transition point between social and inner speech, the moment in development where language and thought unite to constitute verbal thinking.

Thus, in Vygotsky's view, private speech was the earliest manifestation of inner speech. Indeed, private speech is more similar (in form and function) to inner speech than social speech.

Private speech is "typically defined, in contrast to social speech, as speech addressed to the self (not to others) for the purpose of self-regulation (rather than communication)."
(Diaz, 1992, p.62)

Private speech is overt, audible, and observable, often seen in children who talk to themselves while problem-solving.

Conversely, inner speech is covert or hidden because it happens internally. It is the silent, internal dialogue that adults often engage in while thinking or problem-solving.

In contrast to Piaget's (1959) notion of private speech representing a developmental dead-end, Vygotsky (1934, 1987) viewed private speech as:

"A revolution in development which is triggered when preverbal thought and preintellectual language come together to create fundamentally new forms of mental functioning." (Fernyhough & Fradley, 2005: p. 1)

In addition to disagreeing on the functional significance of private speech, Vygotsky and Piaget also offered opposing views on the developmental course of private speech and the environmental circumstances in which it occurs most often (Berk & Garvin, 1984).

Through private speech, children collaborate with themselves, in the same way a more knowledgeable other (e.g., adults) collaborate with them to achieve a given function.

Vygotsky sees "private speech" as a means for children to plan activities and strategies, aiding their development. Private speech is the use of language for self-regulation of behavior.

Therefore, language accelerates thinking/understanding ( Jerome Bruner also views language in this way). Vygotsky believed that children who engage in large amounts of private speech are more socially competent than children who do not use it extensively.

Vygotsky (1987) notes that private speech does not merely accompany a child's activity but acts as a tool the developing child uses to facilitate cognitive processes, such as overcoming task obstacles, and enhancing imagination, thinking, and conscious awareness.

Children use private speech most often during intermediate difficulty tasks because they attempt to self-regulate by verbally planning and organizing their thoughts (Winsler et al., 2007).

The frequency and content of private speech correlate with behavior or performance. For example, private speech appears functionally related to cognitive performance: It appears at times of difficulty with a task.

For example, tasks related to executive function (Fernyhough & Fradley, 2005), problem-solving tasks (Behrend et al., 1992), and schoolwork in both language (Berk & Landau, 1993), and mathematics (Ostad & Sorensen, 2007).

Berk (1986) provided empirical support for the notion of private speech. She found that most private speech exhibited by children serves to describe or guide the child's actions.

Berk also discovered that children engaged in private speech more often when working alone on challenging tasks and when their teacher was not immediately available to help them.

Furthermore, Berk also found that private speech develops similarly in all children regardless of cultural background.

There is also evidence (Behrend et al., 1992) that those children who displayed the characteristic whispering and lip movements associated with private speech when faced with a difficult task were generally more attentive and successful than their 'quieter' classmates.

Vygotsky (1987) proposed that private speech is a product of an individual's social environment. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that there exist high positive correlations between rates of social interaction and private speech in children.

Children raised in cognitively and linguistically stimulating environments (situations more frequently observed in higher socioeconomic status families) start using and internalizing private speech faster than children from less privileged backgrounds.

Indeed, children raised in environments characterized by low verbal and social exchanges exhibit delays in private speech development.

Children's use of private speech diminishes as they grow older and follows a curvilinear trend. This is due to changes in ontogenetic development whereby children can internalize language (through inner speech) to self-regulate their behavior (Vygotsky, 1987).

For example, research has shown that children's private speech usually peaks at 3-4 years of age, decreases at 6-7, and gradually fades out to be mostly internalized by age 10 (Diaz, 1992).

Vygotsky proposed that private speech diminishes and disappears with age not because it becomes socialized, as Piaget suggested, but because it goes underground to constitute inner speech or verbal thought" (Frauenglass & Diaz, 1985).

Educational Implications

Vygotsky's approach to child development is a form of social constructivism, based on the idea that cognitive functions are the products of social interactions.

Social constructivism posits that knowledge is constructed and learning occurs through social interactions within a cultural and historical context.

Vygotsky emphasized the collaborative nature of learning by constructing knowledge through social negotiation. He rejected the assumption made by Piaget that it was possible to separate learning from its social context.

Vygotsky believed everything is learned on two levels. First, through interaction with others, then integrated into the individual's mental structure.

Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological).

This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relationships between individuals.
(Vygotsky, 1978, p.57)

Teaching styles grounded in constructivism represent a deliberate shift from traditional, didactic, memory-oriented transmission models (Cannella & Reiff, 1994) to a more student-centered approach.

Traditionally, schools have failed to foster environments where students actively participate in their own and their peers' education. Vygotsky's theory, however, calls for both the teacher and students to assume non-traditional roles as they engage in collaborative learning.

Rather than having a teacher impose their understanding onto students for future recitation, the teacher should co-create meaning with students in a manner that allows learners to take ownership (Hausfather, 1996).

For instance, a student and teacher might start a task with varying levels of expertise and understanding. As they adapt to each other's perspective, the teacher must articulate their insights in a way that the student can comprehend, leading the student to a fuller understanding of the task or concept.

The student can then internalize the task's operational aspect ("how to do it") into their inner speech or private dialogue. Vygotsky referred to this reciprocal understanding and adjustment process as intersubjectivity."

ZPD

Because Vygotsky asserts that cognitive change occurs within the zone of proximal development, instruction would be designed to reach a developmental level just above the student's current developmental level.

Vygotsky proclaims, "learning which is oriented toward developmental levels that have already been reached is ineffective from the viewpoint of the child's overall development. It does not aim for a new stage of the developmental process but rather lags behind this process" (Vygotsky, 1978).

Appropriation is necessary for cognitive development within the zone of proximal development. Individuals participating in peer collaboration or guided teacher instruction must share the same focus to access the zone of proximal development.

"Joint attention and shared problem solving is needed to create a process of cognitive, social, and emotional interchange" (Hausfather,1996).

Furthermore, it is essential that the partners be on different developmental levels and the higher-level partner be aware of the lower's level. If this does not occur or one partner dominates, the interaction is less successful (Driscoll, 1994; Hausfather, 1996).

Vygotsky's theories also feed into the current interest in collaborative learning, suggesting that group members should have different levels of ability so more advanced peers can help less advanced members operate within their ZPD.

Scaffolding and reciprocal teaching are effective strategies to access the zone of proximal development.

Reciprocal Teaching

A contemporary educational application of Vygotsky's theory is "reciprocal teaching," used to improve students" ability to learn from text.

In this method, teachers and students collaborate in learning and practicing four key skills: summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting. The teacher's role in the process is reduced over time.

Reciprocal teaching allows for the creation of a dialogue between students and teachers. This two-way communication becomes an instructional strategy by encouraging students to go beyond answering questions and engage in the discourse (Driscoll, 1994; Hausfather, 1996).

A study conducted by Brown and Palincsar (1989) demonstrated the Vygotskian approach with reciprocal teaching methods in their successful program to teach reading strategies.

The teacher and students alternated turns leading small group discussions on a reading. After modeling four reading strategies, students began to assume the teaching role.

The results showed significant gains over other instructional strategies (Driscoll, 1994; Hausfather,1996).

Cognitively Guided Instruction is another strategy to implement Vygotsky's theory. This strategy involves the teacher and students exploring math problems and then sharing their problem-solving strategies in an open dialogue (Hausfather,1996).

Based on Vygotsky's theory, the physical classroom would provide clustered desks or tables and workspace for peer instruction, collaboration, and small-group instruction. Learning becomes a reciprocal experience for the students and teacher.

Like the environment, the instructional design of the material to be learned would be structured to promote and encourage student interaction and collaboration. Thus the classroom becomes a community of learning.

Scaffolding

Also, Vygotsky's theory of cognitive development on learners is relevant to instructional concepts such as "scaffolding" and "apprenticeship," in which a teacher or more advanced peer helps to structure or arrange a task so that a novice can work on it successfully.

A teacher's role is to identify each individual's current level of development and provide them with opportunities to cross their ZPD.

A crucial element in this process is the use of what later became known as scaffolding; the way in which the teacher provides students with frameworks and experiences which encourage them to extend their existing schemata and incorporate new skills, competencies, and understandings.

Scaffolding describes the conditions that support the child's learning, to move from what they already know to new knowledge and abilities.

Scaffolding requires the teacher to allow students to extend their current skills and knowledge.

During scaffolding, the support offered by an adult (or more knowledgeable other) gradually decreases as the child becomes more skilled in the task.

As the adult withdraws their help, the child assumes more of the strategic planning and eventually gains competence to master similar problems without a teacher's aid or a more knowledgeable peer.

It is important to note that this is more than simply instruction; learning experiences must be presented in such a way as to actively challenge existing mental structures and provide frameworks for learning.

Five ways in which an adult can "scaffold" a child's learning:

1. Engaging the child's interest

2. Maintaining the child's interest in the task e.g., avoiding distraction and providing clear instructions on how to start the task.

3. Keeping the child's frustration under control e.g., by supportive interactions, adapting instructions according to where the child is struggling.

4. Emphasizing the important features of the task

5. Demonstrating the task: showing the child how to do the task in simple, clear steps.

As the child progresses through the ZPD, the necessary scaffolding level declines from 5 to 1.

The teacher must engage students' interests, simplify tasks to be manageable, and motivate students to pursue the instructional goal.

In addition, the teacher must look for discrepancies between students" efforts and the solution, control for frustration and risk, and model an idealized version of the act (Hausfather, 1996).

Challenges to Traditional Teaching Methods

Vygotsky's social development theory challenges traditional teaching methods. Historically, schools have been organized around recitation teaching.

The teacher disseminates knowledge to be memorized by the students, who in turn recite the information to the teacher (Hausfather,1996).

However, the studies described above offer empirical evidence that learning based on the social development theory facilitates cognitive development over other instructional strategies.

The structure of our schools does not reflect the rapid changes our society is experiencing. The introduction and integration of computer technology in society has tremendously increased the opportunities for social interaction.

Therefore, the social context for learning is transforming as well. Whereas collaboration and peer instruction were once only possible in shared physical space, learning relationships can now be formed from distances through cyberspace.

Computer technology is a cultural tool that students can use to meditate and internalize their learning. Recent research suggests changing the learning contexts with technology is a powerful learning activity (Crawford, 1996).

If schools continue to resist structural change, students will be ill-prepared for the world they will live.

Critical Evaluation

Vygotsky's work has not received the same level of intense scrutiny that Piaget's has, partly due to the time-consuming process of translating Vygotsky's work from Russian.

Also, Vygotsky's sociocultural perspective does not provide as many specific hypotheses to test as Piaget's theory, making refutation difficult, if not impossible.

Perhaps the main criticism of Vygotsky's work concerns the assumption that it is relevant to all cultures. Rogoff (1990) dismisses the idea that Vygotsky's ideas are culturally universal and instead states that scaffolding- heavily dependent on verbal instruction - may not be equally useful in all cultures for all types of learning.

Indeed, in some instances, observation and practice may be more effective ways of learning certain skills.

There is much emphasis on social interaction and culture, but many other aspects of development are neglected, such as the importance of emotional factors, e.g., the joys of success and the disappointments and frustration of failure act as motivation for learning.

Vygotsky overemphasized socio-cultural factors at the expense of biological influences on cognitive development. This theory cannot explain why cross-cultural studies show that the stages of development (except the formal operational stage) occur in the same order in all cultures suggesting that cognitive development is a product of a biological process of maturation.

Vygotky's theory has been applied successfully to education. Scaffolding has been shown to be an effective way of teaching (Freund, 1990), and based on this theory, teachers are trained to guide children from what they can do to the next step in their learning through careful scaffolding.

Collaborative work is also used in the classroom, mixing children of different levels of ability to make use of reciprocal / peer teaching.

Vygotsky vs. Piaget

Unlike Piaget's notion that children's cognitive development must necessarily precede their learning, Vygotsky argued, "learning is a necessary and universal aspect of the process of developing culturally organized, specifically human psychological function" (1978, p. 90). In other words, social learning precedes (i.e., come before) development.

Vygotsky's theory differs from that of Piaget in several important ways:

Vygotsky places more emphasis on culture affecting cognitive development.

Unlike Piaget, who emphasized universal cognitive change (i.e., all children would go through the same sequence of cognitive development regardless of their cultural experiences), Vygotsky leads us to expect variable development depending on cultural diversity.

This contradicts Piaget's view of universal stages of development (Vygotsky does not refer to stages like Piaget does).

Hence, Vygotsky assumes cognitive development varies across cultures, whereas Piaget states cognitive development is mostly universal across cultures.

Vygotsky places considerably more emphasis on social factors contributing to cognitive development.

1. Vygotsky states the importance of cultural and social context for learning. Cognitive development stems from social interactions from guided learning within the zone of proximal development as children and their partners co-construct knowledge.
In contrast, Piaget maintains that cognitive development stems largely from independent explorations in which children construct knowledge.

2. For Vygotsky, the environment in which children grow up will influence how they think and what they think about.
The importance of scaffolding and language may differ for all cultures. Rogoff (1990) emphasizes the importance of observation and practice in pre-industrial societies (e.g., learning to use a canoe among Micronesian Islanders).

Vygotsky places more (and different) emphasis on the role of language in cognitive development.

According to Piaget, language depends on thought for its development (i.e., thought comes before language). For Vygotsky, thought and language are initially separate systems from the beginning of life, merging at around three years of age, producing verbal thought (inner speech).

In Piaget's theory, egocentric (or private) speech gradually disappears as children develop truly social speech, in which they monitor and adapt what they say to others.

Vygotsky disagreed with this view, arguing that as language helps children to think about and control their behavior, it is an important foundation for complex cognitive skills.

As children age, this self-directed speech becomes silent (or private) speech, referring to the inner dialogues we have with ourselves as we plan and carry out activities.

For Vygotsky, cognitive development results from an internalization of language.

According to Vygotsky, adults are an important source of cognitive development.

Adults transmit their culture's tools of intellectual adaptation that children internalize.

