Child language acqusition essay plan-

1) Intorduction- stage of learning, context, link to question, question fact

2) Stage of learning- examples which show telegraphic and post-telegraphic stage, linguistic terminology

3)Virtuous errors- examples, 3 different errors, what the wrrors show in relation to stage of learning

4)Chomksy- theory link to virtuous errors, Skinner's reinforcment theory

5)Theories- Deb Roy home speech project, 'water 'gaga', fox p-2, Jean Berko Gleason 'wug test'

6) Caregivers langauge- link to Skinner, how their preious relationship affects the child language, context, examples

7) Lexis- imitation, pronounciation, power, gender

8) Feautures of spontanous speech- adjective, grices maxims, Halladays functions, examples

9) Scaffold- Bruner, simple syntax, interagotives, declaratives

10)Conclusion- David Crystal, theory, stage, lexicallly advanced

Grammar tests-

Year 6-http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/quiz/2013/feb/04/grammar-punctuation-quiz-test

University tests- http://www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/exercises/grammar/grammar_tutorial/p age_41.htm

Reasons why English is weird-

Grammar tutorial

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/exercises/grammar/grammar_tutorial/index.htm

Analysis of a transcript- child langauge acqusition

Lou: shall we take your jacket off CONFIDENCE IN THE LANGUAGE, POLITNESS STARTEGY

Ruby: it's not a jacket it's a coat DECLARATIVE

Lou: oh (.) sorry (.) shall we take your COAT off then JUST COME IN FROM BEING OUTSIDE, EMPHISISING THE WORD FOR SARCASM, HYPERBOLIC LEXIS, LEXIS WE SHOWING COMMMUNICAL EFFORT, POLTNESS STARTGEY, POSTIVE FACVE, BROWN AND LEVINGSTON  

Ruby: mmm

Lou: are you going to be a bossy boots all morning RHETORICAL QUESTION

Ruby: [nods & laughs] (3.0) what's up wiv Felma HUMOR, PHONOLOGICAL FEAUTURES

Lou: Thelma [questioning intonation] (1.0) oh (.) she's been a silly girl (1.0) she's been

Fighting SIMPLIFYING LANGUAGE

Ruby: what did it (.) what what was it (.) em Simba bitted by a dog REPETITION

Lou: Simba got bitten by a do::g [questioning intonation] oh no is he all right CORRECTION FROM CAREGIVER MEANS THAT THE CHILDS LANGAUGE IS SUBTLY BEING CORRECTED AND THEREFORE IMPROVING, ELONGATION

Ruby: yeh

Lou: yes

Ruby: he's better now

Lou: is he better now (.) the vet looked after him [questioning intonation] (2.0) QUESTIONING RESPONSE BY REPEATING THE QUESTION

Ruby: no we took him to the bets two times but he's better

Lou: he's better SKINNERS REINFORCMENT THEORY [questioning intonation] oh that's good (.) Thelma's getting better

Ruby: Sim (.) Simba THE LEXIS DEVELOPS, AFTER AN ATTEMPT SHE CAN THEN SAY THE FULL PROPER NOUN AS OPPOSED TO A SHORTENED VERSION OF IT

slept on my (2.0) Fergal and Simba slept on my bed

Lou: oh (.) last night [questioning intonation]

Ruby: yeh

Lou: is there room on your bed for two pussy cats and you LEXICAL FIELDS

Ruby: yes

Lou: is there (.) do they not get (.) do you not get pushed out of bed every night by two big TAG QUESTION

pussy cats

Ruby: no SIMPLE SYNTAX, ONE LEXIS

Lou: they're almost as big as you your cats (1.0) shall we have some jam on toast POLITNESS STATGEY

Ruby: yes

Lou: would you like some apple juice as well INTERAGOTIVE , POLITNESS

Ruby: yes

Lou: what would you like first  INTERGTOTIVE

Ruby: apple juice

Lou: apple juice SKINNERS REINFORCEMENT  (.) a little glass [questioning intonation]

