Psychology of language learning Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Psychology of language learning - Assignment Example Language Acquisition A great deal of a child’s acquisition of linguistic structure occurs during the first five years of life. This is the period when he is most active in discerning a set of underlying organizational principles of language from the expression that surrounds him. It is amazing how at a very young age, he is capable of abstracting meaning from direct experience with other language users depending on his own context. Beaty (2009) explains that even at an infant stage, the baby’s early nonverbal communication helps in preparing her for the spoken and written language to follow and at 6 months, she has become a language specialist, based on the sounds she hears most frequently. At 20 months, she may possess a sizable vocabulary if she hears adults around her talk to one another and to her all the time. Of course good hearing and sensitive listening are paramount to language development. According to Lightbrown & Spada (1999), like the first language,  "learner’s age is one of the characteristics which determine the way in which an individual approaches second language learning† (p. 68). Lindfors (1987) notes that the child’s language environment includes a set of specific sentences, however, it is not this set of sentences that he acquires, but deduces from these an underlying set of organizational principles and sound-meaning relationships. To illustrate, children as young as two do not talk by simply using the specific sentences they hear, but rather, they construct sentences according to their own early version of organized principles underlying the specific sentences they have heard. Perhaps due also to limited language and motor skills, the child’s early linguistic system is different from the adult’s and results in telegraphic and grammatically erratic sentences like â€Å"He no want to sit me.†, â€Å"I not like it†, and â€Å"He gived it to me.† Over time, his langu age system will be revised in many different situations, and his sentences will become more adult-like. For his own purpose, he builds his own rule-governed constructions as he has deduced from his environment and from interactions with others (Lindfors, 1987). Language has four elements, and these elements have related skills necessary to develop a proficiency in language. According to Larsen-Freeman (1986), the natural order that children follow when learning their native language in terms of skill acquisition is: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Crucial to the development of teaching approaches is an understanding of such processes involved in language use. Socio-cultural Theory of Language Learning According to Lev Vygotsky (1962), social interaction stimulated by speech is essential for language development. He also mentions that a supportive interactive environment can help the child to reach a higher level of knowledge and performance compared to what might be reache d through his or her ability to improve independently (Lightbown and Spada, 2006). To this socio-cultural perspective, Lightbrown & Spada (2006) contend that people obtain control and reorganize