In contrast, Piaget emphasizes the importance of peers, as peer interaction promotes social perspective-taking.

Behrend, D.A., Rosengren, K.S., & Perlmutter, M. (1992). The relation between private speech and parental interactive style. In R.M. Diaz & L.E. Berk (Eds.), Private speech: From social interaction to self-regulation (pp. 85-100). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Berk, L. E. (1986). Relationship of elementary school children's private speech to behavioral accompaniment to task, attention, and task performance. Developmental Psychology, 22(5), 671.

Berk, L. & Garvin, R. (1984). Development of private speech among low-income Appalachian children. Developmental Psychology, 20(2), 271-286.

Berk, L. E., & Landau, S. (1993). Private speech of learning-disabled and normally achieving children in classroom academic and laboratory contexts. Child Development, 64, 556-571.

Cannella, G. S., & Reiff, J. C. (1994). Individual constructivist teacher education: Teachers as empowered learners. Teacher education quarterly, 27-38.

Crawford, K. (1996) Vygotskian approaches to human development in the information era. Educational Studies in Mathematics, (31),43-62.

Diaz, R. M., & Berk, L. E. (1992). Private speech: From social interaction to self-regulation. Lawrence Erlbaum.

Driscoll, M. P. (1994). Psychology of Learning for Instruction. Needham, Ma: Allyn && Bacon.

Frauenglass, M. & Diaz, R. (1985). Self-regulatory functions of children's private speech: A critical analysis of recent challenges to Vygotsky's theory. Developmental Psychology, 21(2), 357-364.

Fernyhough, C., & Fradley, E. (2005). Private speech on an executive task: Relations with task difficulty and task performance. Cognitive Development, 20, 103-120.

Freund, L. S. (1990). Maternal regulation of children's problem-solving behavior and its impact on children's performance. Child Development, 61, 113-126.

Hausfather, S. J. (1996). Vygotsky and Schooling: Creating a Social Contest for learning. Action in Teacher Education, (18),1-10.

Ostad, S. A., & Sorensen, P. M. (2007). Private speech and strategy-use patterns: Bidirectional comparisons of children with and without mathematical difficulties in a developmental perspective. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 40, 2-14.

Piaget, J. (1959). The language and thought of the child (Vol. 5) . Psychology Press.

Rogoff, B. (1990). Apprenticeship in thinking: Cognitive development in social context. Oxford university press.

Saettler, P. (1990). The Evolution of American Educational Technology . Egnlewood, Co: Libraries Unlimited.

Schaffer, R. (1996) . Social development. Oxford: Blackwell.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). Thinking and speech. In R.W. Rieber & A.S. Carton (Eds.), The collected works of L.S. Vygotsky, Volume 1: Problems of general psychology (pp. 39-285). New York: Plenum Press. (Original work published 1934.)

Winsler, A., Abar, B., Feder, M. A., Schunn, C. D., & Rubio, D. A. (2007). Private speech and executive functioning among high-functioning children with autistic spectrum disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 37, 1617-1635.

Wertsch, J. V., Sohmer, R. (1995). Vygotsky on learning and development. Human Development, (38), 332-37.

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Lev Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory Of Cognitive Development

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Lev Vygotsky's theory of child development, known as the sociocultural theory, emphasizes the importance of social interaction and cultural context in learning and cognitive development. Vygotsky proposed the concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), which is the gap between what a child can do independently and what they can achieve with guidance from a more knowledgeable person.

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Opinion

By Jane Mueller

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A new study reveals there is little or no evidence that phonics - the dissecting of words into smaller sounds or letters - is the most effective method for teaching reading. The study, published in the Educational Psychology Review, does not discredit a phonics-based approach. Rather, it establishes that systematic phonics does not lead to better reading outcomes than a whole language approach, which emphasises the meaning of words by recognising them in the larger context of a text.

Principal Jane Mueller: Teach phonics, by all means, but don't deprive students of other essential learning tools.

The study declares: "The 'reading wars' that pitted systematic phonics against whole language is best characterised as a draw."

In October last year, the federal Education Minister, Dan Tehan, announced: :The Morrison government will ensure student teachers know how to teach the fundamentals of learning to read." Tehan's announcement implied this is best achieved through phonics instruction: "There is clear evidence that children benefit from phonics instruction in learning to read and spell so our government wants teachers to have the skills to teach phonics well."

The criticism of teachers and the teaching profession has become our new national sport. Ill-informed opinions are loud and widespread, and often stem from public figures with no educational qualifications. Those who seek, without fact-checking, to be influenced by social media memes and quotes taken out of context or entirely fabricated, are active participants in the sport.

University World News observed the combination of rhetoric, identity and emotions make for a powerful force against scientific knowledge and expertise. Specifically in relation to education, "When a narrative takes hold in the public imagination, it can be difficult to untangle what is true from what is assumed".

To quote American professor and author Brené Brown, we must question which education critics are actually "in the arena getting their ass kicked". It's easy to criticise when you have never gazed into the eyes of 28 young faces and accepted the challenge of meeting the needs of each individual, taking into account their unique psychological histories and independent needs. As argued by Dylan Wiliam, a professor of educational assessment at University College London, classrooms are simply too complicated for those not in the arena to ever tell teachers what to do.

Formal education has been distorted to the point that it is often viewed as a delivery, control or management system. These systems are social constructs carried over from the first and second industrial revolutions. They are "out of sync with human nature", writes Daniel H Pink, yet our education system is structured so our teachers and students are managed. Society has become conditioned to believe a cookie-cutting, one-size-fits-all approach is wholesome.

Asserting there is one single method for nurturing literacy is misguided. It resembles a narrow-minded understanding of children and their development. Children are not objects to fit neatly on an assembly line. They are a complex joy of quirks and brightness of colour. They enter educational institutions with differing organic makeup, diversity of family background and an assortment of experiences in their formative years. When they start school, their brains have already formed synapses that affect their ability to absorb formal learning through a pre-determined curriculum.

Should teachers be well-trained in phonics? Yes, of course. Should teachers be well-trained in other proven reading teaching strategies? Yes, most definitely. The key is for teachers to gain mastery in a spectrum of evidence-informed strategies so they have a range of tools at their disposal. The professionals they are, teachers must then be entrusted with decision-making authority and autonomy to employ the strategies that will best serve the needs of the children in their care.

Reading is not fostered purely in the classroom, so teacher autonomy must be complemented by a societal appreciation that literacy development is a home-school partnership. Reading for pleasure in the family home boosts children's attitudes towards reading and reading-related success.

Over-regulation of the teaching profession narrows and weakens our education system. The restoration of trust in professional teacher judgment - together with an appreciation that literacy development is a shared, slow and gentle burn - is the strongest path to guiding every child not only to imposed benchmarks, but to their individual potential.
Jane Mueller is the principal of Living Faith Lutheran Primary School, Brisbane. Twitter: @jane_n_mueller

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Teach phonics, yes, but don't pigeon-hole teachers

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Opinion By Jane Mueller Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size A new study reveals there is little or no evidence that phonics - the dissecting of words into smaller sounds or letters - is the most effective method for teaching reading.

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One of the most common discussions within EYFS is the teaching of phonics. Whether it is an argument about its place within reading, or at what point the teaching of phonics should begin, it is always a hot topic.

The difficulty for me is that too much emphasis is placed on the teaching of phonics and so there is huge pressure for Reception and Year 1 teachers.

It can feel at times as though we are overly judged, measured and monitored in this aspect of teaching, which is quite disproportionate considering the full breadth within the EYFS framework.

Outside influences

While a pressure exists to demonstrate the highest quality of teaching and to produce ambitious data, it feels unfair when there are many external factors that contribute strongly to children's outcomes in phonics.

The first and most obvious is the home learning environment. Does this make a difference? In my experience, it absolutely does. Whether a child has experienced listening to songs and rhymes, sharing books and engaging in quality talk will contribute strongly to their readiness for learning.

Age is another big factor. How old are they? The number of summer birthdays will influence the cohort. If I told a Reception teacher that they would have a whole class of summer borns, I can imagine the response...

The most critical factor for me is the quality of pre-school learning experience. I always ask feeder settings about this during transition. It is really useful to the sorts of experiences the children have had before they come to us. Do you provide letters and sounds sessions? How regularly? What does this look like?

Over the years, I have found a range of answers to these questions. In some scenarios the children are very well prepared. In others...let's say that we have a very different understanding of the term "letters and sounds".

I do recall one pre-school manager telling me that she played the Jolly Phonics song on the CD player from time to time.

A critical issue for me is not so much whether they have been taught, but whether they are taught properly: it is frustrating to find children using hard sounds quite frequently "muhhhh" instead of "mmm", for example.

Another noticeable skill lacking is the ability to orally blend and segment. In the past, this has been an area that we needed to revisit and consolidate in September.

Reaping the benefit...

However, this year we have had lots of success with the teaching of phonics in Reception. I put this down to the fact that we are fortunate to have a teacher-led nursery on site. I work closely with the team and we reap the benefits. The children have been really well prepared in learning a wide range of key skills in preparation for teaching phonics.

Key aspects of practice include:

Letters and sounds sessions are delivered daily in small groups.

The emphasis is on practical, play-based learning.

Regular training is delivered for nursery practitioners and Reception TAs.

All staff are trained to model correct articulation.

Many of the sessions are active (we use lots of beanbags, hoops, balls etc).

The nursery class have a structured programme for teaching "phase 1" skills. This is covered throughout the year on a daily basis for short 10 minute sessions. Lisa, our nursery teacher, ensures that the children develop a range of skills from phase 1 of the letters and sounds programme.

We don't deliver 'phonics lessons'

It is really important to us that these sessions are not formal. We provide appropriate, short activities with very young children in mind. We use multi-sensory teaching and aim for the children to have fun.

As I walk through the classroom, I typically see children marching around to the beat of a drum or playing a game outside involving running and jumping.

They use lots of rhyme, singing and music but the key things is that there is a clear focus.

Children learn to identify rhyme, they can discriminate sounds, they are secure with oral blending, they articulate correctly.

All of these things give us a head start in Reception and help to reduce the pressure...ever so slightly.
Helen Pinnington is early years foundation lead at St Thomas More's Catholic Primary School in Bedhampton, Hampshire

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The problem with phonics in EYFS - and how to solve it

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One of the most common discussions within EYFS is the teaching of phonics. Whether it is an argument about its place within reading, or at what point the teaching of phonics should begin, it is always a hot topic.

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Eye contact and gestures linked to vocabulary development

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Babies who frequently communicate with their caregivers using eye contact and vocalisations at the age of one are more likely to develop greater language skills by the time they reach two, according to new research.

Scientists say the findings should encourage parents to pay close attention to babies' attempts to communicate before they can use words, and to respond to them. In the study, researchers looked at 11- and 12-month-old babies' vocalisations, gestures and gaze behaviours, and at how their caregivers responded to them. "These have never been looked at together in the same analysis before," said Dr Ed Donnellan, from the University of Sheffield, the lead author on the study.

To measure the interactions, the researchers videoed infants and caregivers at home, and asked them to play as usual. "We took those recordings back to the university and very meticulously coded what was happening. We looked out for every time the infant vocalised, or gestured, and we coded all the caregivers' responses," said Prof Michelle McGillion of the University of Warwick, a co-author of the work published in the journal Developmental Science and presented at the British Science festival.

The caregivers later filled out a questionnaire about whether their children could say certain words referring to animals, daily routines and food.

The scientists then used statistical models to find that the best predictor of vocabulary at 24 months was when infants were seen to use vocalisations while looking at their caregiver's face when they were about a year old. The benefits were even greater when these interactions were followed by responses from the caregiver.

The statistics showed that at 19 months, children had an average of about 100 words. Those who exhibited the beneficial interactive behaviour earlier in life were seen to have an average of about 30 extra words.

"What this tells us is that babies are trying to communicate before they have arrived at their first words. When they're doing this, they are giving caregivers an opportunity to communicate back, and when the caregivers do that, that's when word learning seems to be improved," said Donnellan.

"The message of this paper is that it's a joint effort; noticing what your child is attending to and talking to them about it will support their language development," said McGillion. "The joy of this message is that that can happen in any context ... across any part of your day. It's not something that requires special equipment or even lots of time. It can happen when you're doing the laundry, for example - when you're taking out the socks, you can talk about socks ... in the park, in the car, at mealtimes, at bathtimes. This finding can be used in any context."

McGillion hopes this work might lead to further studies across more age ranges: "This is a developmental snapshot in the first year of life, but children are constantly growing and changing and so are their behaviours. [It would be interesting to] look at these sorts of behaviours again as children progress through the second year of life to see what's happening there."
Topics

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Babies who use eye contact more likely to build up vocabulary

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Babies who frequently communicate with their caregivers using eye contact and vocalisations at the age of one are more likely to develop greater language skills by the time they reach two, according to new research. Scientists say the findings should encourage parents to pay close attention to babies' attempts to communicate before they can use words, and to respond to them.

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Introduction:

The question to consider is how children acquire language and at which stage they could improve their speaking and listening skills. In particular, syntax and vocabulary are the main concern of the language acquisition domain. The task of psycholinguistics is to discover the relationship between language and the human mind (Field: 2003). Many theories, therefore, have emerged in exploring this relationship, which seek to explain the way in which children understand and acquire language. Over the last five decades these theories have offered various ideas and interpretations of the relationship. For example, in Behaviourist theory, which is associated to skinner's research into language, language acquisition is considered a collection of habits. It is thought that children learn how to form correct utterances through positive reinforcement from the people around them (Patten and Benati: 2010). Cognitive theory, which is associated with Piaget, is considered a way of discovering how individuals create and use language in their social context (ibid, p71). Interaction theory, related to Bruner, holds that language comes from the interaction between children and their environment (ibid, p99). There are, however, two theories in the relevant acquisition literature which oppose one another and provoke countless debates: Chomsky's theory and Tomasello's theory. In Chomsky's theory, children biologically possess an innate ability to acquire their language. This ability is mainly specific to language. Whereas, in Tomasello's theory language is acquired through language use by means of social skills, such as, joint attention and general learning mechanisms (Behrene: 2009).

