Children's Language Acquisition: Nature vs Nurture - Essay Example

Children’s Language Acquisition The acquisition of language among children can be considered to be among the most fascinating aspects of human development and this is mainly because of the fact that it is a process which combines both nature and nurture. The means through which children acquire language can be said to be through the efforts made by their parents as well as well as the environment in which they are raised. Thus, the way that they gain their language skills is normally at first based on the imitation of their parents or those who raise them and as time goes by and their vocabulary extends beyond the basics, they are able to think for themselves and further develop their language skills through expression (Unsworth, 2013). It has been found that nature gives children the ability to acquire language but it does not give them the language itself because the latter is an aspect of humanity which develops due to nurture. It is for this reason that most of the children who are born in one culture can easily adapt to another culture and language as long as they are still young enough to adjust to their new environment. It is normally the environment in which a child is raised that determines his or her rate of language acquisition, so that there are some who acquire it much earlier than others. Thus, one would suggest that nurture plays a more significant role in the language acquisition of children than nature because while the latter facilitates the development of the parts necessary for speech, it is nurture which enables the development and advancement of the skills required for the sake of language acquisition. While speech is a natural part of human beings, language is based on nurture and it is mainly the language that is spoken in the environment that children are raised in that they are able to acquire it. The influence of biological, social and cultural factors have been said to affect the shaping of the different aspects of language acquisition among children. It is a fact that both nature and nurture played a role in language acquisition, the latter hiving existed for almost as long as the human race has existed and it is quite possible that they will continue to exist in the foreseeable future. The acquisition of language among children is a basic part of their daily lives and is manifested within the society by observable factors within the environment that they grow. Thus, children are normally able to acquire language through their interaction with older members of their society and this is normally done in such a manner that they are able to learn the correct terms to use on different occasions as well as how to use their speech in order to acquire the most effective response from those being addressed (Roberts, 2008). They are able to express feelings in a manner which is deemed appropriate or inappropriate as a result of their gender and the language that they use derives from the social expectations of how members of the different genders should speak. When one considers the role of nurture in language acquisition among children, one will find that gender also plays a significant role and this is mainly because in most culture, the way in which members of different genders, whether male or female, are normally expected to speak in a certain manner. For example, in some societies, female children are normally taught from a very young age to display the speech characteristics which are typically associated with being female, such as being highly expressive in the way in which they speak. This shows that there are various factors within the nurture that can be considered to determine language acquisition among children and the most important of these are social and cultural factors. Despite the supreme role that nurture takes in determining the acquisition of language among children, nature also plays a significant role and this mainly because of the fact that the biological make up of an individual has long been used to determine whether he or she is capable of acquiring speech. This is because nature facilitates the organs which are used for speech so that it a person is dumb, it is not likely for him to be able to speak in a normal manner. Instead, these individuals will have to acquire language through other means such as sign language. However, there is yet to be proof of whether children are born with the innate knowledge of the language that their parents and people of their culture use. Language can only be acquired through some form of informal and formal learning and this is normally done through regular interaction between children and older people within their environment (Parodi, 2005). Without the presence of older people whose speech patterns they can imitate, it is most likely that children will not be able to acquire the knowledge of language and how to use it. Children learn and acquire language through their interactions with their family members, their socializing with their teachers and friends at school, and through the influence of mass media. It is a fact that the parents of a large number of children are the ones who determine the rate at which their children are able to acquire language, so that there are some who do so earlier than others. Therefore, these children are given the opportunity to develop their language skills from an early age, beginning with imitation and later through their own efforts (Murray & Goldbart, 2009). This essentially leads them to want to learn more concerning their language, enabling them to develop more comprehensive sentence structures as well as the phonetics needed to pronounce words accurately. It has been found that children develop their language skills through their analysis of the speech stream and they do this by recognizing recurring speech patterns to which they end up attaching meaning. Thus, according to Bavin (2005), they come to discover the sound system of speech so that they can be able to recognize the communicative significance of different words, essentially acquiring language. In addition, children works towards the acquisition of language skills through their early communicative exchanges with their parents and other people close to them so that they come to understand what different words signify and the context within which they can be used to ensure that they are understood. Children’s development of speech skills are among the most significant aspects of their acquisition of language because it is these which determine whether they will become competent in their language or not. The influence of the environment in which they are raised is also very significant because it determines the individuals who are in daily contact with the children and how these individuals can influence the means through which the children involved imitate them. The result is that nurture is extremely important in the acquisition of language among children because it is the only means through which children can be able to develop the speech patterns needed to interact with other members of their society as they grow older and become more independent (Bacalu, 2011). The ability of children to acquire language is normally based on their recognition of the different sound patterns used by the people with whom they share an environment during infancy and it is through this interaction that they are able to gain the basics that will enable them to form more complex sentence structures as they grow older. It has also been found that children in the current age are able to acquire language faster than in previous generations mainly because of the massive influence of mass media in conjunction with their parents’ efforts. This has come to ensure that they are able to recognize sound patterns and meanings from characters in children’s programs on television, enabling them to imitate and acquire language. As has been discussed above, the acquisition of language among children can be considered to be among the most fascinating aspects of human development and this is mainly because of the fact that it is a process which combines both nature and nurture. In addition, the influence of biological, social and cultural factors have been said to affect the shaping of the different aspects of language acquisition among children. Moreover, it has been found that despite the supreme role that nurture takes in determining the acquisition of language among children, nature also plays a significant role and this mainly because of the fact that the biological make up of an individual has long been used to determine whether he or she is capable of acquiring speech. Finally, it has also been found that children develop their language skills through their analysis of the speech stream and they do this by recognizing recurring speech patterns to which they end up attaching meaning. It can therefore be said that both nature and nurture, especially the latter, are important in the acquisition of language among children and they work hand in hand to ensure that speech among children is effective. References Bacalu, F. 2011, "THOUGHT AND CULTURE IN LANGUAGE ACQUISITION FOR BILINGUAL CHILDREN", Economics, Management and Financial Markets, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 762-767. Bavin, E.L. 2005, "First language acquisition", Language in Society, vol. 34, no. 3, pp. 474. Murray, J. & Goldbart, J. 2009, "Cognitive and language acquisition in typical and aided language learning: A review of recent evidence from an aided communication perspective", Child Language Teaching and Therapy, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 31-58. Parodi, T. 2005, "Language acquisition: the growth of grammar", Journal of Linguistics, vol. 41, no. 1, pp. 201-205. Roberts, T.A. 2008, "Home Storybook Reading in Primary or Second Language With Preschool Children: Evidence of Equal Effectiveness for Second-Language Vocabulary Acquisition", Reading Research Quarterly, vol. 43, no. 2, pp. 103-130. Unsworth, S. 2013, "Current Issues in Multilingual First Language Acquisition", Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, vol. 33, pp. 21-50. Read More