Behaviourism : It was proposed by Skinner., Language is seen as a learnt behaviour., Skinner’s premise: the verbal community propels language acquisition through the repeated mechanism of stimulus-response-reinforcement., Children learn a language because they are positively and negatively reinforced., This theory fails because the acquisition process would take a long period of time, sentences would have a direct relation to input data, it will be piecemeal or item by item, not all children will acquire the language in the same way and follow the same path, children would make random errors and they would be corrected if there is reinforcement.  , Social Interactionism: It was proposed by Bruner., Children’s language learning and development takes place during social interaction especially during play., The repeated interaction with the environment provides material for the child’s construction of increasingly detailed scripts. Children memorize those sentences and phrases embedded in formats and routines. Then they relate the stored sentences and the linguistic form., Motivation: to fulfill various social roles and functions., Children: little LINGUISTIC KNOWLEDGE. They need to interpret social situations., Focus: input/experience and the child., If language were learnt because the adult scaffolded language for the child, the acquisition process would take a long period of time and the particular kinds of interactions experienced will detrmine: the function and content of the language to be acquired, which segments will be acquired first and how these will become together or broken to form new units, sentences that have a direct relationship to input data, different children would receive different type of interactions that would facilitate and refine early productions, not all children will acquire language in the same way and follow the same paths, etc.  , Constructivism: It was proposed by PIAGET., What is INNATE is the general ability to SYNTHESIZE the successive levels reached by the increasing complex COGNITIVE ORGANIZATION., LEARNERS construct their OWN REPRESENTATION OF REALITY., LEARNERS must INDIVIDUALLY discover and transform complex information. This involves change, self-generation and construction., There are two basic COGNITIVE PROCESSES: 1. ASSIMILATION: interirorization or internalization of an object or an event, 2. ACCOMODATION: allows the subject to modify his schemes or cognitive structures to incorporate new objects. The system changes qualitatively in this way. , COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT: PROGRESSIVE REORGANIZATION of the resulting mental processes that arise from the combination of: BIOLOGICAL MADURATION AND EXPERIENCE., There are 4 COGNITIVE STAGES which go FROM BIRTH TO 15 YEARS OLD and they involve PHYSICAL AND COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT: 1. sensomotor stage, 2. pre-operational stage, 3. concrete operational thinking, 4. formal operational thinking, 5. learners synthesize info and then pass to the next stage. Each new stage is a further elaboration of reality. , DRAWBACKS: 1. The LAP will take a long period of time, 2. Not possible to account for understanding of certain structures early on, 3. sentence comprehension and production will be gradual in terms of srtucture acquired, 4. expected errors: the mouse was chased by the cat, 5. Not all acquire language in the same way and follow the same paths. ,

7. First Language Acquisition Theories

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