Factors Affecting Language Development Encyclopedia of Early Childhood Development (2023)

introduction

Learning to speak is one of the most visible and important achievements of early childhood. In a matter of months, and without explicit guidance, young children go from hesitant words to fluent sentences, and from a small vocabulary to a vocabulary that is growing by six new words a day. New language tools mean new opportunities for social understanding, learning about the world, and sharing experiences, joys, and needs.

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The nature of language knowledge.

Language development is even more impressive when we consider the nature of what is learned. It may seem that children simply need to remember what they hear and repeat it at a later time. But like Chomsky¹As he pointed out years ago, we wouldn't be good communicators if that was the essence of language learning. Verbal communication requires productivity, i. H. the ability to generate a variety of expressions that we have never heard before. This endless novelty requires that some aspects of language knowledge be abstract. Finally, the "rules" for combining words cannot be rules about specific words, they must be rules aboutThe lessonof words such as nouns, verbs or prepositions. Once these abstract blueprints are available, the speaker can fill in the "blanks" in a sentence with words that best convey the message of the moment. Chomsky's key point was that since abstractions can never be experienced directly, they must arise from the child's own mental activity in hearing language.

issues and context

o Debatte

The type of mental activity underlying language learning is a subject of much debate among children's language professionals. A group of theorists argue that language input merely activates grammatical knowledge that is already genetically available.²The opposition argues that grammatical knowledge results from the way the human mind analyzes and organizes information, not innate.³This debate reflects fundamentally different beliefs about human development and is unlikely to be resolved. However, there are at least two areas where there is a substantial consensus that can guide educators and policymakers: (a) the predictability of the language learning course; and (b) its multideterminate character.

research results

predictable language strings

By and large, the observable "facts" of language development are not up for debate. Most children start speaking by age two, and by age two they probably know at least 50 words and are combining them into short sentences.⁴Once the vocabulary reaches around 200 words, the rate of word learning increases dramatically and grammatical function words like articles and prepositions begin to appear with some consistency.⁵During the preschool years, sentence patterns become more complex and vocabulary diversifies to include relational terms expressing notions of size, place, quantity, and time.⁶By the age of four to six, most children have acquired basic sentence grammar.⁷From there, children learn to use language more efficiently and effectively. You will also learn to create and maintain larger language units such as conversation or narrative.⁸Although there are individual differences in the rate of development, the order in which the different forms appear is highly predictable, both within and between stages.⁹

Determining Factors

There is also broad agreement that the course of language development reflects the interplay of factors in at least five domains: social, perceptual, cognitive processing, conceptual, and linguistic. Theorists vary in the emphasis and degree of determination posited for a particular area, but most agree that each is relevant. There is a wealth of research supporting the view that language learning is influenced by many aspects of human experience and ability. I will mention two findings in each area that reflect the flavor of the available evidence.

social

1. Young children infer a speaker's communicative intentand use this information to guide your language learning. For example, as early as 24 months, they can infer from an adult's excited tone and physical environment alone that a new word must refer to an object that was placed on the table during the adult's absence.¹⁰
2. The language environment influences language learning.. Between the ages of one and three, children from verbal “professional” families heard almost three times as many words per week as children from verbal “wellness” families. Longitudinal data show aspects of this beginningparentalSpeech to predict speech outcomes at age nine.¹¹

perception

1. The perception of the child sets the framework. Auditory perception skills at 6 or 12 months can predict vocabulary size and syntactic complexity at 23 months.¹²
2. perception matters. In English, the forms that are challenging for students with disabilities are forms with reduced perceptual emphasis, e.g. B. those that have no accent or are joined together in a consonant cluster.¹³

cognitive processes

1. Frequency affects learning speed. Children who hear an unusually high proportion of examples of a form of speech learn that form faster than children who are given ordinary information.¹⁴
2. “Offsets” between different language domainsIt can happen that the entire specific sentence requires more mental resources than the child has available. For example, children make more mistakes with small grammatical forms such as verb endings and prepositions in complex syntax sentences than in simple syntax sentences.^fifteen

conceptual

1. Relationship concepts are associated with mental age.Words that express ideas of time, causality, location, size, and order correlate much more strongly with mental age than words that simply refer to objects and events.^sixteenIn addition, children learning different languages ​​learn to talk about spatial locations, such asnoÖNextin practically the same order, regardless of the grammatical features of your specific language.¹⁷
2. Language skills are influenced by knowledge of the world.. Children who have trouble remembering a word also know less about the objects to which the word refers.¹⁸

