How Languages are learned To start off with this book started with a very true statement that as educators as we learn new approaches to teachers we quickly abandoned what we were doing and started something new. Therefore this book has come to help to evaluate existing textbooks and materials but also adapt ways that are more consistent to how to better help our students understand how we learn language. The purpose of this chapter is to look at research and how to prepare for the second language acquisitions. First of all we need to help our students in many ways. We need to continue to let our students learn from being social, like BICS and that will help them have a higher level of knowledge and performance. I need to help my students develop and scaffold them as they develop our language. Like the behaviorist theorist (B.F. Skinner) sees language development. First is behaviorism, they see is as children imitate what is around them and respond to positive reinforcement. They will start with word to word repetition, and once they have a good grasp of the language he will stop imitating. Also Interactionist believe that is a mixture of innate and environment that helps a child develop based on their experiences. Either way students will learn and grow in their language. I know that if slow down when I speak and use simpler sentences they will pick up the language. I also see that as they continue through their development of learning the language they will work on grammatical morphemes and their order of acquisition. They will not follow in the set sequence since they do not develop at the same age and rate. This will be good to have so I can look deeper that their writing and know where to go next with them. As the student grows in their language they will develop more vocabulary due to being exposed to more people, and their social interaction. Then as student go to school and continue to learn to read they will be exposed to more words, and symbols. They will discover that words may have more than one meaning which is called metalinguistic awareness. I am seeing this in my class a lot when we are talking during reading group. Since taking linguist my students are looking more at words and the different meaning. It is great to see them so excited about words. Just the other day we looked at queer and molested from a book we are reading, and the way they know them is different from what the book was saying. By reading students will be exposed to new words and phrases and vocabulary. Most important for me is that having two languages will open the doors for my students, help create academic success in metalinguistic awareness. The part of the article that I still question is how to help my students is the fact that they are losing their first language. I feel bad, and I know that because they are not exposed as much or practice as much is part of problem. The article said that parents can work on the additive bilingualism and they should look the second language. I wonder if this is really true, and if so we should be telling our parents to do this. I will have to look deeper into this research.
In the beginning, there was the survey. And the survey was uncomfortable to answer because I did not agree with the way a few of the questions were phrased. #6 was especially uncomfortable because of the phrase, “ most of the mistakes.” I find myself more cognitive when reading questionnaires because the questions do not always address the topic directly, a bit too ambiguous. What really threw me for a loop was question 16 asking about correcting student errors. I really believed that correcting errors was scaffolding my students. But after reading the behaviorist perspective, I can understand why “letting it go’ is the appropriate response. Grammatical errors will not fossilize themselves when L2 learners continue to hear correct utterances among society. Children need five to 12 corrections before it is embedded in the memory. So, what student will want to converse with a teacher who does nothing but correct their grammar? I do not want to be that teacher!
As a parent, I understood stages of language acquisition, but was not aware of the science behind it until now. Imitation is obvious when ba, ba, baing with a baby lying in your lap. But I never considered the practice stage when a child repetitively utters partial words in order to copy an adult speaker. The book cited the utterance, kawo and the adult indirectly correctly the speech by uttering carrot. It is at this stage where positive feedback is necessary so that the imitation can reformulate into practiced utterances. And it is a positive reinforcement versus a negative reinforcement that will make all the difference with incentive in a child.
I enjoyed reading this book and reminiscing about my children when they were learning to talk. My son definitely enjoyed the acquisition of questioning. He could ask a million "What is it?" and "Why?" questions a day. In fact, I later learned that one of his little friends called him the "Isit?" boy, because he asked so many questions. I didn't realize that there was an actual order for using "wh" words: What?, followed by Where? and Who? and then Why? at around 2 years old. My son was definitely about 2 years old when he was asking me all those questions. Nagy, Herman and Anderson stated that, "Vocabulary grows at a rate of between several hundred and more than a thousand words a year, depending mainly on how much and how widely children read." This is during the school age years, and since vocabulary is so important for every aspect of school I really encourage my students' parents to read to them as much as possible. So every year I propose the "100 Book Reading Challenge". I provide a list of over 100 books recommended by librarians, that every child should read, or have read to them. I find that the students who actually take this challenge and read the 100 books do become my strongest readers and they are able to have all that background knowledge to pull from when we are reading stories in class because they have read a wide variety of books. One of my favorite times of day when my children were little was bedtime. I loved reading to each of them individually and only wish I could help my students' parents develop this favorite time of day also.
As stated above, the activity in the introduction chapter was difficult to answer. I stayed with the agree somewhat and disagree somewhat areas. In class when we did the activity, I did think how agreeing was more positive then disagreeing with some of the statements, and am interested to see how I may change my view as we read through this book. Chapter 1 which discusses first language acquisition, is something I am familiar with. I recalled much of the information from previous classes I have taken. Reading through the different perspectives, I believe in each...I do think that imitation and practice is important for a child to learn language, such as saying bye-bye and waving to a baby, who will eventually pick it up and do the same. But I do believe that a child does have an innate capacity to learn language. After watching the documentary about Genie, I see how there is a critical period to learn language, and once past that period, it is more difficult to acquire the knowledge and skills needed to learn the language. And finally, I do believe that children learn language from their language experiences, as stated by Lieven and Tomasello. Interacting and exposing children to language is extremely important for their learning. As I do with my own daughter, reading each night, having conversations, describing what is around us, etc. has helped her with language, and I feel that she does have a great vocabulary and verbal skills. I know the demands of parenting can be exhausting, but just taking a few minutes each day to interact with a child is important to their language developement.
