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.