This paper seeks to explore these two theories in order to contrast them. The first and second parts of the paper present an overview of the main ideas in the two theories. The third part focuses on their different aspects, including the: poverty of stimulus argument, linguistic creativity, modularity and language specific - domain versus domain- general learning mechanisms. The fourth and final part, discusses some weak points in the two theories.

Overview of Chomsky's (Innatist) theory:

In language acquisition domain, Chomsky's theory is called an innatist theory, because he proposed that children biologically possess suitable abstract knowledge for the task of first language learning .This abstract knowledge shapes the linguistic system which they learn. In fact, through this innate knowledge children can discover the rules of their language system and reduce hypothesis formation and guessing. (Patten and Benati: 2010). Chomsky's main argument is that all human beings are born with an innate knowledge which is particularly designed for language acquisition (ibid). This argument is indeed, opposed to the one that language is a result of the interaction between human beings and the environment or item-usage learning (e.g. Skinner, 1957; Tomasello, 2003). Furthermore, The term Language Acquisition Device (LAD) was coined by Chomsky in this context to refer to such innate knowledge or the little black box (Patten and Benati: 2010).The (LAD) comprises the universal principles of all languages, by which children can be kept on track and not confused by all the complex rules of particular languages. When this (LAD) is activated, the child can discover the structure of the language s/he is to learn by matching the innate knowledge of basic grammatical relationships to the structures of the special language in the environment (Lightbown and Spada: 1999). However, since the 1960s, instead of (LAD) universal grammar hypothesis (UG) was introduced by Chomsky. It was given much concern by him instead of, the (LAD), because, in Chomsky's view this hypothesis means that there is an innate knowledge source which governs the shape of natural language (Patten and Benati: 2010). It should be noted that the first appearance of Chomsky's theory was in 1959 in his critical review of Skinner's book Verbal Behavior in 1957. Chomsky in his review pointed out many shortcomings in applying Skinner's theories to language acquisition. For example, Skinner's experiment using rat boxes is not relevant to language because the behaviour of rats is unlike human behaviour. As a result, Skinner has a mistaken understanding of the nature of language. Furthermore, the environment considered solely as learning mechanism can not be the basis of language acquisition and therefore, man's ability to acquire language must be innate (Aitchison, 2007).

Overview of Tomasello's theory (usage-based theory):

The account of language acquisition provided by Tomasello comes under the umbrella of usage-based theories. Recently, a new view of language and human linguistic competence has emerged (Tomasello: 2003). This view comes from a set of theories usually called cognitive-functional linguistics, and also called usage -based linguistics in order to emphasize their main ideas that language structure is produced or appears from language use (e.g. Langacker, 1987a ; Croft, 1991; Tomasello, 1995, 2003). It is note worthy that this view stands in direct opposition to Chomsky's innatist theory. Because, Tomasello in his theory is mainly concerned with the question of how children 'get from here to there' from the constructions of infant level speech to the abstract constructions of adult thought through one set of processes of acquisition (Tomasello: 2003:3). In Tomasello's theory it is impossible that humans can have been born with a specific collection of communicative behaviours only for language. This collection more probably learned by children during their years from the linguistic conventions used around them. They must possess flexibility in order to learn both the different words and the suitable expressions of each language and the different types of abstract constructional pattern which historically these languages have grammaticized (ibid). Tomasello emphasizes, however, four points in his theory: First, the innate skills which people have are not specific to language but can be used as means for language learning.

Second, theory of mind is central to symbol use, because humans can understand symbols while nonhuman do not possess this ability, because they use signal system. Thirdly, word-learning skills include: joint attention, which means the ability that children possess in their first year old whereby they can understand other people as intentional agents and interact socially through an object to which both pay attention; children note this attention to both it and themselves; Intention reading, means the ability to understand the social world around them through imitating adult acts; the construction-learning skills encompassing: analogy and pattern-finding. The latter means the distributional analysis based on statistical information in the primary linguistic data and the ability to form perceptual and conceptual figures of similar objects or situations (Tomasello: 2003).

The differences between the two theories:

It is noteworthy that the accounts provided by Chomsky and Tomasello comprise many opposed aspects, of which the main ones are as follows:

3.1. Poverty of stimulus argument:

The basic argument of the nativist theory is based on Chomsky's assumption of the poverty of stimulus (1965).This assumption means that the data provided by the input to which people exposed are not rich enough to account for language acquisition (Patten and Benati:2010). In other words, it means that the language to which children are exposed as their input or the primary linguistic data is solely a set of individual utterances yielding some abstract principles of grammar which seem ambiguous for language acquisition .The best solution he can provide is the universal grammar hypothesis (UG), which means that all humans are born with an innate universal language containing a number of abstract principles which can lead the acquisition process (Tomasello: 2003).

Despite the fame of the poverty of stimulus argument in the language acquisition domain and children's language research, it has certain, if we contrast it with the account provided by Tomasello's usage-based theory. We find that the research into the developmental psychology of language acquisition has provided many arguments which support the richness of stimulus in usage-based theories (e.g Clark2003, Tomasello 2003). In fact, the significance of social pragmatic interaction in language acquisition is evidenced by extensive findings in this domain (Tomasello: 2003). To put it more simple, Tomasello in his theory emphasizes that:

There is no poverty of the stimulus when a structured inventory of construction is the adult endpoint (Tomasello: 2003:7).

He notes that the hypothesis of an innate universal grammar has two major problems, namely, first, 'the linking problem' and 'the problem of continuity'. The first problem is how children can connect their abstract universal grammar with the particular language which they learn. The second problem deals with the developmental changes in children's language, for example, how people can understand children's language during their developmental change if we accept that universal grammar is always the same. It, therefore, seems useful to provide a description or explanation of child language acquisition which ignores any hypothesis of universal grammar which creates these problems (Tomasello: 2003). Accordingly, it is important to note that Chomsky and Tomasello are opposed on the argument of the poverty of stimulus. Tomasello's view, however, seems stronger, because nativists provide no support for their claims. As Pullum and Scholz (2002:47) point out, the poverty of stimulus argument "still awaits even a single good supporting example". Moreover, Akhtar (2004) seems to agree with this criticism, in that she indicates that this argument was the basis for a number of nativist claims, yet indeed lack supporting empirical evidences.

3.2. Language is creative:

Another difference between Chomsky and Tomasello is the former's belief that language is creative. From Chomsky perspective, creativity in language has three- fold support. First, people possess the ability to understand and produce strange sentences which they have never before heard or spoken (Aitchison: 2007). Second, the creative use of language is free from the external and internal affects of the stimulus control (Chomsky: 1968). Third, the way in which people use the language considered to be coherent and appropriate to the situation (Hegde: 1980). By the way of contrast, we can see that Tomasello does not ignore creativity in language, but he has little concern for it. According to him, it results from the attempt of humans to create categories in their own language (Tomasello: 1995).

Chomsky asserts that the creativity in language is something which can not be acquired solely through environmental learning methods (Aitchison: 2007). Tomasello contrastingly asserts that, during a period of time, children obtain the communicative conventions are obtained step by step from the people around them. For example, their social cognitive skills and developing cognition are utilised to internalise these conventions. Children's basic abilities are used to learn their first words. They create concepts so as to understand adult speech and then to produce suitable new words in their communicative contexts (Tomasello: 1995).

It is thought, however, from the contrast between the two views that Chomsky's view about the creativity of language has some limitations. For one thing, nativists assert that every utterance we hear and say is completely novel and accepted. This assertion seems to be wrong. The reason is that to accept it we would need to assume that each word or sentence has a separate existence. Moreover, we have to assume that our past language experience is sufficient to provide a clear understanding of the present utterances. But, if these assumptions are accepted, the result will be that human communicative behaviour has no continuity

(Hegde: 1980).

The second point, on the creativity of language free from the control of stimulus, seems to be weak, because, as discussed above in section (3.1) no evidence has been offered in its support.

Furthermore, with regard to the third point, in Chomsky's view the way that people use language is coherent and appropriate to the situation. It could be argued that this point is somewhat vague, since Chomsky admits that he can give no clear meaning to the terms appropriateness and coherent in this context (ibid). However, he stresses that the creative aspect of language is common. Humans constantly create novel utterances and many who lack this ability might be brain damaged (Aitchison: 2007). This view would be more popular if it took into account the effect of environmental learning methods in producing our utterances, since the one question that needs to be asked here is, how humans can produce them without communication with their input.

3.3. Modularity:

In the areas of linguistics and philosophy of mind, the idea of modularity has raised a great deal of concern (Garfield: 1987). There seems to be another difference between Chomsky and Tomasello, about the modularity of mind in language acquisition. To illustrate, the definition of modularity according to Crystal (1998: 246) is:

A term used in recent discussion of language in two slightly different ways. On the one hand, it is proposed, especially in J. A. Fodor's The Modularity of Mind, that the mind is modular in the sense that it consists of a number of different systems ( modules) each has its own distinctive properties , such as the language system and the vision system. On the other hand, it is suggested, especially in government-binding theory that language system itself is modular in the sense that it consists of a number of different subsystems which interact in specific ways.

The concept of modularity is that the brain is divided into separate parts, an idea to which Chomsky gives much attention (1965).He identifies the language area as a separate faculty of mind, in that language is autonomous in the mind and a separate module in the brain (Aitchison: 2007). Furthermore, he goes on to argue that the human mind is, like other complex biological systems, modular in its internal formation (Chomsky: 1984).

The main idea of modularity, according to him, is that the modularity of syntax means that the structures of syntax are not the same as the structures exist in other cognitive (Chomsky: 1968 cited in Tomasello: 1995). By the way of contrast, we can see that Tomasello does not agree that language is a separated module in the brain, because, by his reasoning, in order to have a perfect grammatical theory the syntactic abilities should be combined into cognition and not like an autonomous sub-system (Parisse: 2005).

To sum up, Chomsky's view is a modular view in which there are different sub-parts in the mind each one possessing special characteristics. Tomasello, however, take the non-modular view that there are general principles employed in all cognitive domains which control the mind (Archibald: 1993).

However, to return to the account of modularity provided by Chomsky, one of the difficulties with this account is the claim that syntactic structures are not like the structures which exist in other cognitive domains. This seems to be wrong, because it gives the idea that the syntax module is innate, yet if we give the example of the game of chess, we find that it possesses a number of unique structures, such as, the images of a knight fork or queen-a side attack- in human cognition. But there is no need to presume that this uniqueness chess- playing form needs an innate mental form (Bates et al. 1991).

Moreover, the structures of cognitive thought which adults utilise in order to play the game of chess come through a process in which people employ general cognitive processes to face their problems in their social interaction which they may have had in learning to play a constructed game (Tomasello:1995). Hence, it is thought that Chomsky's view seems to be weak because it is difficult to specify which part of the brain is responsible for language. As Bates asserts, it still far from knowing perfectly which parts of the brain are responsible for language (Bates in press, cited in, Tomasello 1995).

3.4. Language- specific versus domain- general learning mechanisms:

Another point of difference between Chomsky and Tomasello concerns the way in which children acquire language. is another different point between Chomsky and Tomasello. The difference lies in the contention over whether language should be a specific domain or a domain - general learning mechanism. A specific domain in this context means a domain specific to language, whilst, domain - general refers to learning mechanisms which are not specific to language, yet applied generally.

From Chomsky's perspective, since, human beings are able to learn language and animals are not, this ability is considered genetically inherited (Aitchison: 2007). Nativist theory, in fact, hypothesises that children are born with universal grammar (UG), a set of innate principles and parameters. This possession helps children to learn language without making errors as they learn (Conroy and Thornton: 2005). Therefore, this assumes that children possess a pre- existing domain- specific innate form which specifies the form of their language knowledge. Moreover, in language learning in particular, syntax children obtain ability without exposure to adequate stimulus (Chomsky; 1986, Pinker; 1994).

However, Tomasello believes that it is false to suppose that children have genetically endowed grammar (Tomasello: 2003). To his mind, children in order to learn their language employ item-based learning integrated with some general learning mechanisms that are used in other cognitive domains , such as, analogy (Conroy and Thornton: 2005). Moreover, in Tomasello's view the properties of language structure come from joint attention figures and not from innate language - specific mechanisms (Segalowitz: 2001). As a result, Tomasello significantly did not ignore language universals; however, to him they not universals of form or a special type of syntax or linguistic symbols but are instead, the universals of human communication and cognition. For example, human beings use language in similar social contexts in order to provide solutions in language for communicative tasks, such as, describing specific entities (Tomasello: 2003). Consequently, Chomsky's view that language has a specific-domain is weak , because languages differ in their grammatical relations, of subject and object, for example, Acehnese, an Indonesian language, and Tagalog, a Philippine language, do not possess these grammatical relations ( Tomasello:1995).

4. Some weakness in both theories:

Tomasello, then, introduced a new model of usage-based theories in language acquisition in which he paid attention to a main set of skills, namely, intention reading, joint attention and pattern-finding skills. These skills are general skills utilised also in other types of cognition and not in language alone. Furthermore, although they are innate, they are not like the universal grammar (UG) invented by Chomsky, because they are not specific to language (Tomasello, 2003). But Tomasello's account seems to entail some limitations. It is thought that he does not provide a clear explanation for the fact that these skills are sufficient for language acquisition. As Wilson (2006:138) points out:

Tomasello's central claim is that joint attention and intention reading are foundational and prerequisite for language acquisition. It does seems reasonable to assume that they are necessary for language development, but the big question is, are they sufficient? Can they entirely account for all of the complexities of language ... from parsing speech stream to the emergence of complex grammatical structures?

Hollich et al. (2000), on the other hand, seems to agree with this criticism, because they assert that Tomasello's theory, which is one of the social constructivist theories, does not possess a complete or sufficient explanation for the fact that children can produce increasingly inserted sentences in their utterances. Moreover, the problem with these theories is that they still offer no clarification of children's ability to discover the relationships between language units.