Ruby: yes

Lou: yes (1.0) SKINNERS REINFORCEMENT THEORY

Ruby: big girls have glass don't they

Lou: yes (.) big girls have glasses (.) it's all I've got (.) glasses (2.0) LEIXCAL FIELDS, CONCRETE NOUN

Ruby: grandma has glass and cups

Lou: grandma has glass and cups does she TAG QUESTION(.) and what do you have at grandma's (1.0)SUBCONSIOUSLY SIMPLIFYING LANGUAGE

Ruby: apple juice and orange CONJUNCTION- CREATING COMPLEX SYNTAX

Lou: apple juice and orange (.) there we go (.) where are you going to sit to have this (.) INTERAGOTIVE, COMPLEX SYNTAX USING THE CONJUCTION ‘AND’

do you want to sit at the table

Ruby: I'll sit (.) I want to sit in the room DEMANDING, DECLARATIVE SENTENCE

Lou: oo:: no (.) not with your apple juice

Ruby: only wiz my toast (2.0) INACCURATE PRONOUNCIANTION , TRYING TO SAY THE LEXIS ‘WITH’

Lou: sit here and I'll move my things out of the way

Ruby: only in (.) only wiz my toast

Lou: okay (.) there you go (1.0) can you manage INTERAGOTIVE

Ruby: Mummy got (3.0) Mummy's moved a bed               LEXICAL FIELDS

Lou: Mummy's moved her bed or your bed [questioning intonation] (2.0)

Ruby: her bed (.)

Lou: right (.) where's she moved it to

Ruby: (3.0) that (.) bit [pointing left] USING DETERMINERS

Lou: that bit [laughs]

Ruby: then the baby's mattress is (.) on that bit [pointing right]

Lou: a::h I see:: (1.0) so Mummy's moved her bed so she can fit the bed in for the baby (.)ELONGATION

you excited about the baby [questioning intonation]

Ruby: (2.0) it's coming after Christmas

Lou: after Christmas (.) is Father Christmas going to bring it

Ruby: no (.) Mummy's made it

Lou: [laughs] Mummy's made it has she (.) she's clever your Mummy isn't she

Ruby: we don't know how she made it cos the books shows us (.) how's it (.) she made it

Lou: oh right (.) has she read the book with you (1.0) or are you getting a book

Ruby: (2.0) we haven't got a book about the baby we getting a book GRAMMATICALLY INCORRECT, MISSING OUT LEXIS

Lou: are you looking forward to the baby (.) do you want a baby brother or a baby sister

Ruby: (3.0) I want a girl HESTITATION

Lou: a girl (2.0)

Ruby: I want to call it Dora GOOD SEMANTIC AWARNESS

Lou: [laughs] Dora (.) after Dora the Explorer HUMOUR

Ruby: and when she gets bigger (.) she (.) she can explorer [laughs]

Lou: [laughs] when she gets bigger she can be an explorer COMPARATIVE ADJECTIVE , SKINNERS REINFORCEMENT THEORY

Ruby: no (.) Mum said when we at Sun (.) Sunday dinner (.) she'll be adorable [laughs]

Lou: adorable (.) that's clever isn't it

 

 

AO1- LANGUAGE- 24 ACTUAL-24             

AO2-THEORY -6 ACTUAL-16

AO3- CONTEXT-6 ACTUAL-8

 

When the caregiver repeats the sentence ‘em Simba bitted by a dog’, she subtly alters  and changes the material verb to ‘got bitten by a dog’. This lexical choice has the effect of changing the child’s language and identifying the mistake however, the child’s confident is not altered. In another instance, the child makes a grammatical error when she does not put the concrete noun ‘glass’ as a plural. The primary caregiver then simplifies her language and repeats the childs sentence without making any alterations.

The rhetorical question used by the caregiver’ ‘are you going to be a bossy boots all morning’, suggests subtle control and that she is telling the child her actions were unacceptable, and she wants them to change immediately.

 

 

Steven Pinker- the 10 grammatical rules

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/15/steven-pinker-10-grammar-rules-break

This article emphasis how complex the English language is and is written in a very informative manner. It manages to combine expertise and common sense and structures it in a understandable way.

