Friday, January 31, 2020
The Progression Of Language Development Essay Example for Free
The Progression Of Language Development Essay Infants begin life with no other language than their cries and grunts. As their language mechanism matures, they make more and more sounds. Even before they can use these sounds as language, they begin to comprehend the meanings of words that they hear. They also can communicate their wants and needs with gestures and cries (Papalia et al. , 2002, p. 355).            At about one year, the first word appears. The first word is used as a sentence. Later, the vocabulary increases rapidly. Nouns come first; then verbs; then adjectives and adverbs; with pronouns appearing last (Papalia et al., 2002, p. 356).            Language ability depends on maturation, but also on other factors. Those children who talk earliest will, on the average, alter prove to be the most intelligent. Girls tend to talk a little earlier than boys. Single children also tend to talk earlier than twins. Those with a more stimulating home environment make more rapid progress in language development than those with a poorer environment (Papalia et al., 2002, p. 357).            My niece was introduced to two languages from the very start when she was barely three months old. Her parents decided that they introduce her to her ancestral language which is basically French. Although very difficult at first since they will be speaking to her in two languages, they became used to the idea later on. However, they noticed that acquisition of vocabulary is slower compared to unilingual babies or children. This was starting to be evident when the child turned nine months to one-year old when the baby starts to mimic whatever her parents would say to her and starts to speak her desires. Today she is already almost three years old and has been alternately speaking English and French. Though her vocabulary gets mixed many times, she can easily switch to any of the two languages whenever she prefers to; though again given her maturity level, she still is limited with facility for words. From my observation, it is quite true that though a child may be limited with the speed at which he/she can speak words or language compared to the unilingual child, the bilingual tends to have a higher degree of proficiency later on. Studies show that acquiring another language (especially quite similar to the learned ones) will be greater a possibility if the child has been taught with two or more languages as a child (Papalia et al., 2002, p. 357). Reference: Papalia, Diane E., Sally W. Olds, Ruth Duskin Feldman. 2002. Human Development, Eighth ed. McGraw-Hill.
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