May 18, 2013 Reading chapter 1 of How Languages are Learned reminds me of the educational psychology class I took for my undergraduate degree. It was one of my favorite courses. I recall learning about the different stages of human development, which involves speech acquisition. This also brings to my mind the development of my three children. They each progressed differently through the stages of speech. My oldest son spoke early in his development and seemed to act like a sponge and absorb everything that people around him said. My middle child was born three years and nine months later. He hardly said a word until he was eighteen months old. My youngest is a daughter and she acquired speech more quickly similar to my oldest.
I was very sad when watching the stories of Victor and Genie. It makes sense, especially with these extreme cases, that there could be more factors that contributed to their ability to acquire language. I have never heard of CPH and agree, based on these two stories, that access to language is critical in infancy and early childhood.
For the past ten years, I have had a majority of ESL students in my classroom. I have had many conversations with parents that tell me their child knows English. The parent may ask why their child is not getting a good grade in reading and writing. I then tell parents that their child knows how to talk to students on the playground but “school English” or “English in the classroom” is different. I suggest that parents continue to speak to their child in their first language. I talk about the benefits of people that know two languages. I learned about the terms: Cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP) and basic interpersonal communication skills (BICS). These are the terms for language in academic and informal settings. It’s important that students and parents learn the variety of language appropriate to different settings when learning a second language.
My responses to the survey changed quite a bit the second time around. When I first answered the questions, I strongly agreed or strongly disagreed with a few. For instance, I strongly agreed that languages are learned mainly through imitation. Obviously after reading from Troike , this is not always the case. After reading Troike as well as Chapter 1 in Lightbown and Spada, I have revised my answers to agree and disagree. I too made a connection with the developmental stages of learning language. I remember taking a Child Psychology class for my undergraduate degree and found it fascinating. On p. 7 of Lightbown and Spada, I found the term “telegraphic” quite interesting when interpreting sentences like “baby fall down”. As a teacher of primarily ELL students, I have to be telegraphic because quite often students omit function words and grammatical morphemes when they speak, but yet I do understand what they are saying. I have to agree with Vygotsky’s theory that “ children’s language develops primarily from social interaction”. I remember the year I taught 2nd grade I had a student who was a bilingual refusal. His parents did not want him in a bilingual classroom because all of his friends had been exited into a general education class and they didn’t want him to suffer socially. They wanted him to be completely immersed in an English classroom. I was shocked! To my pleasant surprise, the student blossomed! He not only picked up the English language by the second semester, he advanced to the highest level of reading for his grade level. I saw a similar scenario in my student teaching experience. In the beginning of the year a student from Germany entered the classroom knowing no English . By the end of the year, he spoke English quite clearly. I would never have guessed that he didn’t know one word of English had my cooperating teacher not told me. I also agree with Vygotsky’s belief of the zone of proximal development . I quite frequently move students during whole group activities so they are not distracted and they are capable of so much more work because of it.
The first chapter of Lighthouse and Spada brought me back to last semesters ENG. 341 class. The authors discuss auditory discrimination, how a child can hear difference between sounds. I am still amazed that infants can make distinctions between phonemic sounds that are not used in their language. Our teacher Gina spoke one weekend on this very topic. She said something along the line about kids brains are wired to filter out sounds they do not need.
As a parent I also enjoyed reading about the section titled: Milestones and Development Sequences. It made me smile while reading and brought back lots of memories about my daughter’s development. In negation-stage 2 the example used “Daddy no comb hair”, was exactly what my daughter would say.
As a parent the section on behaviorist perspective I also found to be true. The book discussed Skinner along with traditional behaviorists’ hypotheses. They found when children imitated the language produced by those around them was received with positive reinforcement. I can remember saying things while playing with my daughter and having her repeat parts of what was said back to me. My reaction and excitement had to be extremely reinforcing to her, which then inter made her want to do it more.
In addition the chapter reminds me to be patient as my daughter questions everything throughout the day. Rather than be frustrated I need to remember the benefits questioning provides for her cognitive development.
Finally, the stories of ‘Victor’ and ‘Genie’ really show the importance of interacting with young children. In both cases we could see the effects of not being spoken to and worked with as a baby and throughout their early years of development. I feel that their two cases make the critical period hypothesis true.
I thought the beginning of chapter one was really interesting in how it explained that all children will learn grammatical morphemes, questions words, and word order in questions all at the same time. I also found it strange that there is no real reason for why kids learn grammatical morphemes in the same order. The research showed that it might be a combination of different factors that contributes to the order of acquisition. I thought that maybe innate ability might be at play here. Maybe this happens because our brains are just wired that way. Lightbown and Spada said that kids will acquire “wh-words” in a similar pattern because of the questions they are asked and because of their cognitive ability. My question is what if a child is not asked those “wh-words” or is asked a question using one of the “wh words” that is acquired later more frequently? Does that mean the order of acquisition will change? Or will they still acquire those words in the same order? I really enjoyed reading and learning more about all the different perspectives on language development. I think that it is kind of funny that so many people thought that there was only a cut and dry explanation for language, when to me it is obvious that it is a mesh of all different perspectives. Children will learn from imitating their parents like behaviorists thought. We also need to have some kind of basis already in place in our minds for our brains to make sense out of the language we are learning. And what we have learned from Genie and Victor is that there is a period of time where one must learn vocal production of language, but that does not mean that we cannot learn some form of language. In my opinion all of these theories have valid points as well as flaws, but I think that a mixture of all of them into a melting pot is going to get us the closest picture of language and how people acquire it.
