Introduction
Jessica is a 3-year-old girl who has speech and language difficulties. She has spent the majority of her life around her primary socialization which consists of her mum and gran. When she started nursery the Practitioners realised there was an issue with her speech and language, Practitioners can pick up on milestones in children and Jessica wasn’t meeting her language development, which impacted her holistic development. The Practitioners were unable to understand what Jessica was saying. Jessica struggled socializing with her peers, she had a strong attachment to her mum and found it very difficult to settle into the nursery.
Theorist
Noam Chomsky Chomsky (1957) developed a book called “Syntactic Structures”, with the idea that “All human beings may be born with an innate understanding of how language works”. Stanborough, J, R (2019).
Chomsky’s theory of ‘Universal Grammar’ has reformed the study of language and according to Chomsky, we can interpret language because we have a simple understanding of how communication is arranged. He believed that language acquisition must be innate because of how complex it is and that it would be extremely difficult to learn and master a new language in a short space of time. Chomsky supported the nature aspect over nurture because all children follow the same sequence. He believed that children had an optimal learning age and by the age of 10 children will be able to talk in entirety. Chomsky also believed that language is what makes us different from other species and children can learn any human language.
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He believes that all children have a LAD (Language Acquisition Device) in their brain which is pre-wired and encodes the major concepts, which allows children to understand vocabulary and the structure of grammar, its believed children naturally know how to combine a noun and a verb and create a sentence. He states the language passes through the LAD and children learn an appropriate set of rules for the language they are learning. Chomsky believes that language comes naturally to children, they don’t have to be told to do it, and by speaking around children and bathing them in language they will learn it. He also believes that if children are corrected, they will still speak the same way as before they were corrected.
Evaluate
Jessica has a speech and language issue and Chomsky believed if Jessica were to be “bathed” in a language she would be able to learn it, as it's inherited biologically, and when language goes into the ‘LAD’ she will make sense of it. Chomsky believes when Jessica hears words and sounds she will have the ability to grasp the concept of language. Chomsky also believes Jessica is at the optimal learning age for learning and processing language and when Jessica hears words and sounds, she will be able to process and learn them. However according to Skinner's Theory of ‘Operant Conditioning,’ he believed that children learn language through positive reinforcement, where praise and recognition are given to the child which will encourage them to learn and develop, which will have a positive impact on their education. Skinner also believed in negative reinforcement so this would be to ignore and not to acknowledge Jessica if she said something incorrectly, which he believed would encourage her to communicate properly and she would want to learn the language for the ‘reward’. Chomsky criticized Skinner's theory “Children will never acquire the tools needed for processing an infinite number of sentences if the language acquisition mechanism was dependant on language input alone”. Lemetyinen, H (2012).
Analyse
Chomsky’s theory would be good for Jessica as it encourages her to be surrounded by language, which would enable her to learn words and produce sentences therefore the Practitioners would be able to understand what she’s saying. By socializing with peers, Jessica will be able to build on her vocabulary whilst she mixes with her peers and expands on her linguistic development. I don’t agree that Jessica can’t be corrected in her speech and that she is able to understand the grammatical errors which she is making otherwise speech therapists wouldn’t be able to provide the support in which she needs to help with her language development. Chomsky’s theory helps with the development of Jessica's speech and language as it informs us that if people who are working with children should communicate with them at every opportunity will stimulate the innate learning of language ability which will help promote Jessica’s development.
References
- Stanborough, J, R (2019), Born This Way: Chomsky’s Theory: Explains Why We’re So Good at Acquiring Language, Healthline, available at [https:www.healthline.comhealthchildrens-healthchomsky-theory] last accessed [280121].
- Lemetyinen, H (2012) Language Acquisition, Simply Psychology, available at [https:www.simplypsychology.orglanguage.html] last accessed [280121].
- McLeod, S, A (2020) Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Simply Psychology, available at [https:www.simplypsychology.orgmaslow.html] last accessed [280121].
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