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Theories of Language Acquisition By: Isata Jalloh - Coggle Diagram
Theories of Language Acquisition
By: Isata Jalloh
Behaviourism
B. F. Skinner
His perspective is that learning should not be conceived as growth or development, but rather acquiring behaviors as a result of certain environment contingencies.
He speculated that children are conditioned by their environment to respond to certain stimuli with language.
Reading subskills
Visual discrimination of shapes and letters
Auditory discrimination of the sounds of the alphabet
Left to right progression
Vocabulary or word knowledge
Comprehension or meaning making
Nativist
Noam Chomsky
Says that children at birth are given a Language Acquisition Device, which allows them to unconsciously recognize which language he/she is dealing with. This basically enables the child to acquire and produce language
proposed that the brain of human being have in it an innate mental grammar which helps in acquiring grammar. Hence, children within the same speech community learn the same grammar.
Suggested that language is an innate faculty meaning that the language contains various linguistic rules, constraints, and principles.
Evidence to support Chomsky theories
His evidence shows that children will make up words during the learning stage when they are learning to speak which shows that learning is not done passively.
In process of learning, children would always get their nouns, verbs and subject correct.
His evidence proves that in fact the child notices when an adult is speaking and made a mistake during his/her speech.
Evidence against his theory
His theories do not prove that children can easily catch on to any language learning
Social interactionism
Lev Vygotsky
They placed heavy emphasis that caretakers and culture are responsible for higher-order function development.
A child imitates an adult in what he/she does and gradually develops the ability to do things without help.
Language plays a central role in mental development
His theory suggests that social interactions lead to steps by steps changes in children's thought and behavior
A child accomplishing tasks that he/she cannot do with the help of a more skilled person creates a learning process for that child and lead to his/her development.
Jerome Bruner
His theory is based on that learning is an active engagement and learners construct new ideas based their own previous experience
He believes that intuitive and analytical thinking should both be encouraged and rewarded
Three modes of representation - these are ways in which information are stored
Enactive representation
Iconic representation
Symbolic representation
He believes that what determines the level of intellectual development is the extent to which the child has been given instruction plus practice