I too enjoyed reading the chapter because it makes me think about what I can do for my second language learners and to be able to begin to see where they are in their language development and for me to respond in a way to help them develop in both their languages. As I read through chapter one I kept thinking to myself how import it is for children to be exposed to language and be able to respond to it. I look back at my own two children how my wife and I and the grandparents would sit and read and talk to them about the books we shared together. I saw how they develop into good readers and to be able to speak well. When I saw Victor and Genie it reminded me how important for children to be able to go through the stages of language development. I think all three major linguistics theorist have a point. Language is developed from the beginning and continues through birth and through our early stages of childhood, but I think it doesn’t stops there. I believe we need to continue to reinforce our language by reading and writing to keep our minds healthy.
The little things at the right time really make a difference. Like many of you, as I read I could not help but think about our daughter Jacquelyn and how her language developed. I remember how my wife, other family members, and I would take the time to read and have normal conversations. We never used "baby talk", but would use our typical daily language as we talked with each other. It was amazing to see how much Jacquelyn was developing over time. Although it sounds like we were doing a lot, it felt like we really were not. We were just having normal conversations with each other. Being an only child, Jacquelyn has always been around adults. It has been fun seeing her imitating word choice from language used. It even get to the point at times when I can actually say, "Now, that is your mother talking." Children need to be given these experiences to listen, play, and develop language. I can only imagine what a change we would see if parents would only take a few minutes out of their day to just have conversations with their children and each other. For really doing so little, the language development over the years for Jacquelyn has been fantastic. As language development occurred for our daughter, I am a believer that is also one of the driving forces for her developing a love for reading. Many of our students struggle and often do not want to read because because it takes a lot of work and effort due to a lack of language development.
In reading the introduction and Chapter 1 of Lightbown & Spada I was reminded of a lot of information I had learned in my past psychology classes. I remember learning about all the different professional points of view on language development, and each one was reinforced as I read. This text also really helped me by breaking down the stages of language development. Also, taking the survey in the introduction was an excellent way to raise questions that I had not considered before. I had never before thought of how many vocabulary words would be necessary to participate in conversations with native speakers.
I think I found the most powerful concept of this reading and class meeting to be the information, discussion, and video relating to the Critical Period Hypothesis. I had seen the Genie documentary before as well as previously read up on this concept, but at this point I am still unsure of the validity. I think the evidence I have seen so far suggests that there really is a critical period in first language acquisition when it comes to human development.
Like many of my colleagues, I enjoyed reading this chapter for the simple reason that I am living it right now. With three sons ages 4, 3 and 1, I have been witnessing them go through stages as they acquire their language. First, while there are stages that are follow a developmental sequence, I have to say that each child goes through each stage at their own rate. For example, while my children have each started uttering 2-3 word sentences before 12 months, I know other children who have not started until almost two years old. I’ve always looked at it from a literacy aspect. My husband and I read to our kids every day and every night. Sometimes I feel like my kids would let us read to them for hours (or perhaps is a stalling tactic at bedtime) regardless of their motivation, I feel that this has impacted the speed at which they started to utter sentences and their vocabulary.
In Ligthbown and Spada, I enjoyed reading the different perspectives on how the learning aof a language takes place. One of the first questions that I wondered in class was, which of the theories or perspectives is the best( behaviorist, innatist, interactionists) and discovered that really it’s a combination of them. Whether acquiring a first or second language, students are going to go through stages to acquire their language. I believe many factors contribute to their learning and that CPH and ZPD are both theories that ring true in language development.
Just like Marty, I also was reflecting on this chapter and thinking back at when my kids were little and learning to speak. I would use "regular" words and my mother in law would use baby words and babble. I would tell her not to and she would say she's little it is easier this way. I would always say why teach her the same thing 2X. Let her learn it the right way the first time. Luckily, she didn't spend too much time with her. Now that I've been through these stages with my own kids, I do understand them clearly. I don't beleive that language is innate though. A person may go through all the stages to learn but needs to be tought through immitation, and practice. They don't automatically know how to speak. I try to get my parents involved with their children's language issues for the child and for themselves as well by having a list of questions that they should be asking and discussing with their child as they read nightly. This not only gets the students reading more, but gets the parents involved in their book as well and having meaningful conversations.
In reading the introduction and Chapter 1 of Lightbown & Spada I was became so excited to hear how young children develop language. This could very well be due to the fact that my husband and I are expecting our first child this December. Growing up in a large traditional Mexican family I had the privilege to be around my younger cousins as they developed language. I remember witnessing my cousin Khaleb acknowledge my name Tycora by calling me “Toe”. I remember my aunt being concerned when he wasn’t strong with language at 11 months. It wasn’t until he was closer to age 2 that he began using complete sentences. After reading Chapter 1 it was interesting to see the various perspectives that people have on language. Who is to say that a behaviorist perspective that says “the quality and quantity of the language the child hears, as well as the consistency of the reinforcement offered by others in the environment would shape a child’s language behavior” is correct. Or the innatist perspective that says “human beings are born with mental structures that are designed specifically for the acquisition of language”. Maybe even a interactionist perspective that says “language acquistition is based both on the learners’ innate abilities and on opportunites to engage in conversations, often those in which other speakers modify their speech and interaction patterns to match the learners’ communication requirements”. I feel that we can agree that each perspective carries some form of truth; however, neither perspective is the CORRECT one.