In contrast to this, Chomsky's theory is considered one of the famous theories in the language acquisition domain. It has indeed, affected the entire literature language acquisition, because of the controversy surrounding it. Yet this theory too attracts a number of criticisms.

In this section, we focus on four critical points made against this theory. A major criticism concerns the universal grammar hypothesis (UG) which has been discussed above. Although (UG) aroused widespread interest in language acquisition debates, it is thought, that it is based solely on abstract thinking and lacks empirical support. As Kadarisman (2007a) points out, the concept of universal grammar must be without meaning unless it has empirical evidence. But, without adequate explanations, it seems to be more a slogan than a scientific effort. Moreover, due to its abstraction, (UG) neglects the local importance of language used in the cultural context (Becker: 1995). Second, Chomsky's theory is criticised for relying on logical arguments only. As Palmer (2000) indicates, Chomsky's' nativist claims remain are still the same as they have been fir the past two decades. Because his claims are based on logical arguments instead of, direct evidences or reasonable interpretations, his arguments have no external support. Tomasello seems, agree with Palmer in this criticism because he states that Chomsky in his account relies strongly on logical arguments, not using the scientific study of human behaviour and cognition (Tomasello: 1995).

Third, it is criticised because it can not be tested. This creates some contention around Chomsky's account. The reason is that his theory has no clear cut procedures which could be examined. To put it more simple, Chomsky considered theory-construction in linguistics as similar to theory- construction in the physical sciences, particular, physics. Yet, there is a deference between these two domains, because, the mathematical model in physics depends on physical phenomena and is testable, whereas, Chomsky's model relies on subjective judgments made by individual native speakers who may disagree with each other. Consequently, it can not be tested (Moor and Carling: 1987).

Fourth, Chomsky's theory is criticised in terms of its ideas, if considered as philosophical ideas, for instance the adoption of such innatist ideas as, the universal grammar (UG) hypothesis which is based on the hypothesis of an innate language faculty. Subsequently, many linguists (e.g. Hegde, 1980; Moore and Claring, 1987) have strongly criticised these ideas. For example, Hegde asserts that the concept of a nativist theory is merely part of an ancient philosophical idea. Furthermore, Moore and carling believe that Chomskian linguistics are linked by these ideas to philosophy, in particular, epistemology, the part of philosophy concerned with knowledge theories.

Conclusion:

The domain of language acquisition possesses a varied collection of theories. Their main concern is to discover the way in which people, in particular children, can acquire language. The accounts given by Chomsky and Tomasello can be critically contrasted, as seen above. They obviously stand on two opposite sides. In Chomsky's theory, children are born with an innate ability by which they acquire their language, whereas, in Tomasello's theory, language is acquired through language use and not by biologically innate ability. Furthermore, the innate abilities which children have are not specific to language. However, the main aspects which have been contrasted in this paper comprised: first, the poverty of stimulus argument, in which, according to Chomsky, the input is not sufficient to acquire language, while, from Tomasello's perspective there is no poverty of stimulus; second, Language to Chomsky is creative, because it is free from the control of stimulus while in Tomasello's view language results from the attempt of humans to create categories in language; third, modularity, Chomsky's assertion that the mind is separated into sub-parts, whereas Tomasello believes, that general principles control the mind; and fourth, Language- specific versus domain- general learning mechanisms; either there are universals specific to language, as in (UG) hypothesis of Chomsky or, as Tomasello states universals is not specific to language but apply to all human communication and cognition.

Hence, we can conclude that Chomsky's account strongly relies on the hypothesis of universal grammar (UG) to support his view on the poverty of stimulus argument, creativity of language, modularity and the language- specific domain. It should be noted that the universal grammar hypothesis (UG) brought a great deal of debate among scholars of language acquisition, even though one of its limitations is that it has no empirical evidence to support it. Tomasello's account, conversely, depends on general skills in language acquisition, such as, joint attention, intention reading and pattern finding skills. Yet he did not provide adequate explanation to convince us that these are sufficient for language acquisition.

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How Children Acquire Language At Which Stage English Language Essay

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The question to consider is how children acquire language and at which stage they could improve their speaking and listening skills. In particular, syntax and vocabulary are the main concern of the language acquisition domain. The task of psycholinguistics is to discover the relationship between language and the human mind (Field: 2003).

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Acquisition of Language 2: Transitional probabilities & minima

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Saffran, Statistical Learning in infants

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Saffran, Statistical Learning in infants

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statistical learning in infants? (saffran et al., 1996) - ok science

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Whole object assumption v Mutual exclusivity

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Whole object assumption v Mutual exclusivity

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Whole Object Assumption and Mutual Exclusivity Assumption in 3-4-Year-Old Cebuano Preschoolers: A Qualitative Analysis

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The whole object assumption (WOA) and mutual exclusivity (ME) assumption proposed by Markman (1990) are constraints children use in word learning. This small-scale psycholinguistic study investigates the constraints function in 14 preschoolers at

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Mutual Exclusivity: How Children Learn the Meanings of Words | Protocol

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Source: Laboratories of Nicholaus Noles and Judith Danovitch-University of Louisville Humans are...

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The baby is in the high chair and you cover her snack with a bowl. Does she look under the bowl to find her goldfish crackers? Or maybe she drops her green ball on the floor. Does she look for it? Or does she just cry because her snack or favorite toy has disappeared?

It all depends on whether or not she has developed object permanence. Object permanence typically starts to develop between 4-7 months of age and involves a baby's understanding that when things disappear, they aren't gone forever. Before the baby understands this concept, things that leave his view are gone, completely gone. Developing object permanence is an important milestone. It is a precursor to symbolic understanding (which a baby needs to develop language, pretend play, and exploration) and helps children work through separation anxiety. What can you do to help parents teach their babies object permanence?
Play Peek-a-Boo
The favorite game of many families! Peek-a-book is a natural hit because it allows a baby to tune into his favorite thing to look at - his parent's face. Before he has object permanence, that favorite face disappears and reappears instantly - how fun! Check out this video to see it in action:

You can also play peek-a-boo by hiding behind a small towel. Hold the towel infront of your face and call to the baby. As soon as he touches the towel, drop it and say "you found me!" Or put the towel on your head and let him pull it off. Put it on his head and let him find you by pulling it off of himself. Hours of fun!
Play Hide-and-Seek with Toys
Show the baby his toy and when you are sure you have his attention, slowly hide his toy under a small towel or cloth. To help the baby learn to find his toy, hide it so that part of the toy is peeking out. Here's an example:

You can see (and hear) how the baby in this example got frustrated with trying to remove the blanket. Use a smaller cloth or your hands instead to increase the chances that the baby will be successful. Or, you can use other objects such as books to hide toys behind, like in this video:

Add A Few Layers
You can hide the baby's toy or the parent's face behind a few layers of cloth (or cups, whatever you like) to make the game more challenging. You'll want to hold the bottom layers so that the baby only uncovers one layer at a time.
Talk to the Baby When You Are Out-of-Sight
Encourage the parent to talk to the baby from another room then walk in the baby's view. Babies recognize parents' voices early in development so parents can use their voices to help babies know that they are stil there, even when out of sight.

The challenging part about developing object permanence is that, when a baby realizes that his parent still exists when he can't see her, he can get upset. This is what happens with separation anxiety. Playing these games can help a baby as he moves through this other very natural milestone. Object permanence games help babies understand that even though I can't see my mom, she will come back!

If you'd like some more ideas about helping babies develop object permanence, or how to help babies through separation anxiety, check out these links:

Piaget's Theory of Object Permanence - brief overview of the theory and steps Piaget identified in the development of object permanence

Zero to Three - Thinking Skills - lots of easy-to-use strategies

Separation Anxiety - very informative overview of the relationship between object permanence & separation anxiety

What are your favorite strategies for teaching object permanence? Share your ideas!

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Early Intervention Strategies for Success Blog

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The baby is in the high chair and you cover her snack with a bowl. Does she look under the bowl to find her goldfish crackers? Or maybe she drops her green ball on the floor. Does she look for it? Or does she just cry because her snack or favorite toy has disappeared?

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Children share what they really think of the world, with funny and moving results.

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World economic forum

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Why playtime is key to raising successful children

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For every $1 invested in play-based education, up to 12 times as much is repaid to society in the form of creative and collaborative young people, finds recent research.

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Tech needs MKO interaction for children to develop

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Tech needs MKO interaction for children to develop

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A child's development is largely determined by experiences. These days, those experiences increasingly involve the use of technology. Television, the internet, tablets and smartphones are all familiar to the youngest of eyes.

For instance, in 2011, 10% of children under two had used a smartphone, tablet, or similar device. In 2013, that proportion was 38%. Five years on, the figure is likely to be far far higher. Is this increased use of technology affecting children's development? I suspect that it is.

The human brain is a dynamic system which is constantly adapting to its external environment. When aspects of that environment change, from being shown images on a computer screen for example, the brain changes as well). And it is widely thought that the infant brain is more malleable than the adult one).

But are changes brought about by increased use of technology actually noticeable - and are they persistent? Are they positive or negative? There are also various elements which could have an effect. The type of technology used, for example, the duration or frequency of exposure, and the content.

These are important issues to examine - and similar ones have been looked at by researchers before. For instance, one study famously found that listening to Mozart enhanced a child's performance on some IQ tests, leading to a boom in sales of the great composer's music.

However, subsequent (more detailed) investigations found the effect is not specific to classical music. In fact, it is observed whenever an experience leads to a similar increase in arousal and mood). And, as any music fan knows, the effect of music on arousal and mood can never be permanent.

Despite numerous interesting studies looking at technology use in older children, very few have yielded data on children under the age of two. The largest study to date found that watching TV alone had a negative impact on language comprehension in children aged from eight to 16 months. But watching TV with a parent did not. This suggests that the relationship between TV and language reflects a lack of parent-child interaction rather than television exposure per se.

Screen media has also been associated with poorer sleep quantity and quality, partly because of an association between technology use and later bedtimes - and also because of over-stimulation, hyper-arousal and the suppression of the hormone melatonin.

Some believe that content is key. Julie Aigner-Clark, an American stay-at-home mother, shot a video with "educational" content in 1996, which was so well received that she ended up selling the rights to "Baby Einstein" to Disney for US$25m and was praised by former US president George H.W. Bush, for her "enterprising spirit".

A decade later, Disney apparently admitted that the videos may have no educational value and a study found no evidence that one-year-olds learned anything from watching Baby Einstein. It was even suggested by child psychologist Richard House that providing infants with "virtual, techno-magic worlds" confuses them and is "tantamount to child abuse".

But the usefulness of screen media may actually vary, depending on the content and the child's age. Although there is evidence that 15-month-olds can learn American Sign Language from instructional videos (like patting the head to indicate "hat") there is no evidence that children under two can learn words from them.

Some research suggests that children are more likely to learn and remember words from a live presentation than a video. And two-year-olds are more likely to locate a hidden object when they are given clues from an actor interacting with them through speech and gesture via a live video link than when the same information is provided through a pre-recorded video clip.

Watch with mother (or father or guardian)

So perhaps live interaction stimulates different neural circuits than passive listening. This seems to be the case for songbirds (zebra finches) learning their song from their father and it fits with evidence that the infant brain rapidly tunes to socially relevant information. For example, four-month-olds respond more to a person whose actions match their own as their sense of self develops and they become more aware of the external world.

Active engagement may have other benefits too. Using a touch screen (but not watching a video) has been associated with the ability to stack small blocks - so touchscreen technology may provide benefits a TV cannot. Infants are also drawn to movement, so a well-designed touchscreen app may attract and facilitate infants' selective attention, as well as their hand-eye coordination.

But no matter the benefits of technology use, it is important to remember that language development typically and best occurs within the context of direct human to human social interaction. Parent-child interaction is often reduced when the television is on.

Even if we find that technology engages children under two and facilitates their cognitive and motor development, the emerging picture suggests that technology use should supplement - not replace - parent-child interaction.

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Babies and TV: brain development needs a parent's help - here's why

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A child's development is largely determined by experiences. These days, those experiences increasingly involve the use of technology. Television, the internet, tablets and smartphones are all familiar to the youngest of eyes. For instance, in 2011, 10% of children under two had used a smartphone, tablet, or similar device.

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Current 2018 research into benefit of phonics teaching on vocab

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Current 2018 research into benefit of phonics teaching on vocab

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Book review: Closing the Vocabulary Gap | Tes News

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Wise words that will help you broaden pupils' vocabulary

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A landmark 1995 study found that children from higher-income families hear about 30 million more words during their first three years of life than children from lower-income families. This "30-million-word gap" correlates with significant differences in tests of vocabulary, language development, and reading comprehension.

MIT cognitive scientists have now found that conversation between an adult and a child appears to change the child's brain, and that this back-and-forth conversation is actually more critical to language development than the word gap. In a study of children between the ages of 4 and 6, they found that differences in the number of "conversational turns" accounted for a large portion of the differences in brain physiology and language skills that they found among the children. This finding applied to children regardless of parental income or education.

The findings suggest that parents can have considerable influence over their children's language and brain development by simply engaging them in conversation, the researchers say.

"The important thing is not just to talk to your child, but to talk with your child. It's not just about dumping language into your child's brain, but to actually carry on a conversation with them," says Rachel Romeo, a graduate student at Harvard and MIT and the lead author of the paper, which appears in the Feb. 14 online edition of Psychological Science.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the researchers identified differences in the brain's response to language that correlated with the number of conversational turns. In children who experienced more conversation, Broca's area, a part of the brain involved in speech production and language processing, was much more active while they listened to stories. This brain activation then predicted children's scores on language assessments, fully explaining the income-related differences in children's language skills.

"The really novel thing about our paper is that it provides the first evidence that family conversation at home is associated with brain development in children. It's almost magical how parental conversation appears to influence the biological growth of the brain," says John Gabrieli, the Grover M. Hermann Professor in Health Sciences and Technology, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences, a member of MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and the senior author of the study.
Beyond the word gap
Before this study, little was known about how the "word gap" might translate into differences in the brain. The MIT team set out to find these differences by comparing the brain scans of children from different socioeconomic backgrounds.

