Language Learning

God has given us the special ability to communicate with one another through spoken language.  This makes us different from all other species in the animal kingdom.  Before babies are able to speak in a discernable language, they are able to understand language.  I find this very interesting because they are able to communicate their needs to their mother that they are thirsty or hungry without spoken language.  Instead they use cues such as crying and pointing to something to tell us what they want or need. 

            All babies start to speak at different ages.  There are a variety of factors that will determine when a child will start to speak, for example, their personality, their abilities, their desire.  The question is how do they learn linguistics?  How does a child know that their mother is showing them a table if they are simply pointing at the table and saying “table”?  How does the child understand that the mother is not referring to the action of pointing or the color of the table?  Tomasello says that it is because the children already know the object and the intention of the mother but they are not able to articulate the sound of the word just yet.

            The child has already been paying attention to the conversations of their parents for many months by the time they have spoken their first word.  They have learned the art of language.  They know that one person speaks while the other is listening and then they switch turns that is children emulate their parents.  They try to speak and know more vocabulary.  Babies learn very fast by repetition because they hear the same words but in different position and that’s to help them to build more words.

           

Tomasello says that children who spent time with their mothers between 12 to 18 months they had figured out the words faster because they listened carefully with enough attention  every word that their mother saying. For example, if the baby looks at a table all the time I have to follow what is my baby looking at and make contact with him by saying that is table or this is a black table. This is better than asking him to look at another thing like look at this it is TV. This is because the children can not change their attention very fast and if we ask them to change their attention that will confuse them.  From my experiences , when I speak with my daughter and follow her attention and talk with her about what she wants to know, it has led her to know more vocabulary and developed her understanding more and more.

Also, Tomsello says that “ following in” is the best way to get children  to learn more language.  It becomes weaker when the children get older. It is a good way for the babies up to 18 months, but after that we have to use a new ways to help build more vocabulary in our children memory. In order for children to add more  vocabulary, we need  to begin with the words they have previously learned and from there gradually add to their learning.   

In my opinion, the children have ability to speak but they learn words from the people around them, that is babies can understand what their mothers saying  and doing. When was my daughter 6 months I played with her, moving my hand and singing a song she started to laughed and  to move her hands. When I stopped the song she started to say some thing and I heard her voice as she said please said that again or continue.

 Children are very smart and we can explore that through Tomsello when he says babies understand, but they can not talk. The question I am thinking about relates as to how they understand. I wonder if their eye contact, face and body language is enough to help them understand what others saying. For example, last week I went to my friend who has a baby 5 months old. While I was speaking with her mother and her friend, I look at the baby . As I was smiling, I made contact with the baby.  After a while I noticed that she tried to speak for me and all the time while she looked at me I was wondering if  she understood me and if she wanted me to speak with her .

In conclusion, humans have a super ability to learn more than that other of animals. We can know more about that through our children. Babies are smart, creative and have a good attention spen to learn language from their parents and other people around them.