Coursework Ideas

I am currently choosing between two ideas for my investigation. My first idea is something to do with children’s language- I’m thinking about how a 2 years olds’ language supports the stage that they should be in. For this idea I’m considering linking the hypothesis from Skinner that says that “children acquire language based on behaviourist reinforcement by linking words to meanings.” I feel like this will be an interesting theory to explore and test, considering more people believe Chomsky who is his opposite, although I don’t completely believe in his theory. I am planning to collect at least three recordings (and then turned into transcripts) to see if they support my hypothesis. I will attempt to get the child to talk about different subjects that I know they will respond positively too so that the recordings aren’t too similar. I think that one of the only difficulties is that as it is a child that I am testing, he (the child) might not want to cooperate.

The sample data that I have collected show me that he definitely has some grammatical mistakes and errors like mispronounced words, so I will have something to talk about and investigate.

I am considering using additional data but am not sure what and how to link it to my investigation.

As mentioned before there will definitely be difficulties, like the child not cooperating. But I will overcome this by recording at a time that his parents have said he’s at his most talkative. Another difficulty is that I could be subconsciously biased as the child is a relation of mine. I will have to make sure, from my peers, that I don’t do this. I will also handle this in my analysis/evaluation by mentioning what went wrong and why it went like this. In addition, I’ll explain what I could have done instead to have made it work.

 

My second idea for my investigation is to do with children reading. I’m not sure what hypothesis to test for this idea. I’m thinking maybe Uta Frith’s theory; “she proposed that the earliest stage, which she termed the logographic stage, involves children being able to recognise written words on the basis of remembering certain key characteristics of the printed word.” I am planning to collect at least three, maybe four, recordings of the child (5 years old) reading. I will get probably 2 books that the child recognises and maybe 1 or 2 books that the child doesn’t recognise. I think that it’ll be interesting to see if the child will already say the words on the next page before turning the page. I also think that it will be good if the child doesn’t know a book and attempts to read it.

My sample data shows that the child can read quite well. However she takes a while to read and takes a lot of pauses between longer words compared to words like “in” and “is”. I think I could maybe include additional data like a questionnaire to either the child or the parents to see how well they think she can read and when she started reading etc.

I will come across difficulties/issues like the child not being willing to cooperate, like in the first idea.  And perhaps that the child can read quite well and so there might not be many mistakes. In the evaluation, I will do exactly like my first idea, I’ll explain what went wrong, why and what I would do to change it.

 

I’m not sure what my media text will be about but it will be linked to my coursework idea, something linked to children’s language or reading. I think the question that I have is which idea do I do, I think I’m leaning towards the first idea.

The Stages of Language Acquisition

Children's Language Development- Spoken

 

Stage One: Babbling:

Babbling is the first stage of Children's Language Acquisition. It isn't a major stage but some theories say it's the first as it is the first stage where children attempt to talk. Babies recognise their mother's own voice after the first few weeks of being born. It's usually at 8 months that the baby begins using it's vocals to talk. Babies tend to learn by imitation and babbling stage is just like that. Within the first few months the baby hears sounds surrounding them and tries to reproduce them, albeit with limited success. The babies attempts at creating and matching the sounds which is what we call babbling. After babbling for a few months, it begins to link the words or sounds it's making to objects or actions. From 8 months-12 months the baby gains more and more control over not only it’s vocal communication but physical communication as well, like body language and gesturing.  When the baby uses both verbal and non-verbal means to communicate, only then does it move on to the next stage of language acquisition.

 

Holophrastic / One-word stage:

In this stage, children are around 12-18 months and learn to produce single words to mean phrases or sentences. An example would be "play" which could mean I want to play or "Teddy" if they want their teddy. During this stage, nouns make up around 50% of the vocabulary compared to verbs and modifiers which make up around 30% and questions and negatives which make up the rest. The reason that this stage is called the holophrastic stage, is because sometimes children's production of speech is longer and is considered as being only one unit or a whole phrase, which is called a Holophrase. An example would be "Gosleep".

Children learn the ability to distinguish between interrogative, declarative and imperative phrases, and despite their limited grammatical structuring, are able to aid their communication more effectively. For example: 'Dada?' said with a rising tone, would imply a question. 'Dada' said with a falling tone, would imply declarative statement.  'Dada!' said in an exclamation, would imply imperative statement. Children also learn words usually in a certain order. The most common are nouns first, particularly the names of objects directly involved in the baby’s life e.g. ball and doll. The second most frequent is action words often used to get attention. E.g. “bye-bye”, “up” “look”. Describing words, personal, social and function words usually come later on.

 

Two word stage:

The two word stage is around the age of 18-24 months and is made up of primarily two word sentences. These sentences contain 1 word for the predicate and 1 word for the subject. . 'Baby chair', 'Mummy eat' and 'Cat bad' are all examples of utterances at this stage and as it may be obvious, require interpretation. During this stage we see the appearance of single modifiers e.g. “That dog”, two word questions: “Mummy eat?” and the addition of the suffix onto words to describe something that is happening : “Baby Sleeping.” Context of an utterance can help the ambiguity behind such statements. For example: 'Baby chair' could mean:

·         Possession: 'this is baby's chair'.

