How children learn language in public schools
During the first year of a child’s life, parents and guardians are concerned with its physical development; during the second year, they watch the baby’s language development very carefully. It is interesting just how children learn language. Children who are just three or four years old and cannot yet tie their shoelaces, are able to speak in full sentences without any specific language training.
The current view of child language development especially in public school is that it is an instinct – something as natural as eating or sleeping. According to experts in this area, this language instinct is innate – something each of us is born with. But this prevailing view has not always enjoyed widespread acceptance.
In the middle of last century, experts of the time, including a renowned professor at Harvard University in the United States, regarded child language development as the process of learning through
DepEd RO VI Librarian II, mere repetition. Language “habits” interaction a child has with its parents, developed as young children were guardians, classmates and teachers rewarded for repeating language is crucial to its development. The correctly and ignored or punished language at school in particular acts when they used incorrect forms as models for the developing child. In of language. Over time, a child, fact, a child’s day-to-day experience is according to this theory, would learn so important that the child will learn language much like a dog might to speak in a manner very similar to learn to behave properly through the model speakers it hears. training. Given that the model school is so
Yet even though the modern view important, it is interesting to consider holds that language is instinctive, the role of teachers. As children experts are convinced that the actually do not understand every
ibeth meaning of every word at the start of their language training at school even through sounds and patterns, this supports the idea that not every child is born a speaker. But public schools now have the capacity to teach the language. This ability is enhanced if they are involved in classroom conversation. Quality education public high school can indeed be measured with how children learn language from the beginning of their education. ( Paid article)