As part of the study, the researchers used a system called Language Environment Analysis (LENA) to record every word spoken or heard by each child. Parents who agreed to have their children participate in the study were told to have their children wear the recorder for two days, from the time they woke up until they went to bed.

The recordings were then analyzed by a computer program that yielded three measurements: the number of words spoken by the child, the number of words spoken to the child, and the number of times that the child and an adult took a "conversational turn" - a back-and-forth exchange initiated by either one.

The researchers found that the number of conversational turns correlated strongly with the children's scores on standardized tests of language skill, including vocabulary, grammar, and verbal reasoning. The number of conversational turns also correlated with more activity in Broca's area, when the children listened to stories while inside an fMRI scanner.

These correlations were much stronger than those between the number of words heard and language scores, and between the number of words heard and activity in Broca's area.

This result aligns with other recent findings, Romeo says, "but there's still a popular notion that there's this 30-million-word gap, and we need to dump words into these kids - just talk to them all day long, or maybe sit them in front of a TV that will talk to them. However, the brain data show that it really seems to be this interactive dialogue that is more strongly related to neural processing."

The researchers believe interactive conversation gives children more of an opportunity to practice their communication skills, including the ability to understand what another person is trying to say and to respond in an appropriate way.

While children from higher-income families were exposed to more language on average, children from lower-income families who experienced a high number of conversational turns had language skills and Broca's area brain activity similar to those of children who came from higher-income families.

"In our analysis, the conversational turn-taking seems like the thing that makes a difference, regardless of socioeconomic status. Such turn-taking occurs more often in families from a higher socioeconomic status, but children coming from families with lesser income or parental education showed the same benefits from conversational turn-taking," Gabrieli says.
Taking action
The researchers hope their findings will encourage parents to engage their young children in more conversation. Although this study was done in children age 4 to 6, this type of turn-taking can also be done with much younger children, by making sounds back and forth or making faces, the researchers say.

"One of the things we're excited about is that it feels like a relatively actionable thing because it's specific. That doesn't mean it's easy for less educated families, under greater economic stress, to have more conversation with their child. But at the same time, it's a targeted, specific action, and there may be ways to promote or encourage that," Gabrieli says.

Roberta Golinkoff, a professor of education at the University of Delaware School of Education, says the new study presents an important finding that adds to the evidence that it's not just the number of words children hear that is significant for their language development.

"You can talk to a child until you're blue in the face, but if you're not engaging with the child and having a conversational duet about what the child is interested in, you're not going to give the child the language processing skills that they need," says Golinkoff, who was not involved in the study. "If you can get the child to participate, not just listen, that will allow the child to have a better language outcome."

The MIT researchers now hope to study the effects of possible interventions that incorporate more conversation into young children's lives. These could include technological assistance, such as computer programs that can converse or electronic reminders to parents to engage their children in conversation.

The research was funded by the Walton Family Foundation, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, a Harvard Mind Brain Behavior Grant, and a gift from David Pun Chan.

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Back-and-forth exchanges boost children's brain response to language

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MIT cognitive scientists have found that engaging children in conversation is more critical to their language development than the number of words they hear early in life. In a study of children 4 to 6, they found differences in the number of "conversational turns" accounted for much of the differences in language skills that they found among the children.

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Terminology map! Useful for AO1 revision

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Terminology map! Useful for AO1 revision

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Extract 1: C: who did you go with A: um with Richard and a (.) those (.) and um (.) we have a nice time with Richard and Sa um no Sarah there C: were they A: no Sarah there C: was she A: no v Inter...

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People tend to be misinformed about stammering. Here's why finishing my sentences or telling me to 'slow down' doesn't help

I've heard the misconceptions for most of my life.

"Just slow down," a stranger told me as a child. "You're talking too fast - that's why you stutter!" Later on, as my stutter carried on into adolescence and adulthood, strangers and loved ones alike offered up their own judgments of my speech -usually incorrect. Some have good intentions when it comes to sharing their opinions about my stutter. Others ... not so much. But everyone shares one defining characteristic: they're misinformed.

Stuttering is a communication and disfluency disorder where the flow of speech is interrupted. Though all speakers will experience a small amount of disfluency while speaking, a person who stutters (PWS) experiences disfluency more noticeably, generally stuttering on at least 10% of their words.

There are approximately 70 million people who stutter worldwide, which is about 1% of the population. Stuttering usually begins in childhood between the ages of two and five, with about 5% of all children experiencing a period of stuttering that lasts six months or more. Three-quarters of children who stutter will recover by late childhood, but those who don't may develop a lifelong condition. The male-to-female ratio of people who stutter is four to one, meaning there is a clear gender discrepancy that scientists are still attempting to understand.

The severity of a stutter can vary greatly. The way it manifests can also differ, depending on the individual. Certain sounds and syllables can produce repetitions (re-re-re-repetitions), prolongations (ppppppprolongations), and/or abnormal stoppages (no sound). There may be facial tics and body movements associated with the stutter. Stuttering is situational, and the severity can fluctuate for one individual depending on the circumstance or environment.

In the United States, the condition is known as stuttering; in the United Kingdom, it's called stammering. The terms are considered interchangeable.

Developmental stuttering and persistent stuttering generally define the same form of stuttering, which begins in early childhood. The exact cause of stuttering is unknown, but most researchers now classify it as a neurological condition with genetic probabilities. Approximately 60% of those who stutter have a family member who does also, with biological defects sometimes appearing in our genes. Language acquisition and family dynamics can also play a role in the development of a stutter.

Another form of stuttering, called neurogenic stuttering, can be caused by certain injuries or diseases that impact the central nervous system. Unlike developmental or persistent stuttering, neurogenic stuttering can affect a person at any age.

Though the scientific exploration of stuttering is ongoing, there's one fact researchers agree on: stuttering is not caused by emotional trauma or psychological triggers.

There are no miracle cures for stuttering. Any person, program, or product that claims a foolproof cure is false. There are ways, however, to manage a stutter and take steps toward fluency.

The best hope for prevention is early intervention in children. Some people who stutter have great success with speech therapy conducted by a licensed Speech Language Pathologist, while others report little to no improvement. Others endorse certain drugs or vitamins, self-cure programs, or auditory feedback devices, while some argue that these claims provide false hope. A recent study found that most adults who stutter have an awareness of self-therapy techniques, though the results varied depending on the individual.

Because the scientific understanding of stuttering remains incomplete, and no current treatment can guarantee improvement, embracing self-acceptance has become increasingly popular in the stuttering community. In fact, self-acceptance has been shown in studies to positively impact the life of a PWS. Ultimately, this has divided the stuttering community into two camps: those who pursue clinical treatments for stuttering, and those who favour self-acceptance.

Regardless of which side of the argument one might fall, it's universally agreed that a PWS should be able to make their own decisions regarding their speech.

There are many public stigmas and stereotypes that surround stuttering, all of which have the potential to drastically misrepresent those of us who stutter. Stereotypes include personality, psychological, and mental characteristics such as decreased intelligence or untrustworthiness - misconceptions that are illegitimate and damaging. A recent study found the perceived public opinion of those who stutter remains negative and that it is largely misunderstood.

Most researchers agree that the way to challenge the public stigma of stuttering includes education, activism, and personal contact with people who stutter.

So how should a fluent speaker behave during a conversation with a PWS?

First, be conscious of labels. Since the 1980s, most people who stutter prefer the term "person who stutters" after professionals in the field began advocating for labels stripped of negative connotations, retiring the term "stutterer". A recent study found that the term PWS seems to suggest increased sensitivity and respect for those who stutter.

A PWS may experience social anxiety while interacting with others, especially while engaging with those who have negative reactions to stuttering. There are approaches, however, which can help those of us who stutter feel at ease. In conversation, don't interrupt or finish our sentences, give uninvited advice about our speech or offer up potential "solutions". Likewise, stuttering is not caused by the speed or pace of a person's speech; therefore, it's impractical to advise a PWS to "slow down" or "relax."

Instead, wait patiently, maintain natural eye contact, and speak in an unhurried way. If you feel confused by what's being said, wait for us to finish speaking and then ask for clarification rather than pretending to understand. Let a PWS know you value their contributions to the conversation.

Wait patiently and listen. Our thoughts are worth waiting for.
Further reading
Benson Bobrick, Knotted Tongues,Simon & Schuster, 1995.

Barry Guitar, Stuttering: An Integrated Approach to its Nature and Treatment,LWW, 2013.

Wendell Johnson, The Onset of Stuttering, University of Minnesota Press, 1959.

Yairi, H. Ehud, Seery, H. Carol, Stuttering: Foundations and Clinical Applications, Pearson, 2014.
Topics

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Girl, interrupted: the science behind my stutter - and what not to say to me

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People tend to be misinformed about stammering. Here's why finishing my sentences or telling me to 'slow down' doesn't help I've heard the misconceptions for most of my life. "Just slow down," a stranger told me as a child. "You're talking too fast - that's why you stutter!"

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At the dawn of the modern linguistic era, Noam Chomsky stated that the central problem for linguistic theory "is essentially the problem of constructing a theory of language acquisition" (1965, 27). Today, we know more than ever about how children acquire different languages. Two-year-old children acquiring the Mayan language K'iche' produce transitive and intransitive inflections on verbs (Pye, 1983); two-year-old children acquiring Spanish produce verb suffixes for person and tense (Gathercole, Sebastián, and Soto, 1999); two-year-old children acquiring the Bantu language Sesotho produce passive verbs (Demuth, 1990); and two-year-old children acquiring the Inuit language Inuktitut produce polysynthetic verb complexes (Allen, 2017).

Altogether, this would appear to be a golden age of language-acquisition research, and yet we lack a framework for assembling this rich dataset into a comprehensive picture of how children acquire language. For the most part, we publish the results of language-acquisition research on one language at a time. We train our students to investigate how children acquire a single language. Our analytic techniques work best when we can isolate one or two factors such as vocabulary size or sentence length in a single language.

Comparing the course of language development in different languages forces investigators to ignore most of the differences that distinguish the languages. While English contrasts the /p/ in pit and the /b/ in bit, the Mayan language K'iche' contrasts the /p/ in pa 'on' and the voiced, implosive sound /ɓ/ in ɓ a 'gopher'. (Implosive sounds are produced by breathing in air rather than by breathing out.) The differences between English and K'iche' involve not just sounds but every aspect of the grammar, up to and including when to say "I'm sorry." English has a double object construction ("give me the box") that K'iche' lacks. K'iche' has two "antipassive" constructions that English lacks. Subjects and direct objects are obligatory in English and optional in K'iche'. A single verb complex in K'iche', e.g., Katenwila', requires a whole sentence for its translation in English: "I'm going to see you."

Comparing language acquisition in different languages brings us face to face with the problem of defining a unit of comparison that is not influenced by the differences between all of the other linguistic features in languages. Languages have different numbers and types of consonants, pronouns, verb inflections, passive voices, and locative expressions. We cannot compare how children acquire pronouns in different languages if the pronouns have different sounds, mark different semantic contrasts, and have different grammatical restrictions.

In my book, The Comparative Method of Language Acquisition Research (University of Chicago Press, 2017), I make the case for borrowing the comparative method from historical linguistics. Historical linguists have been refining the comparative method for over a century and a half to understand how entire families of languages change over time (Rankin, 2003). Historical linguistic research has produced a comprehensive analysis of the world's languages that is unequaled in other branches of linguistics. This empirical base provides the foundation for the success of the comparative method.

While the comparative method is best known for its use in reconstructing linguistic features for prehistoric stages in families of languages, key aspects of the comparative method can help researchers compare language acquisition in languages belonging to the same family. A central element of the comparative method is its restriction to languages that share a common historical ancestor. This restriction means that it is best to compare the acquisition of English with the acquisition of other Germanic languages and to compare the acquisition of K'iche' with the acquisition of other Mayan languages. This restriction may be viewed as a major limitation of the comparative method, but it has profound implications. One implication is that comparing acquisition results for English and K'iche' produces spurious conclusions with no empirical basis. Another way to state this implication is that theories that account for the acquisition of English do not predict the acquisition of K'iche'.

The obverse side to the common ancestor restriction of the comparative method is that it compels investigators to initiate comprehensive acquisition studies for all of the languages within a language family. This requirement leads to the idea of comparing how children acquire every aspect of English with the way that children acquire similar features in the other Germanic languages, such as Dutch, Frisian, German, and Swedish. Despite decades of acquisition research on the individual Germanic languages, we do not have detailed studies that compare acquisition across the Germanic languages.

The comparative method begins by looking for corresponding linguistic features in related languages. Languages with a common ancestor retain many traits that betray their ancestry, such as similar sounds, words, and phrases. The fundamental advantage of analyzing corresponding linguistic features is that they have corresponding contexts of use. The focus on contexts of use gives the comparative method its ability to control for a variety of extraneous factors that obscure the study of particular linguistic features. For example, we do not understand whether the sounds that children can produce limit their production of pronouns.

The acquisition of negation illustrates how the comparative method controls extraneous factors in language-acquisition research. English has two forms of syntactic negation. The form not is used in contexts of predicate negation, e.g., "It cannot wait." The form no is used in discourse contexts as a response to questions and commands, e.g., Adult: "Do you want to go out?" Child: "No." No is also used for term negation to negate noun phrases, e.g., "We have no bananas today."

Children acquiring English have to learn the proper contexts for using these different forms of negation. Amazingly, children often produce no in contexts of predicate negation, e.g., Kathryn's "no zip" (Bloom, 1970, 150). This overextension is so widespread in the acquisition of English that we might be tempted to predict that all children will extend forms for discourse negation to contexts of predicate negation. There are sporadic examples of this overextension in German, but not in Danish and Swedish (Plunkett and Strömqvist, 1992). The difference in the development of negation between Swedish and English suggests that the link between predicate negation and auxiliary verbs in English accounts for the difference between negative acquisition in English and other Germanic languages.

