Language Development In Children

Children are amazing little beings. They learn so much in a short amount of time, especially when it comes to language. In addition to many other things, psycholinguists study children and their language development. They are interested in “whether the capacity for language is a skill that is built into the brain or whether language acquisition is experience-driven” (McCabe 370). I believe that language development happens quickly in children because it is the focus of the adults around them. Due to the situations I have experienced, I think a child’s language expansion abilities are largely dependent on their experiences. A child in an English-speaking household could not learn a foreign language out of thin air! Children tend to have an easier time learning a second language than adults do. Maybe it is because at this point, they’ve been working towards learning a language as long as they can remember. Adults stop consciously learning new words at some point, but children are very aware of their newfound words, repeating them over and over when requested by their parents and teachers. Or perhaps the answer lies in the way we teach children. More often than not, we teach children through song. These songs tend to stick with us for the rest of our lives! Obvious example: The ABC song. Songs are …show more content…
They soak up everything they hear, and in my experience, they tend to understand the context. A child that is placed in a rich learning environment, or even just a highly social environment, is going to quickly pick up language. This being said, it is important to mind what is said around children, because they repeat everything! It is important to have story-time with children because they can pick up language that their parents and teachers wouldn’t normally give to them. After reading the same story a few times, which always happens, the child has the words from that book memorized, and they’re able to read the story along with the