Lightbown and Spada –Intro and Chapter 1 I thought doing a survey at the beginning of class was a smart and interesting idea. It reminds me of the pre-tests I give my students. When they take the post-test, they are always amazed at how much they have learned. I’m looking forward to taking this again in June and seeing my own growth. There are a couple of items on the survey that resonated with me. #15 says that students learn what they are taught. This seems so simple, but it is not. I believe in the phrase “Caught not Taught.” I know that I can teach a concept in a whole variety of ways and it will not stick in a child’s long-term memory. I had the experience of taking two years of Spanish in high school and two more years in college. But the most Spanish I ever learned was “caught” while I was working as a waitress one summer and all the bus boys and cooks spoke Spanish. I also had a strong opinion about #17 that says students can simultaneously learn both language and academic content. I disagree because of personal experience. When I lived overseas in Indonesia, we moved to another city for three months and had intensive language lessons all day, each day. I was not expected to go to Indonesian school and learn an academic content area [CALP] at the same time I was learning the language [BICS]. I know I would have been completely overwhelmed if I had been expected to do both. I wonder if my opinion will change after reading this book? I enjoyed reading the first chapter about first language acquisition and I got out my 12-year-old son’s baby book to see if I could match up any of the utterances he was making with the various milestones and theories. I found an example of Behaviorism. One of the things I did with my son was teach him baby signs but I didn’t know how to start. My teacher-friend and I decided to do a “Fishy Unit” with our then-8-month-olds. [No kidding!] We read fish books to them, sang fishy songs, played with plastic fish and as a culminating activity took them on a “field Trip” to the Shedd Aquarium. We had a wonderful time and I bought a stuffed Nemo fish as a memento. A few weeks later I noticed my son making smacking noises with his lips. I ran to get the Nemo fish and held it up to him and made the fish-smacking noise with my lips. He repeated the noise and I gave him the fish. Over the next few days every time he made the noise, I grabbed the fish and gave it to him. I took his natural behavior of lip smacking, imitated it, he imitated me and I reinforcing the behavior with the reward of the Nemo fish. I attached the behavior of getting the fish to his lip-smacking action….pure Behaviorism!!! It worked so well that I saw according to my notes that he had six more signs right after that one, making our communication so much easier and fun too. I am happy to see that I am recognizing many terms and people in the reading, like Piaget and his object permanence and Chomsky and his universal grammar. I’m sure I had a class on the subject 20-something years ago in college. It will be good to have that knowledge in the forefront as I plan for next year’s 4th graders.
Chapter 1, Lightbrown and Spada I enjoyed this chapter. It reminded me of my own 4 children learning to speak. I felt like I was back at each stage with them. I was really able to relate to the reading because I had experience with each stage, from the initial sounds a baby makes, to the Ba-ba-ba syllable speak, one word utterance, etc. I relived the “no” stage at around age 2 and then the “why” stage when children are testing the world. However, I did find it interesting that children miss the list of morphemes in an order as they are developing their language. I guess I didn’t realize that a child will usually not skip a stage and that each stage can take a different amount of time. I too felt this was a refresher of the different theories of language acquisition that I learned in college. Relearning the studies of Piaget, Vygotsky, Skinner and Chomsky, is much easier to comprehend than in my college days. When I think of the critical period hypothesis and watching The Wild Child, I could see how this could be true. I do think that social interaction is important to the development of language and a person’s well-being, even if this interaction is ASL. My son started to learn sign language when he was an infant. Before he was able to speak he had well over 300 signs. This way of communication helped his frustration level when trying to communicate. As he began to learn words at around the age of 2, he slowly began to drop the sign language as he didn’t need it to communicate any more. Even with a disability, he too still went through each of the mentioned stages like my other children. He just went through them a little later.
Like many others I too enjoyed this chapter. I think it is fun understanding language acquisition for children between the ages of 0-6. My son is 4 and the reading helps me to understand the stage he is in. There are some things he does that really stand out to me like confusing 'her' and 'she'. He will say something like, "hers coming to our house." Or when he says "fink" instead of "think."
I also found the Critical Period Hypothesis very interesting. It just shows how important it is for us to talk to our children everyday, all the time. It becomes very apparent those children that don't get talked to or read to as much as other children. There language lacks so much. It's almost as if a mini-class should be offered to parents when they are expecting their first child. Not to joke about it, but parents should be educated on this, not just teachers. Maybe a mandatory class while you are waiting to see the dr. wouldn't be such a bad idea. I digress, but what a difference it could make if every parent would just talk to their children.
Sam, this is so true. I had a student at a conference with his parents this year who sat crying and said to his mom, "All I want is for you to say, Leo, how was your day?" How sad is that? I sometimes feel like the role of parents is being downplayed when in fact, their role needs to be brought to the forefront. I don't know what the answer is.