We cannot extend this account of Germanic negation to the acquisition of negation in Mayan languages because the contexts of use in Germanic languages do not correspond to the negation contexts in Mayan languages. English does not have a word that expresses existence that is analogous to the existential predicates in Mayan languages. The English verb to be is marked for tense, unlike the existential predicates in Mayan languages. The Mayan language Mam uses the form miti' to express the negation of nonhuman entities in existential contexts, e.g., Miti' jal, "There isn't one." Mam extends miti' to mark the negation of predicates in the present tense but not to predicates in the future tense or to discourse contexts, which use the form mii'n (England, 1983). Children acquiring Mam occasionally substitute the existential form miti' for mii'n in discourse contexts.

Negation illustrates the way in which contexts of use provide the key to comparing the acquisition of related languages. The forms and uses of negation in English resemble the forms and uses of negation in other Germanic languages due to their shared history, just as the forms and uses of negation in Mam resemble the forms and uses of negation in other Mayan languages (Pye, 2016). Comparing how children acquire negation in genetically related languages avoids a fruitless search for a universal developmental path for negation.

Research on the acquisition of English has become the standard for all language-acquisition research and creates a lens that distorts research on other languages. The comparative method encourages the investigation of children learning other languages by rejecting the need to tie their results to English. The accelerating loss of endangered languages requires the use of a research framework like the comparative method that promotes the investigation of under-studied languages.

The act of documenting how children acquire an endangered language can lead parents to reassess the value of their cultural heritage and form the basis for language-revitalization efforts. Documenting the acquisition of under-studied languages is the only way to meet Chomsky's goal of constructing a theory of language acquisition.
References
Allen, S. E. M. "Polysynthesis in the Acquisition of Inuit Languages." In M. Fortescue, M. Mithun, and N. Evans (eds.), Handbook of Polysynthesis, 449-472. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Bloom, L. Language Development: Form and Function in Emerging Grammars. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1970.

Chomsky, N. Aspects of a Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965.

Demuth, K. "Subject, Topic and Sesotho Passive." Journal of Child Language 17 (1990): 67-84.

Gathercole, V. C. M., E. Sebastián, and P. Soto. "The Early Acquisition of Spanish Verbal Morphology: Across-the-Board or Piecemeal Knowledge?" International Journal of Bilingualism 2 and 3 (1999): 133-182.

Plunkett, K., and S. Strömqvist. "The Acquisition of Scandinavian Languages." In D. I. Slobin (ed.), The Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquisition, vol. 3, 457-56. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1992.

Pye, C. "Mayan Telegraphese: Intonational Determinants of Inflectional Development in Quiché Mayan." Language 59 (1983): 583-604.

-. "Mayan Negation Cycles." In E. van Gelderen (ed.), Cyclical Change Continued, 219-47. John Benjamins: Amsterdam. 2016.

-. The Comparative Method of Language Acquisition Research. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2017.

Rankin, R. L. "The Comparative Method." In B. D. Joseph and R. D. Janda (eds.), The Handbook of Historical Linguistics, 183-212. Oxford: Blackwell (2003).

Clifton Pye is an associate professor of linguistics at the University of Kansas who specializes in documenting the acquisition of indigenous languages of the Americas, with a primary focus on the acquisition of the

Mayan languages spoken in Mexico and Guatemala. His book, The Comparative Method of Language Acquisition Research (University of Chicago Press, 2017), is available now.

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Comparing Child Languages - Language Magazine

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Clifton Pye suggests a comprehensive approach to crosslinguistic research At the dawn of the modern linguistic era, Noam Chomsky stated that the central problem for linguistic theory "is essentially the problem of constructing a theory of language acquisition" (1965, 27). Today, we know more than ever about how children acquire different languages.

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Complex language is often considered a feature that distinguishes us from the rest of the animal world. Some theories claim that the language center of the brain evolved specifically to help us with this particularly complex task, but according to new research, this is not the case.

Looking at how both adults and children learn languages, researchers were able to show that the brain system used to learn a language has more than just this function. The area is employed in various learning activities and didn't just evolve ad hoc in our species. The findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Our conclusion that language is learned in such ancient general-purpose systems contrasts with the long-standing theory that language depends on innately-specified language modules found only in humans," the study's senior investigator Professor Michael T. Ullman, from Georgetown University School of Medicine, said in a statement.
READ THIS NEXT: THE WORLD'S MOST SPOKEN LANGUAGES AND WHERE THEY ARE SPOKEN
The researchers used results from multiple studies that involved a total of 665 participants comprising either children learning their native language or adults learning a foreign language. Language learning in children was strongly correlated with the areas of the brain linked to procedural memory, responsible for things like learning how to drive or riding a bike. In adults, language was first correlated with declarative memory, which helps us memorize things like shopping lists or what we ate last night, and only subsequently shifted to procedural memory.

The correlations were described as large and were found to be consistent across tasks (like speaking, reading, and listening) and languages (English, French, Finnish, and Japanese). This strongly indicates that our language-learning abilities depend on the two brain systems.

"These brain systems are also found in animals - for example, rats use them when they learn to navigate a maze," explained co-author Phillip Hamrick of Kent State University. "Whatever changes these systems might have undergone to support language, the fact that they play an important role in this critical human ability is quite remarkable."
READ THIS NEXT: HOW THE LANGUAGE YOU SPEAK CHANGES YOUR VIEW OF THE WORLD
The findings could have important implications in helping people learn. As well as aiding people learning a second language, they may also be useful for people suffering from autism, dyslexia, and the many others conditions that lead to difficulties communicating.

"Researchers still know very little about the genetic and biological bases of language learning, and the new findings may lead to advances in these areas," added Ullman. "We know much more about the genetics and biology of the brain systems than about these same aspects of language learning. Since our results suggest that language learning depends on the brain systems, the genetics, biology, and learning mechanisms of these systems may very well also hold for language."
POPULAR ON IFLSCIENCE RIGHT NOW:

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Language Learning Uses Brain Circuits That Are Older Than We Are

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Complex language is often considered a feature that distinguishes us from the rest of the animal world. Some theories claim that the language center of the brain evolved specifically to help us with this particularly complex task, but according to new research, this is not the case.

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These notes were made during a revision lesson - hope they help! Declarative sentences - state a fact or assert an opinion. Eric's hair i...

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Steven Pinker - useful for nativism

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Steven Pinker on How Children Learn Language

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Extract 1: C: who did you go with A: um with Richard and a (.) those (.) and um (.) we have a nice time with Richard and Sa um no Sarah there C: were they A: no Sarah there C: was she A: no v Inter...

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I really want to head this post 'on multilingual libraries', plural, but I don't know of any others apart from the one I visited last Thursday in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. There ought to be one in every city where there are multilingual communities - which means all of them. (So if you know of another, do say.)

I was there because I'd agreed to become patron of the library, which was set up by the Kittiwake Trust and which opened last August. I gave a short talk about the need for libraries in general and for multilingual libraries in particular. I paste it below. It includes some of the points I made in an earlier post (January 2011) about the need to save libraries, and adds a summary of the research into the benefits of bilingualism. (For those especially interested in bilingual myths and realities, there's no better place than François Grosjean's blog, 'Life as a bilingual' .)

I paste below a couple of pictures Hilary took while we were there, which I hope hint at the scale of the project and the diversity it contains. They have books in over 60 languages so far, aimed at all ages. Many can be loaned out. Membership is a fiver a year - and for those who would find even that cost too much, they operate the beautiful 'pay it forward' system, where those who can afford it pay in advance for those who can't, such as people belonging to local refugee support groups. Parents with children are welcome to drop in, and there's plenty of space to sit, read, and play, That was one of the most noticeable things about the library: its welcoming, colourful, playful atmosphere. There's more than just books here. Artefacts from other cultures are sprinkled about, and I imagine these will grow as the project develops.

A particular delight was to see that the library doesn't restrict itself to language diversity but to dialect diversity as well. The Newcastle project has books on Tyneside dialects and other varieties of English, as well as local history - an important piece of PR, as many people unfortunately still can't see the point of bilingualism, but they begin to get an inkling when they realise that their own local dialect raises precisely the same issues of identity, pride, and cultural history.

The library is on the upper floor of the Eldon Garden shopping centre, in the centre of Newcastle. If you travel by car, the entrance is on the seventh floor. That sounds like a long way up, but from the inside it's just an escalator ride up, round the corner from John Lewis. Its phone number is 07776 684940. Its website is here , and it's on Facebook. So, if you're in or around Newcastle, my recommendation is to call in and become a member or a volunteer. And if you have any spare books in other languages taking up space at home, a donation is very welcome.

Why multilingual libraries matter

I spy, with my little eye, two words beginning with ... L.
It's a languages library.

L proves to be an interesting letter in English, because it introduces so many words strongly associated with the venture you have launched here: Literature. Languages. Living. Loving. Lending. Learning. Leisure. Legacy ...

How best to capture the spirit, the ethos, the value of libraries? Over the centuries, people have marvelled at them. They have been called a temple, a refuge, a second home, a leisure centre, a discovery channel, an advice bureau. It is a place where you can sit and draw the shelves around you like a warm cloak. When we gain a library we gain a source of wellbeing. The inscription over the door of the library at the ancient city of Thebes read (in classical Greek): 'The medicine chest of the soul'.

The lauding of libraries crosses centuries and cultures. First and foremost they are seen as repositories of knowledge, windows into history. 'A great library', said Canadian scientist George Mercer Dawson (1849-1901), 'contains the diary of the human race.' And especially when it is multilingual.

The metaphor of a library as a treasure trove is a recurrent figure. Let's bring together some famous personalities, and see what they have to say. Here is British poet and journalist John Alfred Langford (1823-1903): 'The only true equalisers in the world are books; the only treasure-house open to all comers is a library.' And Malcolm Forbes (1919-90), the publisher of Forbes magazine, is in no doubt about the appropriateness of the wealth metaphor: 'The richest person in the world - in fact all the riches in the world - couldn't provide you with anything like the endless, incredible loot available at your local library.' And this is writer Germaine Greer (1939- ): 'libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace and wit, reminders of order, calm and continuity, lakes of mental energy'. For Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) it transcends life itself: 'I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library'.

I like the reservoir metaphor - a library as a source of knowledge, waiting for us to simply turn on a tap. Like water, libraries are essential to our wellbeing, whatever our language background. As the American social reformer Henry Ward Beecher (1813-87) said, 'A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life.' It is a means of self-improvement, of advancement. Or, as poet and humorist Richard Armour (1906-89) put it in 1954:

Here is where people,
One frequently finds,
Lower their voice
And raise their minds.

And it brings together people from all walks of life.

Listen to the claim made by American cardinal Terence Cooke (1921-83): 'America's greatness is not only recorded in books, but it is also dependent upon each and every citizen being able to utilize public libraries.' Listen to American astronomer Carl Sagan:

'The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species. I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.'

Listen to science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov (1920-92):

'I received the fundamentals of my education in school, but that was not enough. My real education, the superstructure, the details, the true architecture, I got out of the public library. For an impoverished child whose family could not afford to buy books, the library was the open door to wonder and achievement, and I can never be sufficiently grateful that I had the wit to charge through that door and make the most of it.'

Have you noticed? I've just quoted from a Roman Catholic cardinal, a scientist, and a science fiction novelist. All sending out the same message. There can be few subjects like libraries to unite such disparate and distinguished minds.

As the British politician Augustine Birrell (1850-1933) once said: 'Libraries are not made; they grow.' That takes time. Behind each library, no matter how small, is a history of growth, watered by the professionalism of the library's caretakers and the enthusiasm of its readers. It is not an enterprise that can be measured by numbers. It is quality that counts, not quantity. No political body should fall into the trap of judging the success of a library solely in terms of the number of its visitors. That lone reader in the corner: who knows what personal potential will be realized in the future because of today's library experience? As American poet Archibald MacLeish (1892-1982) said: 'What is more important in a library than anything else - than everything else - is the fact that it exists.' If it exists, it will be used. And French writer Victor Hugo (1802-85) sums it up: 'A library implies an act of faith'.

And a multilingual library most of all, because of all the benefits that knowing more than one language can bring.

Bilingual benefits

It's normal to be bilingual. When we look around the globe, we find that three-quarters of the world's population use at least two languages in their everyday lives, and half use at least three. Only a few nations - chiefly those who once had powerful colonies - have stayed monolingual. To be bilingual is the usual human condition.

You will still meet people who hold old-fashioned beliefs about bilingualism. You might hear somebody say that trying to speak more than one language will make your brain tired. Or that the two languages will get mixed up. Or that knowing two languages will slow you down when you're doing your schoolwork.

None of these beliefs are true. The brain has over 100 billion connections (called neurons) that it uses to receive, store, and send information. A language doesn't take up much of that brain space. People who speak languages like English and Spanish use only a few dozen sounds, a few thousand ways of making sentences, and a vocabulary of a few tens of thousand words. That might seem like a lot, but the brain handles it all easily. The evidence lies in the millions of people around the world who speak three, four, or five languages in their everyday lives without any trouble at all. And then there are the super-language-learners, who can handle twenty or thirty languages without their brain exploding. And anyone can be a super-language-learner. You just need a really good reason for learning each new language.

Many research studies have shown that learning more than one language is good for you - and learning lots of languages is especially good for you. Seven big pluses.

Being bilingual helps you to think more powerfully
Languages make people think in different ways. When you're speaking Spanish you think in one way; when you're speaking English you think in a different way. The mental exercise of moving from one language to the other makes your brain more active. It makes you more creative. It helps you solve problems more easily. And researchers have found out that being bilingual helps your brain to stay healthier when you grow old.

Being bilingual helps you to understand the world better
Language exists so that we can talk about the world to each other, and talk about ourselves and our feelings. Each language does this in its own way. The way Spanish talks about the world is different from the way English does. Every language, no matter how few speakers it has, tells us something unique about the way the world works. So, the more languages you know, the more you will come to understand what it is to be a human being on this planet.

