[Help3]

How do I get a C or B grade in the A2 English Language exam?

Language Acquisition:

Do I only need to know child directed speech and all the theorists:
Vigotsky, etc.

Language Change- is this about using all the language frame works and how would you possibly talk about some of the older texts when you can't even read them?

Thank you.

[mel608]

I ended up getting a B for this exam in January, but should hopefully be getting an A overall due to coursework

It seems like a while since i did it, but definitely know as many theorists and their theories for CLA as possible, and don't just know them, but be able to run through transcripts of a child speaking and recognise how you can apply their theories. For example, a child referring to freckles and moles may say "there's sand on my skin". The overextension of the word sand, a noun the child is able to comprehend and utilise, to mean any similar coloured marks on the skin, supports Chomsky's innateness theory. Be able to tie in other theorists and their research which also support the view of innateness e.g. Berko- Gleason's 'Wug' test.

For language change you need to know as many processes as possible e.g. grammatical shift, ellision, broadening etc etc. Tie these in to the language frameworks, so archaic lexis can tie into the lexical framework, and grammatical shift into the grammar framework. Emphasise heavily the context of the text i.e. a very old text may have the same word spelt differently throughout if it was written before Johnston's dictionary, as this was the first comprehensive dictionary ( i can't quite remember the date but i think it may have been in the 1400's?). This also highlights something else for the language change, you need to know your dates. E.g. the great vowel shift, the first dictionaries and grammatical guides, when the long 's' was in use etc etc. I'm not sure quite what you mean by not being able to read texts? The writing may be in an archaic font/ writing style, in which case you could tie in the time it was written? And the long 's' may be used, allowing you to discuss when that fell out of fashion? But you should always be able to read the text, otherwise you wouldn't be able to analyse it.

I've just found a useful worksheet with theorists for CLA that we were given in January that you may find useful! I've copied and pasted it below Feel free to ask anything else!

Skinner

His theory in a nutshell
Children learn to speak by imitating their parents and being rewarded or punished according to the accuracy of their utterances.

Research that supports this idea
o Children eventually learn to say ‘went’ instead of ‘goed’. This seems to be learned through listening, imitation and correction.

What to look out for in the data
• adults explicitly modelling or teaching language and children responding
• children imitating/repeating adults’ speech
• children learning or repairing mistakes after correction from adults


Chomsky

His theory in a nutshell
Babies are born with an innate knowledge of the structure of language (all language share the same basic structure) and this speeds up their learning of their native language when they hear it. When they hear examples of language they fit these into their (unconscious) mental model of how language works (called the Language Acquisition Device or LAD by McNeill).

Research that supports this idea
o Berko-Gleason (1958) found that children were able to provide the plural of ‘wug’, the name of an imaginary creature, even though they had never heard the word before
o Childreh learn language at about the same age, acquiring particular elements in roughly the same order
o Similar grammatical categories (noun, verb, etc) exist in all languages

What to look out for in the data:
• children doing more than simply imitating adult speech, e.g. semantic overextension & overgeneralisation suggest children are actively constructing language according to an unconscious model of how language works (LAD)
• children resisting or simply not responding to correction from adults

• children making up new names for things
• children forming utterances they’ve never heard anyone else say (can’t just be imitating but must be actively constructing sentences using their implicit knowledge of the ‘rules’ (LAD))


Piaget

His theory in a nutshell
Language development goes hand in hand with the development of thinking and knowledge (cognitive development). Until the child has acquired concepts of size, object permanence [an object still exists when it can’t be seen], etc, s/he can’t grasp and use words such as ‘more than’, ‘less than’ and ‘gone’.

Research that supports this idea
When seven year olds were taught phrases like ‘more than and ‘ess than’ this language tuition did not help them to grasp these concepts. The words are usually acquired after the concepts have been grasped.

What to look out for in the data
• children talking to themselves while playing or working at a task, in a way that suggests they are trying to help themselves make sense of something (‘egocentric speech’)
• children failing to use or understand language because they haven’t yet grasped the concept expressed by the language


Bruner & social interactionist theory

The theory in a nutshell
1. Language is social. ‘Children learn to use language initially…to get what they want, to play games, to stay connected with those on whom they are dependent’ (1983).
2. Children’s language development is enriched and accelerated according to the quantity and quality of their social interactions with adults. It is only through interactions with adults that children learn the social pragmatics of language use.