Lightbown and Spada I think the survey in the beginning of the chapter was a great way to begin. I had some pretty confident answers in the beginning, but changed some after reading the chapter, and will probably continue to change more of my views as I work my way through this book. Reading this did also remind me of when my own children were small and developing language. Again, I also didn’t pay much attention to the scientific reasoning behind how and why they were developing their language. It is interesting to me to now have the chance to read about the different stages, and remember and think back to that time in my life. I agree with Vygotsky’s theory regarding children developing language from social interaction, but I don’t agree that it is the only way to develop language. It is always amazing to me that at our school we have had incoming Kindergarten students who do not know their colors, cannot count to 10, or say the alphabet. It’s my own prejudice coming through that makes me wonder how nobody has counted their fingers and toes, or sung the ABC song to them. Sad. Of course, once they’re in the social setting of school, their language takes off. A term that I was unfamiliar with was the Critical Period Hypothesis. I had never considered that humans are programmed to acquire certain knowledge and skills at specific times in life. Unfortunately, the tragic story of Genie illustrated that her lack of language due to isolation prevented her from acquiring language.
I was very interested in reading this first chapter in Lightbown & Spada. I have a son at home who will be three next month, and so much of the FLA continua rang true with him. I'm not sure if I would have been able to recognize any of this as his speech was developing, but looking back it's very clear. For example, my son began speaking in present progressives at around 18 months (give or take a month or two). Since then, his language has developed into full sentences/paragraphs of speech, complete with past forms, possessives, copula, and articles. I attribute this to what Vygotsky coined ZPD - by learning alongside peers, being spoken to by me and my husband, and engaging in high-level literacy activities, he has progressed quickly. I also hear negation from my son, many times using the correct form, such as "doesn't". He asks questions ALL the time, and enjoys acting out scenes from his favorite movies - he somehow knows all the words, complete with intonation and actions after watching something two times.
In my linguistics class, the one I took just before this one, we barely touched on the behaviorist, innatist, and interactionist perspectives, but I do remember studying this in my undergrad ed psych classes. Vygotsky and Piaget were "critical friends" of ours in college education classes, and we soaked up all we could find on their research. I learned about the importance of interaction - the second key link (next to motivation) for learning language, whether it's L1 or L2. I don't remember learning about recasting, but I have always used this method in speaking, reading, and writing with my students. In speaking, I recast my son's language in grammatically correct way. When writing, I use dialogue journaling with my students and I choose one or two important words and then recast them in my written response, with correct spelling.
I think the obvious thing that I take away from reading this chapter is to appreciate what students can do with the language they have. I always had this idea that correcting them was the right thing to do. The exposure of the readings and the instruction I have received so far in this cohort is helping me see a whole new way about the challenges of learning a second language.
How Languages are Learned Blog #2 After reading the Introduction of How Languages are Learned and taking the survey, I realized I have to think about my approach to teaching and language, since our discussion group debated a few of the answers. After listening to classmates and reading the first chapter I see their point of view, and I’m sure I will change my thinking again. I never thought about the information in the first chapter on language acquisition. As our children develop language, we go through the negation and questioning stages with them, but I never realized, or noticed, the order in which ‘wh’ words emerge. It makes sense that what is first and where and who come next, followed by why. The why questions seem to drive many people crazy, but when you think about it, like the book states, children realize this one little word engages others in so much conversation, and answers so many questions. “Children enter school with the ability to understand and produce several thousand words, and thousands more will be learned at school. Vocabulary grows at a rate between several hundred and more than a thousand words a year, depending on how much and how widely they read” (p. 14). Many schools mix ELL and gen ed classes for specials with the intention that the L2 students will converse with the L1 students and give them more practice through peers. Being bilingual is very beneficial to children. From the brain development to the economic and social advantages, it is a skill that should be taken advantage of if possible. The most important piece of information I took away from the readings and Secret of the Wild Child is that humans must interact with children, modeling and engaging them in conversation to develop their language and brain. Genie, Victor, and Jim (the boy of deaf parents with no speech or sign language) are examples of why this is so critical early in life.
How Languages are learned
ReplyDeleteTo start off with this book started with a very true statement that as
educators as we learn new approaches to teachers we quickly abandoned
what we were doing and started something new. Therefore this book has
come to help to evaluate existing textbooks and materials but also
adapt ways that are more consistent to how to better help our students
understand how we learn language. The purpose of this chapter is to
look at research and how to prepare for the second language
acquisitions. First of all we need to help our students in many ways.
We need to continue to let our students learn from being social, like
BICS and that will help them have a higher level of knowledge and
performance. I need to help my students develop and scaffold them as
they develop our language. Like the behaviorist theorist (B.F.
Skinner) sees language development. First is behaviorism, they see is
as children imitate what is around them and respond to positive
reinforcement. They will start with word to word repetition, and once
they have a good grasp of the language he will stop imitating. Also
Interactionist believe that is a mixture of innate and environment
that helps a child develop based on their experiences. Either way
students will learn and grow in their language. I know that if slow
down when I speak and use simpler sentences they will pick up the
language. I also see that as they continue through their development
of learning the language they will work on grammatical morphemes and
their order of acquisition. They will not follow in the set sequence
since they do not develop at the same age and rate. This will be good
to have so I can look deeper that their writing and know where to go
next with them. As the student grows in their language they will
develop more vocabulary due to being exposed to more people, and their
social interaction. Then as student go to school and continue to learn
to read they will be exposed to more words, and symbols. They will
discover that words may have more than one meaning which is called
metalinguistic awareness. I am seeing this in my class a lot when we
are talking during reading group. Since taking linguist my students
are looking more at words and the different meaning. It is great to
see them so excited about words. Just the other day we looked at queer
and molested from a book we are reading, and the way they know them is
different from what the book was saying. By reading students will be
exposed to new words and phrases and vocabulary. Most important for me
is that having two languages will open the doors for my students, help
create academic success in metalinguistic awareness.