AQA website

http://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/english/as-and-a-level/english-language-b-2705

AO1-LANGUAGE- NEED 24 MARKS
A02-THEORY-NEED 16 MARKS
AO3-CONTEXT-8 MARKS

General CLA notes:

• 'Language defies you as being human'
• 'From birth, language is in our lives'
• Humans are the only individuals on the planet who can speak
• Expressing thought processes unique to yourselves
• Children use minimal effort when speaking
• We are still unsure as to how we speak
• Dr Deb Roy- speech home project
• Children use determiners when they are unsure how to label objects e.g 'dat'
• 2 word stage=syntax
• Adults unconsciously simplify lexis in order to converge
• Every child has a caregiver and this is normally the parents
• Semantic awareness outstrips phonological ability
• At five years old the child should know 5000 lexis
• Adults use 15,000 words a day
• Despite decades of research, we are no closer to discovering how we acquire language
• Children can often identify objects and nouns but not actions and verbs
• William Fifer- babies
• Noam Chomsky- LAD

http://www.universalteacher.org.uk/

• 'Language defies you as being human'
• Cognition theory-piaget
• We have an innate ability to speak
• The case of genie-the wild child
• Fox p-2 part of your DNA

Telegraphic stage: incomplete syntax/utterance, struggle with question structures, struggle with negatives, use the negative lexis 'no' for negatives


Caregiver: Skinners reinforcement theory, unconsciously guiding the child's language

Exam content

A01 – linguistic analysis

A02 – Stages + theory

A03 – Context 

Lexis

Spoken: Features of spontaneous speech

-          Phatic talk/taboo language

-          Non-fluency features: fillers, hedges, ellipsis, overlap, back channel, False starts

-          Adjacency pairs

-          Grice’s maxims 

-          Idiolect, sociolect 

-          Transactional/Interactional talk

-          Discourse marker

-          Pragmatics

-          Paralinguistic features 

-          Tag questions 

-          Halliday

-          High frequency lexis/low frequency lexis

Written:

-          Pronoun

-          Adjective

-          Verbs

-          Adverbs

-          Nouns

-          Conjunctions 

-          Determiners

 

Both: 

-          Formality

-          Register

-          Discourse 

-          Gender/power/technology

 

 

 

Grammar = Structure, context

-          Syntax (sentence structure)

-          Imperative (command) 

-          Mitigated imperative (polite, using please)

-          Interrogative (question) 

-          Declarative (statement)

-          Exclamative (!)

-          Pronouns, nouns, verbs, adjectives, modal verbs (outcome), adverbs, prepositions, determiners, conjunctions

-          Semantics/pragmatics

-          Noun phrases, pre-modified/post modified nouns

-          Simple/compound/complex sentences

-          Punctuation 

 

Features of spontaneous sppech

phatic expressions

commonly known as 'small talk'; establishes and maintains social relationships



non-fluency features

a range of features that interrupt the flow of speech



fillers

words and expressions that have little meaning that are inserted into speech



hesitations

filled pauses, such as 'um' and 'er'



pauses

can be silent or filled; can be a non-fluency feature or intentional



false starts

changing a grammatical construction or pronunciation 'mid-stream



overlapping speech

two people talking at the same time during a conversation



colloquialisms

informal or conversational expressions



slang

highly informal language that often consists of made-up words or conventional words used in new ways.



contractions

the combination of two words into one by eliminating one or more sounds and indicating the omission with an apostrophe



paralinguistic features (list)

facial expressions, body gestures, body language, eye
gaze



elision

the omission of a sound or syllable when speaking



hedge

words that avoid directness and attempt to lessen a negative effect



tag questions

questions attached to the end of statements



adjacency pairs

a related pair of utterances by two speakers one after the other, always found together



feedback

verbal and nonverbal responses to a message



vocal effects

Sounds such as sighing, yawning, huffing, laughing, humming



code switching

Changing from one mode of speech to another as the situation demands, whether from one language to another or from one dialect of a language to another