Research that supports this idea
o Clarke-Stewart (1973) found that children whose mothers talk more have larger vocabularies
o Several researchers have found that parents often respond to the ‘truth values’ of what their baby is saying rather than to its grammatical correctness
o children who grow up in the absence of social interaction fail to develop language in the normal way

What to look out for in the data
• children clearly enjoying/benefiting from interaction
• parents reinforcing their children’s attempts to speech by responding in an encouraging and positive way
• adult caregivers using features of Child-directed Speech
• conversation skills and pragmatic awareness (e.g. politeness) being modelled/taught/learnt through interaction between a child and adult caregiver
• adult caregivers providing the Language Acquisition Support System (LASS) when talking to (or doing any activity, e.g. reading) with a child
o Gaining the child’s attention
o Query – asking a question
o Label – telling the baby what the object is
o Feedback


Critical Period theory (Lenneberg)

His theory in a nutshell
The Human brain is designed to acquire language at a certain time (ie during the first five years) and once this period has passed normal language development is no longer possible.

Research that supports this:
o story of Genie who was locked up until the age of 13 and never learned to speak fully competently

[ACollins]

(Original post by Help3)
How do I get a C or B grade in the A2 English Language exam?

Language Acquisition:

Do I only need to know child directed speech and all the theorists:
Vigotsky, etc.

Language Change- is this about using all the language frame works and how would you possibly talk about some of the older texts when you can't even read them?

Thank you.

I'll attach a document that I used when I was revising Language Change, it gives a lot of details about what to include in an essay (frameworks etc). Hopefully you'll find it helpful.

[Help3]

(Original post by ACollins)
I'll attach a document that I used when I was revising Language Change, it gives a lot of details about what to include in an essay (frameworks etc). Hopefully you'll find it helpful.

Thank you to the both of you. I was wondering what dychronic and synchronic are for language change?
Prescriptivism- is for language change and descriptivism is against language change? Or have I got that wrong?

[Help3]

(Original post by mel608)
I ended up getting a B for this exam in January, but should hopefully be getting an A overall due to coursework

It seems like a while since i did it, but definitely know as many theorists and their theories for CLA as possible, and don't just know them, but be able to run through transcripts of a child speaking and recognise how you can apply their theories. For example, a child referring to freckles and moles may say "there's sand on my skin". The overextension of the word sand, a noun the child is able to comprehend and utilise, to mean any similar coloured marks on the skin, supports Chomsky's innateness theory. Be able to tie in other theorists and their research which also support the view of innateness e.g. Berko- Gleason's 'Wug' test.

For language change you need to know as many processes as possible e.g. grammatical shift, ellision, broadening etc etc. Tie these in to the language frameworks, so archaic lexis can tie into the lexical framework, and grammatical shift into the grammar framework. Emphasise heavily the context of the text i.e. a very old text may have the same word spelt differently throughout if it was written before Johnston's dictionary, as this was the first comprehensive dictionary ( i can't quite remember the date but i think it may have been in the 1400's?). This also highlights something else for the language change, you need to know your dates. E.g. the great vowel shift, the first dictionaries and grammatical guides, when the long 's' was in use etc etc. I'm not sure quite what you mean by not being able to read texts? The writing may be in an archaic font/ writing style, in which case you could tie in the time it was written? And the long 's' may be used, allowing you to discuss when that fell out of fashion? But you should always be able to read the text, otherwise you wouldn't be able to analyse it.

I've just found a useful worksheet with theorists for CLA that we were given in January that you may find useful! I've copied and pasted it below Feel free to ask anything else!

Thanks for the work sheet as that's really helpful. I just learned about Imitation and Skinner there. I learned about operant conditioning, positive and negative reinforcement as Skinner is also part of psychology- should I include that in there? Like I know to look through the texts and find areas of which support the theories then would it be best to talk about the theories so the examiner knows you have an understanding of the theories. Like would I say the child has imitated their parent in this conversation and then talk about what Imitation theory is?