Why are children able to learn language?
Can you agree to say that just about all children learn language?
Do you know that there is enormous disagreement about why children are able to learn language?
What is YOUR theory on "why children are able to learn language?"
Before you continue to read my notes, please STOP and THINK!
Write down some of YOUR thoughts on paper! [Writing as Evolution! Thinking With a Pencil! This is an important cognitive experience for you to have before you answer the question of " Is writing promote children's thinking? How? Why?" ]
Noam Chomsky (e.g., 1972) proposed one answer to that question: People possess a "language organ" that allows them to acquire language especially easily. Chomsky proposed that the language organ embody innate knowledge of aspects of grammar that are consistent across all the world's language ("universal grammar"). This innate knowledge would allow children to recognize which of a few possible types of grammar their native language used and thus to learn it quickly, despite its inherent complexity. [Just for your note: according to many researchers (e.g., R. Siegler, 1998) "The problem is that there does not appear to be a universal grammar to be learned."]
According to Snow (1986), children learn in cultures in which adults converse with children on topics of special interest to the children, in cultures in which adults refuse to discuss such topics, and in cultures in which they discourage young children from talking to them at all. Acquisition of most complex cognitive skills is more dependent on favorable circumstances and direction instruction.
Siegler (1998) discusses that language acquisition is its self-motivating properties. Some children are interested in trucks, others in flowers, yet others in dinosaurs. In contrast, all children are sufficiently interested in language to master a very complex system in a relatively short time. Part of this is due to a desire to communicate.
Siegler also mentions that people's interest in language goes beyond communicating; we also try to speak grammatically. Where you going? I'm going. Shoe fixed. Talk to mommy. Shoe fixed. See Antho. Anthony. Good night. See morrow morning. (Weir, 1962) Beginning language users often ask question such as Anthony's "Where you going?" other people understand such statements, respond appropriately to them, and rarely correct them. Yet children soon abandon such immature forms in favor of grammatically correct ones. This motivation cannot be attributed to a general desire to imitate adults and older children, as young children's special tastes in clothing, music, toy, and food indicate. Instead, the desire to learn language, like the desire to be near other people and to understand the world around us, seem to be a basic part of people's makeup.
(References)
Chomsky, N. (1972). Language and mind (enlarged edition). New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Siegler, R. (1998). Children's thinking (3rd edition). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Snow , C. E. (1986).Conversation with children. In P. Fletcher & M. garman (Eds.), Language acquisition: Studies in first language development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Weir, R. W. (1962). Language in the crib. The Hague: Mouton & Company.