Different theorists studied and wrote a lot about their findings on how language developed and learned by growing children.
The language proposed by psychologist and psycholinguists agrees and and contradicts on different aspects.
BF Skinner proposed language is learnt through association . His argument based on the fact that sentence viewed a behavioural chains in which words has a stimulus and responses.This means due to word association learned in the past each word tends to invoke another word in response ,the word elistant also serving as stimulus for another words.
Pupils learn language through imitation from those know a little more ,for example siblings,parents ,caretakers and others in the immediate environment.
Language is acquired through constant practise and meant through reinforcement. That's children rewarded for good correct of words and punished for wrongly use of unacceptable words. To teach a children lets say corn for example, first the children must touch the corn physically or shown it in a picture and told to look for the corn ,so that they can build language of corn simply by use his sense to see touch and feel the corn.
When asked to spell the word corn must be done until mastered the word and then correctly rewarded good or well done.
Each step in the learning process should be short and grow up to impose certain behaviour.
Learning should be regulary rewarded and at all stages it should carefully controlled by schedule of intermittent reinforcement.
Reward should follow when correct response appears ,the learner see an opportunity to discover stimulus discrimination for the most likely success . However some scholars had discovered that imitation is involved in learning language ,but only to some extend. The reason is that some sentences produced by child are imitating adults.About the reinforcement scholars argued that parents correct and give praise to children.
Chomsky come up with cognitive view of language development . He proposes that every child has a biological or innate mechanism designed specifically for acquisition of language .In his view the nature of language and its complexity can't be explained merely on the basis of word association . A Language Acquisition Device (LAD) permittes interpretation of language to hear and generation of infinite number of sentences.
LAD pre-determined child would likely to use language ,thus the child acquire language to the point of being able to construct grammartically correct sentences from phonemes to morphemes to words which form phrases , which are constructed from sentences.
Proponents of all these theories agree on:
•Motivation is important in the classroom. A motivated free child is more likely to learn than the one which is not.
•The teacher is therefore should create an environment desirable for child to explore and manipulate their sorroundings. The incentives teacher can give learners are in the form of rewards in words:(very good,fair ,better etc).
Competition with others should be also encouraged and shouldn't be too intense as might affects performance due to distracting emotional conditions.
•Theorists agreed that favourable feedback about performance has a positive effects. On subsiquent performance , Skinner said this is reinforcement. There must be some reassurances about the level of success and the knowledge of results must follow quickly. After completion of the school work, children's progress should be up to date referred back to them ,whilst they school work is still fresh should be back to them.
•Whole or part learning Skinner advises that children should learn by small steps others argued that ,where taking parts out of context may lead to the material being meaningful. Whole learning is preferable.
•Habits are automatic response patterns which are generally acquired by repeating a sequence of activities until the sequence is spontaneous ,so encourage pupils to memorise only where there is a need and when it is necessary.
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