The Pros And Cons Of Language Acquisition

We are all the same with the potential to learn which every language our parents use. However, that is not so “babies are born knowing a great deal about language.” In the article, the writer wrote “Babies don 't know beforehand which language they are going to be exposed to. Potentially they have to be able to master any one of thousands of different languages. And, yet by the time they are four or five, children have figured out precisely which language is spoken in their community.” However, babies are fast learners. Children start learning their parent’s language long before they say their first word.

Inquiry into Cultures Culture is defined as the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group; also: the characteristic features of everyday existence (such as diversions or a way of life) shared by people in a place or time (Merriam Webster). Culture makes people unique and without it, everyone would be blended together. Culture in my opinion is a great thing; however, with all great things come challenges. Learning more about other cultures would be a great way to overcome these challenges, and learning another language is a huge step in that direction. One of the biggest challenges brought about by having many cultures, is the misunderstanding between people of these cultures.

Childhood or infantile amnesia is the inability of adults to recall autobiographical memories from early childhood (Eyesnck & Keane, 2013). We are generally unable to remember memories from before the first three to four years of our life. By the time children are two years old, they are able to answer questions about recent events although they often need careful prompting to retrieve the memories. Over the next four or five years, children become better at recalling and describing important events in their lives and by the age of seven or eight, most children have well-developed autobiographical memories with the same rate of normal forgetting seen in adults. An extensively used method for testing childhood amnesia is the cue word technique.

The pre-linguistic stage observes infants simply crying to communicate, progressively cooing and responding to sounds and human voices. As they near the age of one, infants begin to turn their head towards sound, babble, giggle, visually respond to people and respond to their own name. It is thought that by one, they understand approximately twenty words in context and very simple messages or instructions. The early years sees the appearance of the first words, and in the first half of this stage children are expected to use 6/20 recognisable words, and to feel confident in joining in with repeated songs and rhymes they may of heard. They also begin to respond to the simple instructions they receive.

In support of his findings, Skinner eventually realized that human beings could not only respond also manage their environment to induce results. However, Skinner and Watson both repudiated that thinking or emotion plays a significant role in determining behavior. Instead, humans appear to learn many behaviors -including languages- through repetitions and positive or negative reinforcement. Scientifically speaking, behaviorism explains how learning takes place. When it is taken into account in the field of language teaching, it shows how languages are learned.

There are lots of opinions created by one another about languages, whether it be personal or based by society. Martin Espada and Richard Rodriguez have a big part on being bilingual and forming two different opinions and arguments. Being bilingual to Espada is having an Identity, love, and connecting to your heritage. However; for Rodriguez it’s something different. Rodriguez throughout his life struggles having to learn the public language only to lose his private language.

How does the author’s dialect affect the readers’ interpretation of the story? Throughout the research on dialect it was interesting to find so many different types of dialect throughout the world. There are even many different types of dialect in the United States of America and throughout our history. In this paper the discussion of philosophy of dialect, American dialect, musical and vocal dialect and finally how it all ties together by the author and reader. Before beginning the different types of dialect it is very important to know the definition of dialect.

One point Swales brought up was that communication is necessary to fall under the category of a discourse community and that each discourse community must have a unique way of communicating (221). That is a way of saying that each discourse community must have their own language. If a group of people are really part of the discourse community, then they will be able to communicate fluently (Swales 221). Communication and language is a very hot topic in Gee’s article and we see that when he says, “Someone can speak English, but not fluently. However, someone cannot engage in a discourse in a less than fluent matter.

These are not typical things that we think about daily, so it was interesting to take a step back and study these concepts from an academic and engineering standpoint. There are many reasons why these ideas are important. We read a long article by WM. A. Wulf detailing just how and why diversity is important, specifically in engineering. He discusses many

All of us have different childhood memories, Babies always remember things, but with short-term memory which stays 3-5 secs in babies. But they remember the sounds, such as singing bird or other toys. After birth, in 6 months, they can also remember places, locations, and people