Exam revision:

Noam Chomsky:
Said that everyone has a language acquisition device in which is a mechanism which gives us the ability to obtain language.


Jean Piaget:
A child must understand a word before they use it.


Jean Berko-Glesaon:
Jean conducted a 'wug' test in a classroom environment. 'Wugger' 'Wugging'. Although the lexis 'wug' was a made up word, the children were able to subconsciously apply the grammatical rules to the lexis. Proves that children learn plurals off by heart.


David Crystal:
Children learn language through copying and imitating others, this is how children develop accents.


A child never makes a mistake, always a virtuous error. Every virtuous error that is made, the child is learning a valuable lesson and is altering their language appropriately.


Vygotsky says that role play assists the children in learning the world around them.


Brown (1973) studied children’s language development between the ages of 20 months and 36 months and found the sequence shown below occurred regularly. The features are also listed in the order in which they were acquired:

1)    –ing

2)    plural ‘-s’

3)    possessive ‘-s’

4)    the, a

5)    past tense –ed

6)    third person singular verb ending – s (eg): he sings

7)    auxiliary verb ‘be’  (eg): I am dancing

Skinner:

Reinforcement theory, you learn from positive and negative reinforcement, and punishment. Encouraging or discouraging repetition of the lexis.