Defining the Problem
At younger ages, children experience numerous difficulties while transitioning between their school and home environments. They are forced to adapt to two diverse sets of rules, expectations, behaviors and values. Home settings and school educational programs must respect and reinforce each other as they are meant to attain the greatest benefit for every child. However, the lives of many children entering preschool today are intimidating and complicated as they are forced to learn and communicate in a new language that completely devalues their first language. In many schools today, children whose home language is not English are required to immerse themselves in the school system, mainly through the use of English. There …show more content…
This involves a synthesis of the findings from the relevant literature in order to understand the topic further. In addition, reviewing empirical studies will be important in coming up with a concrete conclusions regarding the entire study and specifically on the topic of the study. This review will commence with a brief overview of the research and theory on the childhood acquisition of the first and second languages. Different scholars in development psychology, early childhood education and linguistics continue to front competing arguments regarding this topic. Notwithstanding this, majority agree that the ability of children to learn a number of languages and their rising oral and written skills are impacted upon by their social environments as well as their cultural and linguistic backgrounds (Little et al., …show more content…
As a matter of fact, majority of the children who attend school having some competency in a number of languages were either bilingual or multilingual while growing up in their home environments (Ball, 2010). Such children have not experienced consecutive attainment of other languages. Studies have also found out that the level of proficiency of a particular language does not spring forth in the early years of a child but it rather takes many years. Such studies have identified a number of factors that impact on the length of time and the eventual outcomes of additional language learning among children. Some of the factors highlighted in empirical studies include; motivation by peers, socio-cultural adaptation, home exposure, formal learning, individualistic differences such as the intelligence levels, the socio-economic status of a family and ethnic and or gender discrimination. Some of these findings are similar to this research especially on the influence of the home exposure to a child’s grasp of a language. The empirical results from this study show that majority of the first languages among children are learnt from a home based set up before any other factor plays a role in language development. These factors also prove that the general notion that promoting the use of mother tongue languages in school will hinder the development of the
At younger ages, children experience numerous difficulties while transitioning between their school and home environments. They are forced to adapt to two diverse sets of rules, expectations, behaviors and values. Home settings and school educational programs must respect and reinforce each other as they are meant to attain the greatest benefit for every child. However, the lives of many children entering preschool today are intimidating and complicated as they are forced to learn and communicate in a new language that completely devalues their first language. In many schools today, children whose home language is not English are required to immerse themselves in the school system, mainly through the use of English. There …show more content…
This involves a synthesis of the findings from the relevant literature in order to understand the topic further. In addition, reviewing empirical studies will be important in coming up with a concrete conclusions regarding the entire study and specifically on the topic of the study. This review will commence with a brief overview of the research and theory on the childhood acquisition of the first and second languages. Different scholars in development psychology, early childhood education and linguistics continue to front competing arguments regarding this topic. Notwithstanding this, majority agree that the ability of children to learn a number of languages and their rising oral and written skills are impacted upon by their social environments as well as their cultural and linguistic backgrounds (Little et al., …show more content…
As a matter of fact, majority of the children who attend school having some competency in a number of languages were either bilingual or multilingual while growing up in their home environments (Ball, 2010). Such children have not experienced consecutive attainment of other languages. Studies have also found out that the level of proficiency of a particular language does not spring forth in the early years of a child but it rather takes many years. Such studies have identified a number of factors that impact on the length of time and the eventual outcomes of additional language learning among children. Some of the factors highlighted in empirical studies include; motivation by peers, socio-cultural adaptation, home exposure, formal learning, individualistic differences such as the intelligence levels, the socio-economic status of a family and ethnic and or gender discrimination. Some of these findings are similar to this research especially on the influence of the home exposure to a child’s grasp of a language. The empirical results from this study show that majority of the first languages among children are learnt from a home based set up before any other factor plays a role in language development. These factors also prove that the general notion that promoting the use of mother tongue languages in school will hinder the development of the