Being bilingual helps you to feel proud of yourself
If you find yourself in a country where you don't speak the language, you're like a baby who can't talk. Learning another language, even to a limited level, removes the frustration of being unable to communicate when you find yourself in a place where it is spoken. You also feel you've really achieved something. You're right to feel proud of yourself, when you've learned another language.

Being bilingual helps you build friendships
We live in a world where a war can start because people have misunderstood each other. Learning each other's language can be an important step towards achieving cooperation among countries. Interpreters and translators are essential, but they can't replace the sense of mutual respect which comes from personal linguistic ability. Being able to speak someone else's language is the first step towards making them a friend.

Being bilingual stops you being scared of languages
The more languages you know, the more you come to understand how language works. You stop being frightened of languages and you find new languages easier to learn. You also become more aware of the characteristic features of your mother-tongue. English-speaking people often say they learned a lot about English grammar by seeing how it differs from other languages.

Being bilingual improves your social skills
Learning another language is to learn another culture and another way of behaving. As a result, bilingual people develop a broader range of social skills, and become more outward-looking. They are also likely to have a greater respect for the differences among cultures, and that can only be a good thing in a world where there is so much conflict.

Being bilingual can get you a better job
For most people, this is the best benefit of all. These days, many companies are international, and are looking out for people who can speak more than one language - and, even more important, who aren't frightened of learning new languages. These companies know they'll be more successful selling goods if they can do this in the language of the customer.

So, a multilingual library has a lot to celebrate. And perhaps at no better time than on the two big days of the year: Mother-tongue Day on 21 February and the European Day of Languages on 26 September. But the rest of the year too.

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I really want to head this post 'on multilingual libraries', plural, but I don't know of any others apart from the one I visited last Thursday in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. There ought to be one in every city where there are multilingual communities - which means all of them.

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CLA through reading

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Australian Council for Educational Research - ACER

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A large-scale study tracking the progress of more than 270 000 students has concluded that teaching reading through a synthetic phonics programme has long-term benefits for children from poorer backgrounds and those who do not speak English as a first language.

The analysis, from the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) at the London School of Economics, also found the teaching method has large, initial benefits for all students at age five and age seven.

The phonics programme - rolled out in primary schools across England between 2005 and 2010 following positive results from a small-scale study in Scotland and an independent review into the teaching of reading (Rose, 2006) - is typically completed at age seven.

The CEP study differs from previous research as it also assesses the impact four years down the track. It found no measurable benefits for the average child at age 11. Study authors Professor Stephen Machin, Professor Sandra McNally and Associate Professor Martina Viarengo say this is probably because most children learn to read eventually, regardless of the teaching method.

At age seven, those taught to read using other methods were behind those using synthetic phonics, but they caught up later. However, the academics note: 'Most interestingly, there are long-term effects at age 11 for those with a high probability of starting their school education as struggling readers. The results for our study suggest that there is a persistent effect for those classified as non-native English speakers and economically disadvantaged (as measured by free school meal status).'

The results of the study have been published in a CEP discussion paper 'Teaching to Teach' Literacy. It also explores different strategies advocated for the teaching of reading.

'How reading should be taught in schools has been, and remains, hotly debated amongst educationalists,' the academics say. 'The historic division has been between proponents of "whole language" versus "phonics" approaches.'

The 'whole language' method, it explains, involves being introduced to language through context, such as through stories and picture books, and the 'phonics' method teaches spelling patterns that correspond to sounds.

'Synthetic phonics ... involves learning to pronounce the sounds (phenomes) associated with letters "in isolation". These individual sounds, once learnt, are then blended together (synthesised) to form words. By contrast, [in] analytic phonics ... children are taught to recognise the beginning and ending sounds of words, without breaking these down into the smallest constituent sounds. It is generally taught in parallel with, or sometime after, graded reading books, which are introduced using a "look and say" approach.'

The paper notes that 'systematic' phonics instruction was advocated in the US in 2000 and in Australia in 2005. Until 2006, England's National Literacy Strategy recommended the use of analytic phonics as one of four methods, alongside knowledge of context, grammatical knowledge and word recognition and graphic knowledge. Following the 2006 Rose Report, primary schools were required to use synthetic phonics as 'the first and main strategy' for teaching students how to read.

The staggered implementation of the programme in different schools allowed the CEP study authors to analyse its effects using census information from the National Pupil Database.

Ultimately, the study concludes the programme's implementation has been money well spent - the costs involved employing a literacy consultant to work with a school for a year offering intensive training support to teachers. 'The effect sizes for the most disadvantaged group seem high enough to justify the costs of the policy.

'This study therefore shows that good teaching can indeed be taught and this is an example of a "technology" which is helpful in closing the gap between students who start out with disadvantages (whether economically or in terms of language proficiency) compared to others.'
References
Machin, S., McNally, S., & Viarengo, M. (2016). CEP Discussion Paper No 1425: 'Teaching to Teach' Literacy. Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics and Political Science. Retrieved from http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1425.pdf (852 KB)
Related reading
National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy (Australia) (2005-12). Teaching reading: report and recommendations. Department of Education, Science and Training.

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, NIH, DHHS. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read: Reports of the Subgroups (00-4754). Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Rose, J. (2006). Independent Review of the Teaching of Early Reading. Department of Education and Skills.

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A large-scale study tracking the progress of more than 270 000 students has concluded that teaching reading through a synthetic phonics programme has long-term benefits for children from poorer backgrounds and those who do not speak English as a first language.

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 Related to Heath's language socialization (reading to inform writing development)

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 Related to Heath's language socialization (reading to inform writing development)

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February 2017 - current research. Children's grammar development

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February 2017 - current research. Children's grammar development

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Children's ability to understand basic grammar early in language development has long puzzled scientists, creating a debate over whether that skill is innate or learned with time and practice.

A new Stanford study, recently published in Psychological Science, helps build evidence for the latter. Analyzing toddlers' early language with a novel statistical approach, associate professor of psychology Michael Frank found that rule-based grammatical knowledge emerges gradually with a significant increase around the age of 24 months.

The new study, titled "The Emergence of an Abstract Grammatical Category in Children's Early Speech," also points out the need to gather more data that track children's speech over time, which would help make future research more precise.

"The ability of humans to acquire and use language is a big difference between us and other species, and it's also one of the biggest scientific puzzles out there," said Frank, who co-authored the study. "Studying language acquisition in children is one way for us to try to find out what makes us human."

Imitating or understanding?

Previous research has shown that children use articles, such as "a" and "the," early and in an overwhelmingly correct way. But, Frank said, it is difficult to sort out whether children are just imitating adults or if they actually understand that articles should be used before nouns like "dog" or "ball" - and can use them appropriately with new nouns that are unknown to them.

To address that difficulty, the team created a new statistical model to measure changes in a child's grammar over time. The model relies on Bayesian inference, a method that helps estimate the level of certainty in results. In addition, it takes into account the relationship between what the child says and what the child has heard from adults, separating imitation from generalization.

Researchers applied this model on data sets available for 27 toddlers and found that rule-based grammatical knowledge in their speech wasn't constant and was more present in older children.

Frank said the statistical model they used allowed them to not only analyze children's language but also stay away from overly confident interpretations when there was too little data for a particular child.

Big data on babies

The study underscored the fact that data on language development in children under 2 years old is lacking. To characterize children's initial level of grammar use, Frank said, it's critical for scientists to have a sophisticated analytical model as well as consistent recordings that start from the time children begin talking.

According to Frank, the current lack of data and the analytical challenges it presents have led to researchers on opposite sides of the grammar debate to draw contradictory conclusions. For instance, two studies published in peer-reviewed journals in 2013 used similar data sets, but one inferred that grammatical knowledge is innate while the other concluded that grammar is a learned skill.

"People have very strong feelings about the question of innateness versus learning," Frank said. "We really didn't know what to expect because there were these conflicting reports out there."

The team hopes that its statistical model, together with new data sets, will help move the debate forward.

To help increase the pool of data, Frank and his colleagues are building an online database called Wordbank. The site aims to spur the gathering of data on children's vocabulary and early language development and encourages researchers to share their data with different institutions and universities. Frank is also collaborating on a smartphone app for collecting early vocabulary data from parents.

"It's going to take a tremendous amount of data to study this problem and build enough evidence for how children learn language," Frank said. "We're hoping that once we have those data, we can get a clearer picture of children's early learning."
Additional authors on this study were This work was supported by the National Science Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Stephan Meylan (lead author), a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley; Brandon Roy, a former postdoctoral researcher at Stanford and the MIT Media Lab; and Roger Levy, an associate professor at MIT.

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New research: Toddlers' grammar skills are learned, not innate | Stanford News

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Children's ability to understand basic grammar early in language development has long puzzled scientists, creating a debate over whether that skill is innate or learned with time and practice. A new Stanford study, recently published in Psychological Science , helps build evidence for the latter.

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Superb analysis of influences on CLA (focus on nativism)

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Languag Socialisation (cites Shirley Brice Heath)

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Watch Channel 4's series on 'The Secret Life Of...' - 4 yr olds. 

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Watch Channel 4's series on 'The Secret Life Of...' - 4 yr olds. 

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Consider what influences a child's language development - boys and girls

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The Secret Life of 4 and 5 Year Olds: The Secret Life of 4 and 5 Year Olds

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The award-winning series that lifts the lid on the drama of life in the playground

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Gentry's research and stages of spelling development

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Gentry's research and stages of spelling development

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Task: Read, highlight and annotate ideas useful to talk about children's spelling

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Facts about Vygotsky and Piaget

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CLA THEORIES: Nature v Nurture

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Steven Pinker: Human nature and the blank slate

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Steven Pinker's book The Blank Slate argues that all humans are born with some innate traits. Here, Pinker talks about his thesis, and why some people found it incredibly upsetting.

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Task (1.11.16) - what do you find most interesting here?

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Theorists

Cognitive - Jean Piaget - can only understand language when you understand concept (e.g. can talk in past tense when you know about time)

Behaviourist - Skinner learn through imitation - doesn't explain where new sentences come from

Nativist - Chomsky - Language Acquisition Device (LAD) - works out what is/isn't acceptable lang use using innate programmed patterns (which are general). exact rules learnt through trial and error. His theory supports the fact that children around the world seem to develop at a similar pace, irrespective of race/culture/mother tongue. (This also 'defies' Skinner's model) Also, the fact that there is a universal grammar amongst all languages of the world. & the fact that children consistently create new forms of language that they would not have heard before.

Conversely, John Macnamara - said that rather than having an in-built language device, children have an innate capacity to read meaning into social situations. It is this capacity that makes them capable of understanding and learning language, not the LAD.

Interactive - caretaker, motherese etc - slower pace than adult convo, simplified, repetition, short sentences, often caretaker asking 'where is___?', 'that's a___', tag questions to involve child ('isn't it?')

Example for importance of social interaction: Bard and Sachs. Studied a boy called 'Jim', who was son of two deaf parents. Although he was exposed to TV and radio, his speech development was severely retarded until he attended sessions with a speech therapist --> hence implying that human interaction is necessary, as Jim was obviously ready to talk, but without the social interaction with his therapist, he was unable to do so.

Katherine Nelson - found that 60% of children's early word phrases contained nouns, then verbs, pre-mods and phatic and she also said that the nouns were more commonly things that surrounded the children i.e ball, mum, cat. Nelson also said that in Re-casts (e.g. Ben - "me ball" mum - "pass me the ball") children whose sentences were re-cast performed better at imitating sentences

Halliday is just the functions of child language, I remember them like RRIIIPH, like rest in peace:

Representational - "I've got something to show you" - language showing how they feel, declarative

Regulatory - "Do as I tell you" - requesting/asking for things

Instrumental - "I want"- expressing needs/wants

Interactional - "Me and you" - speaking to other, establishing personal contact

Imaginative - "Let's pretend" - imaginative language, used with play, to create imaginary world. Crystal talks of 'phonological' function as playing with sound.

Personal - "Here I come"- child expresses their feelings/expressing personal preferences

Heuristic - "Tell me why"- uses language to explore environment/ seeking information

Most commonly used in children's language is instrumental and regulatory, which are learnt, along with interactional and personal, at a young age. Representational is used by 6-8+ year olds.

Possible way to get the theorists in

If you do get a transcript of child speech, you could easily talk about caretaker speech (often referred to as Motherese or CDS - Child Directed Speech). As for cognitive approach, you could talk about if a child is discussing abstract ideas (emotions and ideas that aren't physical), because they'd only understand them if they understood the concept (comprehension before application). To apply a behaviourist approach; if a child was imitating in the conversation, or saying something unusual that they've copied off someone. If a child is overextending the inflection -s to make feets - they've not finished learning through trial and error yet, so you could talk about nativists. Another way you could discuss a nativist approach is if the child adds an "ed" onto a verb which does not make sense - a brief demonstration - "I drawed" instead of "I drew" this cannot be taught to the child, the child has used past information and applied it to recent information without prompt, showing it is innate. You can get marks if you discuss things that contradict a theory, if the child shows none of the theories you could point out how it DOESN'T support theorists.

Features of child lang acq

Holophrases - one word (12-18mths), then two-word stage (after 18mths), then telegraphic speech (after 2yrs) - sometimes grammatically correct but omit determiners like 'a' and 'the'

Underextension - 'car' only for family car, but not other cars

Overextension - 'car' for tractor, van, etc

Fis phenomenon - Berko and Brown - child pronounces fish as fis but when a parent asks if it is a fis, the child says no - when asked if it's a fish, child says yes. can understand a word without being able to pronounce it - comprehension before speech

Simplification - deletion, substitution

Intonation - Cruttenden - found children find it harder to recognise intonation

Questions - inflection often used at first to show it's a question, then question words learnt during 2nd yr, firstly what and where, then why, how and who. results in 'where daddy gone?' as they've not learnt auxiliary verb, 'has'. auxiliary verbs learnt 3rd yr, and how to form qus is learnt too (reverse subject and verb order). 'joe is here' --> 'is joe here?' but wh- words not always inverted correctly - 'why joe isn't here?' (hehe plagiarised my revision book for the examples, sorry!)