Linguistically

1. Verb endings are clues to the meaning of verbs. When a verb ends in -ing, three-year-olds decide it refers to aExercise,such asNadar, instead of onefull state change,such asTo press.¹⁹
2. Current vocabulary influences new learning. Young children often decide that a new word refers to an object they don't already have a name for.⁶

Conclusions

nature and education

These are just some of the insights that, taken together, speak convincingly for the iterative nature of the development. Children accomplish the task of learning languages ​​with perceptual mechanisms that work in specific ways and with finite capacities for attention and memory. At the very least, these cognitive systems will affect what is perceived during language input and may be critical to the learning process. Likewise, the children's previous experiences with the material and social world provide the first basis for the interpretation of the language heard. Later they will also use sign language. However, language acquisition does not occur exclusively from within. The structure of the language to be learned and the frequency with which the different forms are heard also have an effect. Despite theoretical debates, it seems clear that language proficiency reflects knowledge and skills in virtually all domains and should not be viewed in isolation.

Pedagogical and political implications

Educators and policymakers often ignore preschoolers whose language seems to lag behind in other areas, arguing that these children are "a little behind" in language. Rather, research suggests that language acquisition should be viewed as an important barometer of success in complex integrative tasks. As we have just seen, when language “fails” other domains are also involved, either as a cause or as a result. In fact, leading epidemiological studies have shown that children diagnosed at age four with certain language disorders (i.e. delays in language acquisition)sinsensorimotor, mood disorder, or delay) are at high risk for academic failure and mental health problems in adulthood.^20,21Fortunately, research also shows that language learning can be accelerated.²²Although the child should create the abstract patterns from the language data, we can facilitate this learning by (a) presenting language examples that match the child's perceptual, social, and cognitive resources; and (b) choose learning objectives that are consistent with the common developmental trajectory.

references

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8. Owens R.Language development: an introduction. 5^aBoston Edition, Messe: Allyn and Bacon; 2001.
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17. KK McGregor, RM Friedman, RM Reilly, RM Newman. Semantic representation and naming in young children.Journal of Speech-Language-Hearing Research2002;45(2):332-346.
18. Carr L, Johnston J. Morphological Notes on Verb Meaning.Applied Psycholinguistics2001;22(4):601-618.
19. Fazio BB, Johnston JR, Brandl L. Relationship between mental age and vocabulary development in children with mild intellectual disabilities.American Journal of the Intellectual Disability1993;97(5):541-546.
20. Beichman JH, Wilson B, Johnson CJ, Atkinson L, Young A, Adlaf E, Escobar M, Douglas L. Fourteen-year follow-up of children with language/language problems and management: psychiatric outcome.Zeitschrift der American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry2001;40(1):75-82.
21. Young AR, Beichman JH, Johnson C, Douglas L, Atkinson L, Escobar M, Wilson B. Academic outcomes of young adults in a longitudinal control sample and children with early identified language problems.Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Related Disciplines2002;43(5):635-645.
22. Nye C, Foster SH, Seaman D. Effectiveness of language intervention in people with language/learning disabilities.Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders1987;52(4):348-357.

To cite this article:

Johnston J. Factors influencing language development. In: Tremblay RE, Boivin M, Peters RDeV, eds. Rvachew S, Subject eds.Encyclopedia of early childhood development[in line].https://www.child-encyclopedia.com/language-development-and-literacy/according-experts/factors-influence-language-development. Updated January 2010. Accessed December 28, 2022.

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