Language Learning in Early Childhood Essay

Early childhood education and early schooling for young children usually starts at the age of three; however, language learning for all human begins at the very early age. Many new born babies start to communicate with meaningless words like pa and ba; perhaps, it is the first stage they want to begin learning how to speak. The question arises with a grappling impression of why it happens, and what pushes them to superfluously generalize those meaningless sounds. The reason behind this amazing issue is what has engaged many psychologists and linguists all over the area of language research projects around the world. Beginning to simply answer this question, Lightbown and Spata (2010), state that in very early stages children produce a specific group of repeated words to convey their thoughts: for example, a comfortable baby frequently repeats cooing and gurgling; however it is not the case with a hungry child. Moreover, they assert that the process of learning to communicate falls into different sequential stages, which is the focus of this paper. According to Lightbown and Spata (2010), as children grow up, the sense for communication eagerly start to discover many features of the language that gives them the idea of how meaning relationships are created through the language. A twelve years old month baby exactly knows the meaning of cookies; he/she is still unable to use an appropriate language to ask questions about that. To state the matter differently, the linguistic cognitive development gradually unfolds the puzzle of how language is manipulated to express ideas. Many children who could not produce correct grammatical utterances, they would learn that in later years as they hear complete sentences from the environment they live. Vygotsky (1976) (citing Lightbown and Spata, 2010), believes that a great deal of children language is acquired through interactions with families and friends; however, B. F Skinner, and American psychologist, explain the acquisition of language in term of behaviorism that marks learning of a language as practice of reproducing what children hear or receive in daily conversation. In addition to these two theories, Noam Chomsky, a well-known figure in linguistics; argue that children are innately capable of learning language; though, the surrounded environment provides them with fundamental contributions that help them learn the basic language rules. Although learning a language is a natural process, but things get worst if we think about negative aspects of language acquisition. In attachment with some biological types of obstacles in acquiring a language like deafness, articulatory problems, and dyslexia, there is one last hurdle oppositely functioning in course of language learning, which is called bilingualism. Children who face a different language during school periods, it is too difficult for them to maintain their first language, and they often lose the normal range of their native language. In this case, children are said to be caught in a confusing dilemma. They haven’t completely learned their native language not have been learning the other one. â€Å"To deal with the problem, we suggest the maintenance of the first language while a second language is being learned† (Lightbown and Spata. 2010, p 26). Indeed, it is concluded that language learning is a series of interconnected stages which is progressed within the first three years of child’s age. Many psychologists and Linguists have presented different ideas about language acquisition; however, they only partially understand about how language is learned. Besides, since Language is a social phenomenon, it must be the result of some interactive means of communication between human beings. Children have some kind of innate capacities that predispose them not only learn their native language but also enables them to learn languages that are spoken in the place they live.