Language Acquisition

There seems to be a few ideas as to how children acquire language. The Nativist theory holds that language is pretty much innate and all children are born with the capability of speaking and understand grammar due to an innate grammar module. Social Interactionists seem to believe that adults play more of a part in spreading language to their children. After reading through the articles, I believe that both of these theories have some truth. I do think there is a critical period for language development and if that is the case, then language cannot be completely innate. Also, the fact that children universally make the same errors in the same way must mean something as well. Humans must have something built into them in order for the same type of mistakes to occur worldwide.

Also, if children are born with langauge capabilities and in addition, need adults to model language to assist in the learning process, then it makes sense that the more adult interaction with language that a child experiences, the better grasp of language they will have. I believe this coincides with the way children learn to read as well. If children are born with language capabilities, then it makes sense that they might be born with reading capabilities as well. So, if they are capable of learning to read, then adult assistance and exposure to reading would also benefit them in learning to acquire reading skills. So, if a child is read to a great deal or is heavily exposed to the written word in other ways, it would make sense that that child would be familiar with reading and probably more skilled in that area than a child who had not been as heavily exposed.

I know that from personal experience, my sister read to my niece and nephew every night before bed when they were small and neither child had difficulty learning to read. Furthermore, as a side note, both of them enjoy reading a great deal and I believe there is a correlation there as well.

Response to three articles

I found the article on Literacy from Wikipedia to be very informative and thought provoking. I read through the article and learned about the different levels of literacy around the world and various definitions of literacy, but the end of the article almost contradicted this information in my opinion. The end of the article says "Some scholars argue that literacy is not autonomous or a set of discrete technical and objective skills that can be applied across context. Instead, they posit that literacy is determined by the cultural, political, and historical contexts of the community in which it is used, drawing on academic disciplines including cultural anthropology and linguistic anthropology to make the case." After thinking about this idea, I believe I agree with it. I do not see how one definition could be applied and then used to measure literacy around the world. I think the real way to determine literacy in different areas would be to determine the forms of communication used in each society and then literacy levels could be measured accordingly. This might take a great deal more time and I am not exactly sure how someone would even begin to do that, but I think it would be the most accurate form of measurement.

Also, I was not suprised by the Silencing Teachers article. I think that a lot of times, an administrator might make a decision without thinking about the actual implications it might have in the classroom. Jaeger expresses that the administration never once thought that the teachers might have had something valuable to offer. This statement is so sad because the teachers are the ones that are doing the actual teaching and transferring of knowledge and they are the ones who know their students. I think the people who are actually doing the teaching should have a say in what they are doing. Also, I would like to learn more about the different ways to teach reading and how flexible most school districts are with the teaching styles.

Also, the "Open Books" collaboration seems to be an effective way to promote reading. I think these illustrators should be celebrated because of their great contributions to children's literature.

Hi

Hello, I am Rachel. I graduated from Rutgers last year and this is my second semester at Montclair.