LANGUAGE-LEARNING AND TEACHING PROCESSES AND YOUNG CHILDREN

(Chapter 6)

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CHILDREN LEARNING STRATEGIES

Although there are many variation in the way

children learn the language, there are

underlying strategies that are used by most

of the children. Those strategies differ with

the langue level of a child.

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TODDLER LANGUAGE-LEARNING STRATEGIES

Receptive Strategies: When is a word a

word??

Before children can recognize words, they

must gain a sense of how sounds go together to

form syllables of the native language.

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Infants may use lexical, syntactic, phonological

and stress-pattern cues in combination to break

the speech down and aid interpretation.

(e.g. Clusters n English and Korean)

As a result, children will be able to locate word

boundaries and hence speech can be recognized

as a series of distinct units, but still meaningless

words. ( around 11 months old)

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IT IS NOT ENOUGH!! HOW CHILDREN LEARN WORDS ????

Linguistics do not really know but they tried

to infer from the language behaviors of

toddlers that certain lexical principles or

assumptions are being used.

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Three fundamental assumptions for toddlers:

1) People use words to refer to entities. (i.e.

Reference Principle)

- People refer to entities. Words do not just “go

with” but “stand for” entities to which they refer.

- As a result, a toddler must be able to

determine the speaker’s intention to refer, the

linguistic patterns used, and the entities.

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a subprinciple is the mutual exclusivity

assumption.

It guides initial word learning by

presupposing that each referent has a unique

symbol.

For example, a reference can not be both a

“cup” and a “spoon”

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2) Words are extendable. (i.e. Extendability Principle)

toddlers assumes that there is some

similarity, such as shared perceptual

attributes that enable use of one symbol for

more than one referent.

For example,

A “cup” will refer to the child’s cup and those

other cups for other children.

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3) A given word refers to the whole entity, not its parts. ( i.e. Whole-object Principle)

A word refer to a whole entity rather than to a

part or attribute. In fact parts are rare in toddler

lexicon.

For example,

“doggie” refer to the dog not his fur, leg or color.

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Three additional assumption may be needed for

the toddler to form hypothetical definitions

quickly and to use syntactic information.

4) Categorical Assumption.

(18 months old) infants extend a word to related

entities.

They classify those entities based on the perceptual

attributes, function, and communication

characteristics such as shortness and length.

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Unlike the Extendibility Principle, the

Categorical Assumption goes beyond the

basic-level referents of the same kind to

categories of entities.

For example, a “cup” might be extended to all

the objects that hold liquid.

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5) Novel Name-nameless Assumption.

Infants will link a symbol and referent after

only a few exposures.

In other words, a child assumes tat a novel

(new) word is linked to a previously unnamed

referent.

Patents aid this by pointing to, holding, etc.

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The Conventionality Assumption.

Infants expect meanings to be expressed by

others in consistent conventional forms.

in other words, adults do not change the

symbol with each use. As a result, a ‘car’ will

be called car all the time.

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EXPRESSIVE STRATEGIES

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Evocative utterance

It is a toddler learning strategy in which the

child name entities.

After the child did that, the adult should either

confirm or negate the child’s selection of words.

As a result, the child either maintain or modify

her speech.

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Hypothesis-testing

It is a toddler language learning strategy in

which a child seeks confirmation of the name

of the entity by naming it with raising

intonation, then posing a yes/no question.

A responding adult may confirm or deny the

hypothesis.

For example,

“Doggie “

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Interrogative testing

It is a toddler learning strategy in which a child

attempts to learn the name of an entity by

asking “What? That? Wassat?”

Those requests for confirmation are often

found in the pointing and vocalizing

behavior of infants prior to first words.

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Selective Imitation

Why selective??Because children do not imitate

indiscriminately.

For example;

Adult: Daddy home.Child: Daddy home.===Adult: The doggie is sick.Child: Doggie sick

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Role of the selective imitation

It is a toddler learning strategy in which a child

repeat part or a whole utterance of another

speaker.

Imitation is used to acquire morphemes, words,

syntactic-semantic structures.

Usually, imitation is more mature than production

capacities of children and this why it is used as a

learning strategy.

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The role of imitation as an aid in acquisition

of language is very complex.

Why?

Imitation of other is important for vocabulary

growth.

Self-imitation is important for the transition

from single-word utterance to multiple-word

language production.

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After age 2, the amount of imitation

decreases.

At the single-word level, selective imitation is

important for vocabulary growth.

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Imitation may also serve as a conversational

role, enabling the child to relate his/her

utterance to those of more mature language

users.

For example;

Adult: See Johnny ride his bike?

Child: Ride bike. Bike fall.

Adult: No. He won’t fall.

Child: No Fall. No go boom.

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The child uses two strategies of revision:

focus operation and substitution operation.

Focus Operation: When a child focuses on

one or more words and repeat them

- requires minimal linguistics skills.

- predominate till age 3

Substitution Operation: when the child

repeats only a portion of the utterance and

replaces words.

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Formulas: memorized verbal routine or

unanalyzed chunk of language often used in

everyday conversation.

For example;

When the child ends all his conversation

in :See yea, bye!”

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Both selective imitation and formulas provide

“scaffolding” for a child and reduce the

langue process load because they aid

linguistic analysis.

Evocative, interrogative hypothesis testing

enable the child to further participate in

conversation and to explore and test new

words and utterances.

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