Address

Affective features

Agenda

Adjacency pairs

Adverbials

Back-channelling

Backtracking

Closing conversation

Co-operative signals

Deictics

Disagreement

Facilitating mechanisms

Feedback

Fillers

Foregrounding

High considerateness/high involvement speakers

Humour

Implicatures (implication)

Introducing new topics

Metamessages

Monitoring talk

Opening conversation: request, question, offer

Overlap (co-operative)

Pauses

Rapport talk/report talk

Relevance

Repetition

Simultaneous speech

Tag questions

Turn-taking

Types of conversation: child/adult, gender related, power related (e.g. doctor-patient)

Uncompleted sentences

Utterance types: statement (declarative); question (interrogative); command (imperative); exclamation

INFORMATION TAKEN FROM-https://quizlet.com/10838149/features-of-spontaneous-speech-flash-cards/ &http://www.teachit.co.uk/armoore/lang/speech.htm

Frameworks

English Language- Frameworks

                   

Frameworks

These are very important for talking about a piece of text, whether written or spoken, and are really the structure you'll use for analysing texts. There are six frameworks:

1. Discourse Structure
2. Graphology
3. Lexis
4. Grammar/Syntax
5. Phonology
6. Pragmatics

Inital A2 coursework ideas

Initial Idea’s:

I have gained permission to work with my three year old cousin and to monitor his language over time.  I have also considered looking at his literacy work however; this would be difficult as he is not producing much work containing lexis.

Mangotsfield primary have allowed me to visit weekly and work with children of all ages (reception to year six) however, if I choose to do this I need signed confirmation from all the children’s parents. Although, this would give me the most valuable data, the research for this would take a long time.

I am also considering, recording my year 9 and my year 7 cousin- one is male and one is female. I am unsure whether to look at gender difference between them or how much more developed ones language is in comparison to the other.

In addition to this, I am interested in the language of teenagers and being in a college environment, the data would be easy to obtain and then transcribe. This could also be a predominately gender based experiment in comparing the differences between the sexes.  

Grice's Maxims

Grice’s Maxims-

 

1. The maxim of quantity, where one tries to be as informative as one possibly can, and gives as much information as is needed, and no more.
2. The maxim of quality, where one tries to be truthful, and does not give information that is false or that is not supported by evidence.
3. The maxim of relation, where one tries to be relevant, and says things that are pertinent to the discussion.
4. The maxim of manner, when one tries to be as clear, as brief, and as orderly as one can in what one says, and where one avoids obscurity and ambiguity.

Information taken from ‘http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/dravling/grice.html’

Coursework- English language A2

Coursework A2-

2500 words overall- 10% either way 

Introduction-

This must consist of 400 words and it must have the primary purpose of explaining  why I am interested in the chosen topic, link it to theories and research i have obtained, frameworks and a brief description of what i expect to find.

Methodology-

This must consist of 300 words and needs to include the data that i intended to collect, the process i went through to ensure my data was comparable, reliable and ethical and a data description table with useful names. Within this section i could also choose to include the problems i faced when trying to obtain my data.

Analysis-

Ideally, this should be 1500 words as this is considered an important section of the coursework. Two frameworks should be explained in this: lexis and grammatical and these two parts should consist of 750 words each.  Under these headings, PEEE and context should be elaborated upon, theories and interpretations should be discussed here also. 

Conclusion- 

The conclusion should be 250 words and it should explain whether our hypothesis was proven or dis proven, you should summarize and explain significant findings here.

Evaluation-

This is the shortest part of the coursework and this should predominately consist of understanding of factors that make your conclusion tentative. The evaluation gives you the opportunity to impress the reader with depth of thought. You should also discuss how far you can generalise your findings and if they give you the opportunity for further research to be conducted . 

As well as the 2500 word essay, a 750 word media essay needs to be completed. The media text needs to be designed for a mass audience and should be aimed at the general public as opposed to the exam board; it needs to be a publishable article about your coursework.