·         Request/command: 'put baby in chair'.

·         Statement: 'baby is in the chair'.

 

The Telegraphic Stage:

This stage is between the age 2-3 and could be considered the most important. The stage is named this because it is similar to what is seen in a telegram; containing just enough information for the sentence to make sense. This stage contains three and four word sentences. Sometime during this stage the child begins to see the links between words and objects and some of the children's utterances are grammatically correct, for example: "teddy looks tired."  However others have grammatical elements missing: "This shoe all wet"- it's missing is to make it correct.

Children are more likely to keep hold of content words (nouns, verbs and adjectives, that refer to real things) and function words (that have grammatical function: pronouns and verbs) are often lost.

Overgeneralisations are also found at this stage, which is when children make errors in their allowance of variety. For example:

§  The inflection -s to mark plurality is seen to be added to irregular verbs: sheep: sheeps

§  The inflection -ed to mark past tense is seen to be added to irregular verbs: go: goed

Such examples would suggest that children try to figure out grammar by themselves,  not by hearing them from the people around them in their environment. Children would not hear 'goed' from the adults around them. 

 During this stage a child’s vocabulary expands from 50 words to up to 13,000 words. At the end of this stage the child starts to incorporate plurals, joining words and attempts to get a grip on tenses.

As a child’s grasp on language grows it may seem to us as though they just learn each part in a random order, but it's not the case. There's a definite order of speech sounds. Children first start speaking vowels, starting with the rounded mouthed sounds like “oo” and “aa”. After the vowels come the consonants, p, b, m, t, d, n, k and g. The consonants are first because they are easier to pronounce then some of the others, for example ‘s’ and ‘z’ require specific tongue place which children cannot do at that age.

As all human beings do, children will improvise something they cannot yet do. For example when children come across a sound they cannot produce they replace it with a sound they can e.g. "Wun" instead of "Run." 

Reference:

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCEQFjAAahUKEwjaw_HTn-rHAhXDltsKHbQlCNI&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thestudentroom.co.uk%2Fattachment.php%3Fattachmentid%3D25709%26d%3D1151420036&usg=AFQjCNHQ-68vokbrzro4t3msVWF0nTtsmQ&bvm=bv.102022582,d.bGg

https://sites.google.com/a/sheffield.ac.uk/all-about-linguistics/branches/language-acquisition/what-is-child-lanuage-acquistion

https://enlsac2max.wordpress.com/stages-of-language-acquisition/

Reading Log

Source One:

The Guardian. 2015. ICYMI, English language is changing faster than ever, says expert. [Online]. [Accessed 11 July 2015]. Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/01/icymi-english-language-is-changing-faster-than-ever-says-expert (In this article the writer explains that the English Language is evolving quicker lately due to social media and instant messaging. The Language Change can be found greatly in "text speak" terms. The writer explores terms like ICYMI (in case you missed it) and modern terms like "fleek" and "bae". They surveyed 2,000 people to see if they knew what these terms meant, and the results were very low.)

Source Two:

Hill, A. 2011. Singing to children may help development of language skills. [Online]. [Accessed 11 July 2015]. Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/may/08/singing-children-development-language-skills (The article explains that singing to children could actually help their language development. Sally Goddard Blythe, a consultant developmental education director has said that singing traditional lullabies and nursery rhymes to babies and infants before they learn to speak is essential in later educational success. It's a special type of speech which prepares the babies voice, brain and ear for language that it will soon be taught. Hill explains that there have been significant numbers of children that enter school and nursery that have inadequate language skills as their parents haven't helped to develop them.)

Source Three:

Sample, I. 2014. Talking to babies boosts their brain power, studies show. [Online]. [Accessed 22 July 2015]. Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/feb/14/talking-to-babies-brain-power-language (In the article, she (Hill) explained that reading bedtime stories to babies improves their brain power and so sets them up for school success. A developmental psychologists has said that parents shouldn't just use simplistic baby talk and should expand the language they use to talk to their child. The psychologist described a series of experiments in which she tested children's language processing skills. It found that when parents chatted more with their children, their language processing improved and they learned new words more swiftly.

Source Four:

Gill, M. 2013. Have we literally broken the English language? [Online]. [Accessed 30 July 2015]. Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/13/literally-broken-english-language-definition (Throughout the article she (Gill) talks about how language is changing by how the word "literally" has changed. The original definition is "in a literal manner or sense" now, it means "to acknowledge that something is not literally true but is used for emphasis or to express strong feeling". It then states that we can't do anything about it as people would be surprised if it is used in the original sense of the word. Also if it isn't literally it's another word.

Source Five:

Kleinman, Z. How the internet is changing language. [Online]. [Accessed 25 August 2015]. Available from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10971949 (In the article Kleinman writes about the different ways that internet is changing our language. An example would be 'to Google'. Years ago this phrase would have no meaning, now it means to search something on Google's search engine. Other ways are super slang in computers (Control, Alt, Delete) and Word play. An example of Word play is Lolcats. There would be a picture of a cat accompanied by a deliberately grammatically incorrect caption. She overall shows that this could be the future of our communication and language.