Teaching Advice on Language Acquisition

First, it's important to realize that there are five different stages of language acquisition:

1. Cooing: Appears at about 6 months or so. All infants coo using all the phonemes from every language. Even congenitally deaf children coo.
2. Babbling: Appears at around 9 months. Infants are starting to selectively use the phonemes from their native language.
3. One-word utterances: At around 12 months, children start using words.
4. Telegraphic speech: Children start making multi-word utterances that lack function words. (about 2 years old)
5. Normal speech: By about 5-6 years of age, children have almost normal speech

Second, it's important to realize that there are three different models of language acquisition.

Hypothesis testing:

As kids are exposed to language, they form "hypotheses," which are kind of like tentative rules for the language. As these hypotheses are confirmed or disconfirmed, they are modified appropriately.

The nature side of the equation provides the biases that guide what features of language kids pay attention to.

Imitation: Pretty self-explanatory.

Modeling: Children sound like the adults around them, such as by sharing accents and idioms. Adults use child-directed speech to make themselves easier for children to understand.

Teachers can do assignments by grouping. Students can be in five different groups based on the stage that they're in. Since students will need help getting to the next stage, the teacher can do guided reading exercises with the students. Teachers can read books that are on level to different groups.

Since I know how important imitation is, I will have students of different stages read together at least thirty minutes a week. The less advanced student can fluency and competency from the more advanced student, but the more advanced student may learn vocabulary and word attack skills from the less advanced student. When they read together, they can test out their hypotheses as well.

It's also important to know that Chomsky theorized that children have a built-in system that aid's them in the acquisition of language called a language acquisition device. The LAD is like a system containing many switches that determine the features of the native language.

Teachers can check for competency and comprehension by observing responses during class discussions about reading materials. Teachers can also observe students while they're silently reading. If they seem to be stuck on words, they are probably not comprehending. If they look confused or bewildered or frustrated, they are probably not comprehending the material. Teachers can informally observe students by giving students a miscue analysis at least twice a month. Students can also write entries in a reading response journal which will show comprehension. Teachers can also ask oral or written response exit ticket questions about the reading before the class is over. With high stakes testing being so important these days, teachers will constantly have to use formal assessments on their students.

Reference:

Author Unknown . Language Acquisition. Date Accessed 8/1/2008 from:http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/course/85-211b/language_acq.html