David Crystal

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Crystal

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

This theory states that an individuals thoughts and actions are determined by the language or languages that an individual speaks. In addition to this, this theory discusses that all human thoughts are bound by the restraints of language and that language shapes our thinking and behaviour. 

http://linguistlist.org/ask-ling/sapir.cfm

The link above discusses this theory.

AS English language- gender

AS Gender

Theories:

Zimmerman and West- this theory explores the gender difference of females and males in conversation. The concept of interruptions is discussed within this theory. This concluded that over 90% of males interupt in conversation and that the desired state for females is to be silent during conversation. 

Peter Trudgil- this theory studies pronouncian and how it varies depending on social class and gender. A common fault in an individuals pronouncian would be dropping the letter 'h'. It was concluded that females are more likely to pronounce the full lexis and are less likely to drop specific letters. Overt prestige and covert prestige are discussed and linked in with this theory. 

Pamela Fishman- Fishman focuses on women's roles in conversation and the concept of shift work that women seen to do in conversation. This theory concludes that women keep the conversation going. 

Deborah Tannen- conflict vs compromise, orders vs proposals, information vs feelings, status vs support,  advice vs understanding and independence vs intimacy 

Spender, 1980 quoted ' Boats as well as cars are seen as female because they are objects that have traditionally been under the control of men. They are physically attractive objects.'

English Language       Brooke Hamblin

Language and Power

 This is an example of a langauge and power text

Power asymmetry: difference in power status of participants

Unequal encounter: a power asymmetry but specifically demonstrated in the physical layout

Power shift: when the balance in power changes

Powerful participant: the individual who has more power

Less powerful participant: the individual with less power

Linguistic constraint’s: tactics to control interaction

Face: Brown and Levingston’s theory about an individual’s self-esteem and/or emotional needs

Positive face: Want to feel loved and appreciated

Negative face: the want to be left alone

Wareings theory: three types of power

·         Political power- politicians, law police

·         Personal power- occupation or role e.g.teacher

·         Social group- power, age, race, gender, class

·         Instrumental power- maintaining and enforcing authority

·         Influential power-influencing your actions, very persuasive

·         Ideology – set of belief systems, way or perceiving the world

POWER DEPENDS ON CONTEXT

English Language- Summer AS task                                                   Brooke Hamblin

 

 

Initial Ideas: I am going to undergo an investigation on child language acquisition. I will specifically be focusing on the language development from the ages of reception to year one. In order to obtain this information, I have gained permission to work with the children in Mangotsfield primary school.

Links:

Linguistlist.org/lang-acq

All children acquire language in the same way- no matter what language or how many languages. This source specifies that it is a gradual process and numerous errors will be made throughout. Children imitate their parent’s language during their early stages. However, when children start socialising with other children, their language adapts and children’s again. The environment is crucial when children are learning language; they model their behaviour on what goes on around them.

Thestudentroom.co.uk/revision:childlangacq-speak

This source breaks down the stages of a child’s learning in months. It states that from 18-24 months the child’s vocabulary will consist of two hundred words however, there will be no consistency.   Within this source, three theories are also discussed: Imitation theory, Innateness theory and the fact language is acquired because it is necessary.

Aggslangauge.wordpress/Chomsky

This article is based around Noam Chomsky and his theory that every child is based with a language acquisition device which encodes the major principles of language. This article is different to other articles due to the fact it states language cannot be learnt through imitation, as the language spoken around them is usually by adults and they do not always speak with grammatically correct English and their English is often broken and irregular. In addition to this, it states that all children, regardless of their intellectual ability will become fluent in their native language by the age of five.

 

www.theschoolrun.com/what-your-child-learns-reception

Within this article, it states the methods which children learn method in a normal school day. Some methods include: role play, listening, show and tell. The aim for children in schools is that they work towards constructing full sentences.

 

 

Slideshare.com/childlanguageacqusition

This article states that children must understand lexis before they can use it. Question and answer is a popular format which rapidly helps speed up the process of language acquisition. A theory which is discussed within this source would be ‘Bellugis theories’.

 

 

Reading log:

Birthtofive.org/continuity-and-transition-reception

Aggslanguage.wordpress

Thestudentroom.com

Lingumd-edu