The part of the article that I still question is how to help my
students is the fact that they are losing their first language. I feel
bad, and I know that because they are not exposed as much or practice
as much is part of problem. The article said that parents can work on
the additive bilingualism and they should look the second language. I
wonder if this is really true, and if so we should be telling our
parents to do this. I will have to look deeper into this research.
Lightbrown and Spada Blog # 2
ReplyDeleteIn the beginning, there was the survey. And the survey was uncomfortable to answer because I did not agree with the way a few of the questions were phrased. #6 was especially uncomfortable because of the phrase, “ most of the mistakes.” I find myself more cognitive when reading questionnaires because the questions do not always address the topic directly, a bit too ambiguous. What really threw me for a loop was question 16 asking about correcting student errors. I really believed that correcting errors was scaffolding my students. But after reading the behaviorist perspective, I can understand why “letting it go’ is the appropriate response. Grammatical errors will not fossilize themselves when L2 learners continue to hear correct utterances among society. Children need five to 12 corrections before it is embedded in the memory. So, what student will want to converse with a teacher who does nothing but correct their grammar? I do not want to be that teacher!
As a parent, I understood stages of language acquisition, but was not aware of the science behind it until now. Imitation is obvious when ba, ba, baing with a baby lying in your lap. But I never considered the practice stage when a child repetitively utters partial words in order to copy an adult speaker. The book cited the utterance, kawo and the adult indirectly correctly the speech by uttering carrot. It is at this stage where positive feedback is necessary so that the imitation can reformulate into practiced utterances. And it is a positive reinforcement versus a negative reinforcement that will make all the difference with incentive in a child.
I enjoyed reading this book and reminiscing about my children when they were learning to talk. My son definitely enjoyed the acquisition of questioning. He could ask a million "What is it?" and "Why?" questions a day. In fact, I later learned that one of his little friends called him the "Isit?" boy, because he asked so many questions. I didn't realize that there was an actual order for using "wh" words: What?, followed by Where? and Who? and then Why? at around 2 years old. My son was definitely about 2 years old when he was asking me all those questions.
ReplyDeleteNagy, Herman and Anderson stated that, "Vocabulary grows at a rate of between several hundred and more than a thousand words a year, depending mainly on how much and how widely children read." This is during the school age years, and since vocabulary is so important for every aspect of school I really encourage my students' parents to read to them as much as possible. So every year I propose the "100 Book Reading Challenge". I provide a list of over 100 books recommended by librarians, that every child should read, or have read to them. I find that the students who actually take this challenge and read the 100 books do become my strongest readers and they are able to have all that background knowledge to pull from when we are reading stories in class because they have read a wide variety of books. One of my favorite times of day when my children were little was bedtime. I loved reading to each of them individually and only wish I could help my students' parents develop this favorite time of day also.
Lightbown & Spada
ReplyDeleteAs stated above, the activity in the introduction chapter was difficult to answer. I stayed with the agree somewhat and disagree somewhat areas. In class when we did the activity, I did think how agreeing was more positive then disagreeing with some of the statements, and am interested to see how I may change my view as we read through this book. Chapter 1 which discusses first language acquisition, is something I am familiar with. I recalled much of the information from previous classes I have taken. Reading through the different perspectives, I believe in each...I do think that imitation and practice is important for a child to learn language, such as saying bye-bye and waving to a baby, who will eventually pick it up and do the same. But I do believe that a child does have an innate capacity to learn language. After watching the documentary about Genie, I see how there is a critical period to learn language, and once past that period, it is more difficult to acquire the knowledge and skills needed to learn the language. And finally, I do believe that children learn language from their language experiences, as stated by Lieven and Tomasello. Interacting and exposing children to language is extremely important for their learning. As I do with my own daughter, reading each night, having conversations, describing what is around us, etc. has helped her with language, and I feel that she does have a great vocabulary and verbal skills. I know the demands of parenting can be exhausting, but just taking a few minutes each day to interact with a child is important to their language developement.
May 18, 2013
ReplyDeleteReading chapter 1 of How Languages are Learned reminds me of the educational psychology class I took for my undergraduate degree. It was one of my favorite courses. I recall learning about the different stages of human development, which involves speech acquisition. This also brings to my mind the development of my three children. They each progressed differently through the stages of speech. My oldest son spoke early in his development and seemed to act like a sponge and absorb everything that people around him said. My middle child was born three years and nine months later. He hardly said a word until he was eighteen months old. My youngest is a daughter and she acquired speech more quickly similar to my oldest.
I was very sad when watching the stories of Victor and Genie. It makes sense, especially with these extreme cases, that there could be more factors that contributed to their ability to acquire language. I have never heard of CPH and agree, based on these two stories, that access to language is critical in infancy and early childhood.
