Approaches and method in language teaching - MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about the Approaches and method in language teaching. Answer: Language is the most important method of communication for the humans. It is an extremely important skill that allows one person to communicate with another person (Owens, 2016). Children start developing languages even before they learn how to speak. A baby cries when she is hungry. Delay in the language skills may lead to frustration and miscommunications as she will not be able to convey her message properly. It is necessary to develop the language skills of a child so that information can be easily exchanged in a proper manner (Menyuk, Liebergott Schultz, 2014). Language acquisition is known to form a crucial stage in the development of the children (Slobin, 2017). The theory that was used in the olden days was that the children learnt language by imitating other people. Currently, there are many theories of language development like the Behavioural Theory, Interactionist Theory, Nativist Theory, and the Learning Theory. The aim of this essay is to explain the language developme nt of children by drawing on these theories. From birth, all the babies are surrounded by people who play and talk to them. Communication is a very important part which helps in determining the method in which the baby will learn to speak in the native language. Many theorists argue that nature is responsible for the manner in which a baby starts acquiring the language skills, while other theorists believe that only nurturing a child in a proper manner will help it to develop the language skills. The Nativist Theory is based on a biological theory, which states that the humans have the ability to develop language. When a child is born, the ability to develop a language is already present within the child. Chomsky believed that babies already have rules about the language in their heads, which is referred to as Universal Grammar. This universal grammar is the base on which the human languages are built. The theorist who is primarily associated with the Nativist Theory is Noam Chomsky. Before Chomsky developed this theory, it was considered that the language development was considered to be a cultural phenomenon based on imitation. The theorist was of the belief that all human babies are born with a Language Acquisition Device or a LAD (Chomsky, 2014). This Language Acquisition Device contains a set of rules that are common for all the languages. It is considered to be a hypothetical area of the brain which is responsible for explaining as to how the children can learn and understand languages. This device is similar to theoretical ideas that state the various ways of understanding the syntax and the languages (Berwick Chomsky, 2015). The theory also believed that Language Acquisition Device helps the children to identify and understand the structure of the native language so that they can subconsciously mark the lexical items in accordance to the syntactic position and the word class (Chomsky, 2014). As the children already have the building blocks of their mind, they can easily pick up the language. The Learning Theory includes the different kinds of learning that include social, operant, and classical learning (MacWhinney, 2014). Language development is considered similar to other behaviours that are learnt by a child. Language development is the reinforcement that helps in shaping the babbling into proper speech. According to the Innatist Perspective, to learn pluralizing the words are results of the new generation which are based on the experience of the similar words. For example, a child who has learnt to say Daddy from Tatty will eventually learn daddies. Classical conditioning is learning to associate a noun with an object. For example, if a baby hears the word bottle whenever it is being fed, they will start associating the object with the noun. The term bottle will start evoking a similar response along with the cognitive representation of the object. According to the operant conditioning, parents tend to reward their babies when they make babbling sounds and appreciate them. When the baby starts growing old, parents become more rewarding when they pronounce a word. Finally, they start shaping the speech of their children by encouraging them and correcting their words. For example, a child may pronounce Pas-Getty instead of Spaghetti. The parents start correcting them until they can speak the correct word. Various arguments have been stated against the Learning Theory. These arguments are that it is not capable of explaining the things that children say which they have not heard before. The theory also fails to explain the things that children do not say despite hearing them. The children do not start uttering articles like a, an, and the, though these words are most commonly spoken in English. It is believed that the kids learn languages from either nature or as a result of proper nurturing. The social Interactionist theorists believe that babies learn languages from both social and biological instances (Richards Rodgers, 2014) . Every person likes to talk with the babies, and this is what is exposing them to language. The Interactionists have the view that babies are generally born with the brains that provide them with the capability of picking up a language along with a strong desire of communicating. Few Interactionists also believe that the babies signal adults for giving them the exposure that is required to pick up a language. The theory proposes that the children can pick up languages easily from the people who are interested in communicating with them. The two big names in this theory are that of Jerome Bruner and Lev Vygotsky. Lev Vygotsky believed that the cultural development in every child can be seen in two different stages. Firstly, the child starts observing the interaction that goes on between the other people and then this behaviour starts developing in the child. This proves that the child tries to learn first and then the ability to communicate starts developing within him. The child slowly starts moving from the baby talk to learning complete sentences. Jerome Bruner is best known for the discovery of the learning theory and he believes that the learners, children or adults, generally learn the best when they start discovering knowledge for themselves (Nelson, 2015). Bruner also argues that an infant and an adult can communicate though the infant has not learnt to speak yet. The non-verbal communication between the infant and the adult helps in building the structure of the language before the child starts communicating verbally. The Interactionists focus on the model of collaborative learning. Collaborative learning refers to the idea that helps in the linguistic and cognitive development of children when conversing with the old people (Li et al., 2016). Language and speech are the tools that are used by humans for communicating sharing thoughts, emotions and ideas. The speech involves talking, which is an important way in which a person can express language. The period that is most intensive for the development of the language is during the first few years of childhood. During the first five years, the brain of a child develops and matures. The skills of learning a language will develop the best when there are the perfect sounds, exposures, and sights along with the different kinds of languages. The ability to learn a language can become difficult if the kids are not exposed to any particular language. The signs of communicating with the parents start when the infants realize that they will get food, companionship and comfort if they cry. Once the kids start growing, they start sorting the phonemes which will help in composing the language. The Nativist Theory, the Learning Theory and the Interactionist Theory suggest various explan ations and manners in which a child acquires and develops the language skills. Reference Berwick, R. C., Chomsky, N. (2015).Why only us: Language and evolution. MIT press. Chomsky, N. (2014).Aspects of the Theory of Syntax(Vol. 11). MIT press. Chomsky, N. (2014).The minimalist program. MIT press. Li, L., Tang, Z., Wang, D., Feng, Y., Zhang, S. (2016). Collaborative Learning for Language and Speaker Recognition.arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.08442. MacWhinney, B. (2014).Mechanisms of Language Acquisition: The 20th Annual Carnegie Mellon Symposium on Cognition. Psychology Press. Menyuk, P., Liebergott, J. W., Schultz, M. C. (2014).Early language development in full-term and premature infants. Psychology Press. Nelson, P. K. (2015). Piano Curriculum: What Order Do Teachers Introduce Concepts, What Method Books Teachers Are Using And How Do The Method Books Align With Jerome Bruner's Enactive, Iconic And Symbolic Learning Theory.MTNA e-Journal,6(4), 13-1. Owens Jr, R. E. (2016). Language Development: An Introduction| Edition: 9.Instructor. Richards, J. C., Rodgers, T. S. (2014).Approaches and methods in language teaching. Cambridge university press. Slobin, D. I. (Ed.). (2017).The Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquisition: Volume 1: the Data. Psychology Press.