How children acquire and learn language

Children are excluded from the social world due to the lack of knowledge of the English language because of such a young age and they haven’t been exposed to the language yet to be able to learn it. Pointing as a paralinguistic feature will only get children so far in terms of communication. Words and language is one of the most important things a child can learn, as the whole world is built upon language.

A 15 month year old infant, who is situated in the one word stage – called Zac, uses a completely different part of the brain than adults when trying to acquire language. In infants this age their larynx is positioned high up, an advantage of this is so they don’t choke, however a disadvantage of this is that they are not able to say as much speech as they would like due to the larynx being so high up. They are unable to perform a major function in life – speech; the larynx needs to drop 3cm in order to talk, after this takes place air passes along vocal cords which produce speech. To only say one word, we use 30 muscles in order to produce it.

A child of two and a half years old will learn roughly 10 new words a day, they will be able to describe in detail and be able to react with words and think about the future. Vygotsky’s theory of social interaction is applicable here as these toddlers are like sponges soaking up new words all the time, also able to structure sentences and apply the correct syntax. They will create occasional virtuous errors because of plurals, an example of a virtuous error would be – they would say mouses instead of mice, as they have applied the logical rule for plurals however they would need to be taught the exception.

Also as a toddler they will not recognise themselves in a mirror as they lack self-awareness, once they reach the age of 18 months they will be able to realise that it is in fact themselves in the mirror.

 As they start to grow older this means they develop self-awareness of needs, therefore pragmatically they have a lack of politeness. They cause a tantrum in order to get their own way, they have realised this as they have got older. Plus,  2 year olds are able to use pronouns which links to self-awareness, therefore they use the language needed as well as tantrums in order to gain what they desire.