For the past ten years, I have had a majority of ESL students in my classroom. I have had many conversations with parents that tell me their child knows English. The parent may ask why their child is not getting a good grade in reading and writing. I then tell parents that their child knows how to talk to students on the playground but “school English” or “English in the classroom” is different. I suggest that parents continue to speak to their child in their first language. I talk about the benefits of people that know two languages. I learned about the terms: Cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP) and basic interpersonal communication skills (BICS). These are the terms for language in academic and informal settings. It’s important that students and parents learn the variety of language appropriate to different settings when learning a second language.
My responses to the survey changed quite a bit the second time around. When I first answered the questions, I strongly agreed or strongly disagreed with a few. For instance, I strongly agreed that languages are learned mainly through imitation. Obviously after reading from Troike , this is not always the case. After reading Troike as well as Chapter 1 in Lightbown and Spada, I have revised my answers to agree and disagree.
ReplyDeleteI too made a connection with the developmental stages of learning language. I remember taking a Child Psychology class for my undergraduate degree and found it fascinating.
On p. 7 of Lightbown and Spada, I found the term “telegraphic” quite interesting when interpreting sentences like “baby fall down”. As a teacher of primarily ELL students, I have to be telegraphic because quite often students omit function words and grammatical morphemes when they speak, but yet I do understand what they are saying.
I have to agree with Vygotsky’s theory that “ children’s language develops primarily from social interaction”. I remember the year I taught 2nd grade I had a student who was a bilingual refusal. His parents did not want him in a bilingual classroom because all of his friends had been exited into a general education class and they didn’t want him to suffer socially. They wanted him to be completely immersed in an English classroom. I was shocked! To my pleasant surprise, the student blossomed! He not only picked up the English language by the second semester, he advanced to the highest level of reading for his grade level. I saw a similar scenario in my student teaching experience. In the beginning of the year a student from Germany entered the classroom knowing no English . By the end of the year, he spoke English quite clearly. I would never have guessed that he didn’t know one word of English had my cooperating teacher not told me.
I also agree with Vygotsky’s belief of the zone of proximal development . I quite frequently move students during whole group activities so they are not distracted and they are capable of so much more work because of it.
The first chapter of Lighthouse and Spada brought me back to last semesters ENG. 341 class. The authors discuss auditory discrimination, how a child can hear difference between sounds. I am still amazed that infants can make distinctions between phonemic sounds that are not used in their language. Our teacher Gina spoke one weekend on this very topic. She said something along the line about kids brains are wired to filter out sounds they do not need.
ReplyDeleteAs a parent I also enjoyed reading about the section titled: Milestones and Development Sequences. It made me smile while reading and brought back lots of memories about my daughter’s development. In negation-stage 2 the example used “Daddy no comb hair”, was exactly what my daughter would say.
As a parent the section on behaviorist perspective I also found to be true. The book discussed Skinner along with traditional behaviorists’ hypotheses. They found when children imitated the language produced by those around them was received with positive reinforcement. I can remember saying things while playing with my daughter and having her repeat parts of what was said back to me. My reaction and excitement had to be extremely reinforcing to her, which then inter made her want to do it more.
In addition the chapter reminds me to be patient as my daughter questions everything throughout the day. Rather than be frustrated I need to remember the benefits questioning provides for her cognitive development.
Finally, the stories of ‘Victor’ and ‘Genie’ really show the importance of interacting with young children. In both cases we could see the effects of not being spoken to and worked with as a baby and throughout their early years of development. I feel that their two cases make the critical period hypothesis true.
I thought the beginning of chapter one was really interesting in how it explained that all children will learn grammatical morphemes, questions words, and word order in questions all at the same time. I also found it strange that there is no real reason for why kids learn grammatical morphemes in the same order. The research showed that it might be a combination of different factors that contributes to the order of acquisition. I thought that maybe innate ability might be at play here. Maybe this happens because our brains are just wired that way. Lightbown and Spada said that kids will acquire “wh-words” in a similar pattern because of the questions they are asked and because of their cognitive ability. My question is what if a child is not asked those “wh-words” or is asked a question using one of the “wh words” that is acquired later more frequently? Does that mean the order of acquisition will change? Or will they still acquire those words in the same order?
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading and learning more about all the different perspectives on language development. I think that it is kind of funny that so many people thought that there was only a cut and dry explanation for language, when to me it is obvious that it is a mesh of all different perspectives. Children will learn from imitating their parents like behaviorists thought. We also need to have some kind of basis already in place in our minds for our brains to make sense out of the language we are learning. And what we have learned from Genie and Victor is that there is a period of time where one must learn vocal production of language, but that does not mean that we cannot learn some form of language. In my opinion all of these theories have valid points as well as flaws, but I think that a mixture of all of them into a melting pot is going to get us the closest picture of language and how people acquire it.
I too enjoyed reading the chapter because it makes me think about what I can do for my second language learners and to be able to begin to see where they are in their language development and for me to respond in a way to help them develop in both their languages.
ReplyDeleteAs I read through chapter one I kept thinking to myself how import it is for children to be exposed to language and be able to respond to it. I look back at my own two children how my wife and I and the grandparents would sit and read and talk to them about the books we shared together. I saw how they develop into good readers and to be able to speak well. When I saw Victor and Genie it reminded me how important for children to be able to go through the stages of language development. I think all three major linguistics theorist have a point. Language is developed from the beginning and continues through birth and through our early stages of childhood, but I think it doesn’t stops there. I believe we need to continue to reinforce our language by reading and writing to keep our minds healthy.