Critical period for learning - Cases about twins who were kept locked up by their family, but they were rescued young so developed normally. Feral children like Genie, who was forced not to talk, and hence only made limited lang progress as she is thought to have missed the critical period for learning lang. Two girls were found wolves in a wolves' den and had trouble learning to speak etc [1] "After three years, Kamala had mastered a small vocabulary of about a dozen words. After several more years, her vocabulary had increased to about 40.To compare, a normal two-year-old child, at the peak of its language learning, would find it easy to pick up 40 new words in a single week. Also, Kamala's words were only partly-formed and her grammar stilted"

Stages of negatives:

Aged 0-15months - Gestures are used to indicate a negative

15-18months - single words "no" "not" are used

2-2 1/2 yrs - "no" and "not" are used either at the beginning or end of a sentence e.g. "no eat" "going not"

3yrs - negatives are used with the correct syntax i.e. intergrated into the sentence

4/5/6yrs - more subtle negatives i.e hardly, are used, more "n't"'s as well, "can't" "won't" etc. Implied negatives are understood, i.e. "we'll go later"

Look at how much is said by each person, who controls what is being said, who takes the lead, pragmatics, social context, as well as the actual things that are being said

Check this website for developmental milestones in child lang: [2]

Written Child Language

Need fine motor skills in order to hold the pen and write evenly

Knowledge of letter shapes/patterns

Rules: top-bottom/left-right/'finger space'

Capitalisation and punctuation

Format of specific genres eg. for a letter there should be an address, date etc

Tense

Phonic spelling/look and say method

Stages in actually writing:

Palmer grip - used to make marks on the page (just like up and down lines)
which leads to more conventional grip, where you can make more circular lines

Motor control - more circular again, leave gaps as though imitation text

Proto-letter formation - Begin to write name and letters, but the letter might be too big, or back-to-front

BM Kroll - He suggested that there are a number of stages that children go through:

Stage 1- Preparatory Stage - Up to the age of 6
Child masters physical skills needed to write. Learns basic principles of spelling system.

Stage 2 - Consolidation - Ages 6-8
Child writes like they speak. Short, declarative sentences common. Grammatically incomplete sentences. Long strings of sentences joined with simple conjunctions.

Stage 3 - Differentiation Stage (8 - mid teens)
Child becomes more aware of differences between writing and speech. Increasing confidence. More complicated sentences and constructions.

Reading and Child Lang Acq

Children's books also relate to prominent aspects of a child's life, eg. school, family etc.

The higher up the reading scheme, the fewer pictures there are to aid pragmatics.

Reading schemes like 'Roger Red Hat'

The teaching of reading in schools

Phonics (analytic and synthetic)

Synthetic - break the sounds into syllables - there is a representation/action for each sound, too. For eg, S = weave hand in an s shape, like a snake, and say ssssss

Analytic - used in conjunction with other strategies, was the original method and doesn't break down words into such small units like synthetic.

Try thinking about how you learnt to read, perhaps you read 'Roger Red Hat' too!

Jeanne Chall's Stages of Reading: 1. Pre-Reading and Pseudo-Reading (Up to age 6), 2. Initial Reading and Decoding (6-7), 3. Confirmation and Fluency (7-8), 4. Reading for Learning (9-14)

What you look at in Lang Acquisition

This area of study is designed to teach candidates about the nature and functions of language in the individual and social development of humans. It will focus on some of the distinctive features of speech

and literacy development in children from 0 to 11 years who are native users of English.

These include:

The primacy of speech and the learning of the sound system

The links between the child's desire to communicate needs and the acquisition of phonology, lexis and grammar in order to achieve purposes (pragmatics)

The significance of social interaction in language acquisition and the development of innate structures to achieve, continue and extend interpersonal communication (turn-taking, politeness rules, implied meanings, specific contexts, social awareness and other discourse patterns)

The connections between developments in children's language and their general conceptual development

The beginnings of reading and writing.

LANGUAGE CHANGE

Tips for answering Language Change Questions

Get as much context as you can in - eg look at the date and try to think what would have been happening at the time.

A key period is following the introduction of the printing press (1476) and the introduction of the first dictionary (1755 - Samuel Johnson). Also remember the grammar books that appeared at the time - the writers that tried to "fix" the language (Robert Lowth's Short Introduction to English Grammar was written 1762). All these had an influence on the language, and helped it to become standardised (slowly - remember it didn't all happen at once).

Important point: the dictionary (Samuel Johnson 1755) was prescriptivist! It taught people how words should be defined and spoken, Mr Johnson also excluded words he found unfashionable from the dictionary. To end on, the finished version was very expensive and could only be afforded by the wealthy. However, Samuel Johnson himself was resigned to the fact the language was inherently changeable, so don't quote him as a prescriptivist!

Where some English words have come from

English is a Germanic language

Some words can be Latinate - tend to be the more fancy, scientific words, or ones to do with legal stuff...introduced mainly during the Renaissance to make the words sound more impressive

Norse words - tend to be things like "window" and "sky" - everyday outdoor objects

Saxon/Celtic words - words to do with family relationships?

French influence - along with Latinate, return to "correct" spelling which led to the "b" in "subtle" and "debt" as a reminder of the latin origin (debt comes from debitum which has a "b"). Also, some words have entered English twice. "Chief" and "Chef" both have the same french root, which is thought in turn to come from the latin for "head".

Samuel Johnson's dictionary (1755) wasn't the very first, but was the first substantial one that people refer to

Contemporary lang change- estuary English, slang etc

Terms - like amelioration (meaning of word becomes better),perjoration (meaning of word becoming worse), broadening (word means more than one thing), narrowing (word means fewer things now), coinings/neologisms (new words, like 'kodak'), loan words (words from other langs etc) etc. These are all examples of semantic change.

Reasons for language change

Blurring of the class structure - fewer extremes

Proliferation of TV and film

Education - compulsory education etc

New technology

Rise of youth culture

Media & public broadcasting

Impact of foreign invasion (Norse, Norman French)

Printing press - introduced by William Caxton in 1476 - used East Midlands dialect - dialect of education (Oxbridge) etc, became Standard Eng. Printing press worked by ordering letter blocks, so the actual font needed to be standardised. As well as that, spelling and language was standardised to a certain extent as well. Perhaps most importantly is that it was the portal into the world of written texts, which allowed them to be passed around and transported all across the country, which may have contributed to standardising language.

Rise of merchant classes

Scientific development/technology

King James Bible

Also remember, language is still changing. Through media, travel, politics, etc.

English has become a significant global language due to expansion of the British Empire, and, more recently, the significance that the USA have across the world.

English exists as many different varieties due to the influence of the native languages of the countries which adapt English into their culture.

It is possible that all these varieties of language could lead to language decay, whereby no-one would be able to understand the other varieties of English

English could become more 'standardised' among nations due to the increase in communications (internet, tv, film, media in general) that a shared culture is created --> A shared culture means a shared language is required.

Some still think language is decaying... but we can't really say that - we're descriptivists, remember! But their views are expressed in:

Crumbling castle view - language is a beautiful building which must be preserved as is. But how would we coin new words? (This is the problem in France - the Académie française/French Academy which doesn't allow for English loanwords to prevent the anglicisation of the French language - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_academy)

Damp spoon theory - language changes because people are lazy - 'I must own to a queasy distaste for the vulgarity of "between you and I", "these sort", "the media is" ... precisely the kind of distaste I feel at seeing a damp spoon dipped in the sugar bowl or butter spread with the breadknife' (Guardian 9-9-1968)

See http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/~maynell/Apr.02.03.pdf for more info.

These are quite prescriptivist attitudes, of course!

Prescriptivists include: Defoe, Swift and Johnson, who all attempted to regulate the language.

They also talked of setting up an academy (as in France) to resurrect/regulate/preserve language?

Theorists

Suzanne Romaine '98

Internal: formation of new words and the influence of dictionaries etc. Looks at what happens inside the language

External: the changing social contexts, language as an ongoing process

Donald Mackinnon '96 - categorises the attitudes people have to language use:

incorrect or correct

pleasant or ugly

socially acceptable or socially unacceptable

morally acceptable or morally unacceptable (political correctness: conscious process, never clear cut and very context dependant, normally a negative thing)

appropriate in context or inappropriate

useful or useless

Labov - 'Martha's Vineyard Research': we subconsciously change our language to identify ourselves with one group rather than another [3]

Quotes to do with Lang Change

Rod Steiger - "communication without purpose is artistic masturbation"

What you look at in Lang Change

This area of study is designed to engage candidates in explorations of historical and contemporary changes in the English language together with consideration of explanations of their causes and effects.

Candidates will need to draw on their knowledge of systematic frameworks, so that they can see how change affects semantics as well as grammar, lexis and phonology. This module will focus on the following areas for study

Change as an inherent feature of living language

A brief overview of the historical development of English to identify different ways in which language changes over time and continues to change in contemporary experience

The ways in which style has changed in spoken and written English

The socio-cultural causes and consequences of language change in English over time

The relationship between dialectical variation and temporal change.

Stronger answers

addressed the question relevantly;

engaged with the data in detail and with attention to its context;

identified patterns and examples across the data set;

expressed ideas clearly and accurately with appropriate terminology;

identified language features accurately including grammatical and pragmatic aspects;

showed informed insight into the data set whilst being cautious of its limitations;

reflected an open-minded and tentative approach to the issues raised;

showed assured conceptualised knowledge of language theories and studies;

demonstrated strengths in quality of explanation and accuracy of expression.

Weaker answers

People who just go through and analyse from start to finish, one after another get less marks than those who catagorise via importance and relevance;

gave little or narrow relevant coverage of the question or the data;

engaged with the data descriptively or by content summary;

used language imprecisely with limited terminology;

asserted ideas with underdeveloped explanations;

showed limited knowledge and understanding of the issues;

made no references to research ideas or few and simplistic references;

treated the dataset as uncomplicatedly representative of the given situation;

listed examples without observing underlying patterns;

made sweeping statements on the basis of limited evidence;

gave narrow or partial coverage of the issues.

Remember: the examiner is more interested in your observations of the data than chunks of generic essay about theorists, etc. Also as a final tip; do not talk about information that is irrelevant for example: "The mother is being quite moody with her child, as observed here (insert line)" this will cost you marks and time! Focus, concentrate, catagorise and kick some analytical ass.

Comments

These notes are aimed at A Level English students at A2 level.

Originally written by violetviolin on TSR Forums.

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TheoristsCognitive - Jean Piaget - can only understand language when you understand concept (e.g. can talk in past tense when you know about time)Behaviourist - Skinner learn through imitation - doesn't explain where new sentences come fromNativist - Chomsky - Language Acquisition Device (LAD) - works out what is/isn't acceptable lang use using innate programmed patterns (which are general).

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Task (1.11.16) - read and come with 1 question for the class

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Language and communication skills are critical to a child's development. Good communication makes them better able to engage in socialization and to learn from their environment and from formal classroom instruction. When we talk about communication we are talking about both speech which is the verbal means of communication and language which is using shared rules to put words together to express thoughts and feelings as well has to understand the meaning of language through both spoken and written communication. Since parents are a child's first teacher, knowledge of language development in children improves their ability to interact with their child to stimulate and guide them in their ability to understand and communicate with their environment.

There are four main components of language:

Phonology involves the rules about the structure and sequence of speech sounds.

Semantics consists of vocabulary and how concepts are expressed through words.

Grammar involves two parts. The first, syntax, is the rules in which words are arranged into sentences. The second, morphology, is the use of grammatical markers (indicating tense, active or passive voice etc.).

Pragmatics involves the rules for appropriate and effective communication. Pragmatics involves three skills:

using language for greeting, demanding etc.

changing language for talking differently depending on who it is you are talking to

following rules such as turn taking, staying on topic

From birth on, children are programmed to develop speech and language. The first five years are most critical but language development continues throughout early childhood and on into adolescence. During the first five years stimulation of language development is important as the brain is both developing new nerve cells as well as multiple connections between nerve cells to serve the function of language both expressive and receptive. Lack of stimulation during this time could result in a child making slower progress or end up with poor communication skills. Later, we provide some tips for parents on how to help with language development but the basic suggestions are to spend lots of time talking, singing and reading to your child.

In the early stages of language development, the brain is programmed to attend to speech sounds and begin to mimic them. Early on babies like to make sounds up on their own. Later they attempt to repeat sounds/words that they are exposed to from their environment.

Children usually say their first words between nine and 18 months old. The most common first words are either "mama" or "dada'. What's kind of interesting is no matter what language children are raised in, the first words usually reference either mother or father. By the age of 18 months a child usually has a vocabulary of 50 to 150 words.

By two they can probably use over 300 words and understand about 1,000 words. By about 18 months children begin to put a couple of words together to form a sentence sometimes referred to as "telegraphic speech" such as "Mommy ball" or "Mommy throw ball".

Around 3 years of age, children begin to use language for all kinds of things. They are not only trying to get things by asking they are talking about past experiences and even beginning to use it to pretend. By preschool (4 ½) they are beginning to understand and use the rules of language to express possession of something, connect thoughts and quantify. There language is becoming more like that of adults.

In elementary school children continue to expand their use of oral language but are also learning to read a write. As children progress through middle school and high school they continue to expand their vocabulary and refining their grammatical skills and write in more complexities as well as continue to develop reading comprehension skills.

The tables below describe specific skill development for each stage of development through age 8. Below the developmental time line you will find information on how you can stimulate and encourage language development as well as information on how to recognize lagging development and what to do about it.

Recommended Books for Parents

Videos on Language Development

Language Development Time Lines:

Birth to 6 Months
Six to 12 Months

12 to 18 Months

18 To 24 Months

Two to Three Years

Three to Four Years

Four to Five Years

Five to Six Years

Six to Seven Years

Seven to Eight Years

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Look Who's Talking! All About Child Language Development

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Language and communication skills are critical to a child's development. Good communication makes them better able to engage in socialization and to learn from their environment and from formal classroom instruction.