The little things at the right time really make a difference. Like many of you, as I read I could not help but think about our daughter Jacquelyn and how her language developed. I remember how my wife, other family members, and I would take the time to read and have normal conversations. We never used "baby talk", but would use our typical daily language as we talked with each other. It was amazing to see how much Jacquelyn was developing over time. Although it sounds like we were doing a lot, it felt like we really were not. We were just having normal conversations with each other. Being an only child, Jacquelyn has always been around adults. It has been fun seeing her imitating word choice from language used. It even get to the point at times when I can actually say, "Now, that is your mother talking." Children need to be given these experiences to listen, play, and develop language. I can only imagine what a change we would see if parents would only take a few minutes out of their day to just have conversations with their children and each other. For really doing so little, the language development over the years for Jacquelyn has been fantastic. As language development occurred for our daughter, I am a believer that is also one of the driving forces for her developing a love for reading. Many of our students struggle and often do not want to read because because it takes a lot of work and effort due to a lack of language development.
ReplyDeleteIn reading the introduction and Chapter 1 of Lightbown & Spada I was reminded of a lot of information I had learned in my past psychology classes. I remember learning about all the different professional points of view on language development, and each one was reinforced as I read. This text also really helped me by breaking down the stages of language development. Also, taking the survey in the introduction was an excellent way to raise questions that I had not considered before. I had never before thought of how many vocabulary words would be necessary to participate in conversations with native speakers.
ReplyDeleteI think I found the most powerful concept of this reading and class meeting to be the information, discussion, and video relating to the Critical Period Hypothesis. I had seen the Genie documentary before as well as previously read up on this concept, but at this point I am still unsure of the validity. I think the evidence I have seen so far suggests that there really is a critical period in first language acquisition when it comes to human development.
Lightbown and Spada
ReplyDeleteSession 2 Blog: Nicole Tucker
Like many of my colleagues, I enjoyed reading this chapter for the simple reason that I am living it right now. With three sons ages 4, 3 and 1, I have been witnessing them go through stages as they acquire their language. First, while there are stages that are follow a developmental sequence, I have to say that each child goes through each stage at their own rate. For example, while my children have each started uttering 2-3 word sentences before 12 months, I know other children who have not started until almost two years old. I’ve always looked at it from a literacy aspect. My husband and I read to our kids every day and every night. Sometimes I feel like my kids would let us read to them for hours (or perhaps is a stalling tactic at bedtime) regardless of their motivation, I feel that this has impacted the speed at which they started to utter sentences and their vocabulary.
In Ligthbown and Spada, I enjoyed reading the different perspectives on how the learning aof a language takes place. One of the first questions that I wondered in class was, which of the theories or perspectives is the best( behaviorist, innatist, interactionists) and discovered that really it’s a combination of them. Whether acquiring a first or second language, students are going to go through stages to acquire their language. I believe many factors contribute to their learning and that CPH and ZPD are both theories that ring true in language development.
Just like Marty, I also was reflecting on this chapter and thinking back at when my kids were little and learning to speak. I would use "regular" words and my mother in law would use baby words and babble. I would tell her not to and she would say she's little it is easier this way. I would always say why teach her the same thing 2X. Let her learn it the right way the first time. Luckily, she didn't spend too much time with her. Now that I've been through these stages with my own kids, I do understand them clearly.
ReplyDeleteI don't beleive that language is innate though. A person may go through all the stages to learn but needs to be tought through immitation, and practice. They don't automatically know how to speak. I try to get my parents involved with their children's language issues for the child and for themselves as well by having a list of questions that they should be asking and discussing with their child as they read nightly. This not only gets the students reading more, but gets the parents involved in their book as well and having meaningful conversations.
In reading the introduction and Chapter 1 of Lightbown & Spada I was became so excited to hear how young children develop language. This could very well be due to the fact that my husband and I are expecting our first child this December. Growing up in a large traditional Mexican family I had the privilege to be around my younger cousins as they developed language. I remember witnessing my cousin Khaleb acknowledge my name Tycora by calling me “Toe”. I remember my aunt being concerned when he wasn’t strong with language at 11 months. It wasn’t until he was closer to age 2 that he began using complete sentences. After reading Chapter 1 it was interesting to see the various perspectives that people have on language. Who is to say that a behaviorist perspective that says “the quality and quantity of the language the child hears, as well as the consistency of the reinforcement offered by others in the environment would shape a child’s language behavior” is correct. Or the innatist perspective that says “human beings are born with mental structures that are designed specifically for the acquisition of language”. Maybe even a interactionist perspective that says “language acquistition is based both on the learners’ innate abilities and on opportunites to engage in conversations, often those in which other speakers modify their speech and interaction patterns to match the learners’ communication requirements”. I feel that we can agree that each perspective carries some form of truth; however, neither perspective is the CORRECT one.
ReplyDeleteLightbown and Spada –Intro and Chapter 1
ReplyDeleteI thought doing a survey at the beginning of class was a smart and interesting idea. It reminds me of the pre-tests I give my students. When they take the post-test, they are always amazed at how much they have learned. I’m looking forward to taking this again in June and seeing my own growth. There are a couple of items on the survey that resonated with me. #15 says that students learn what they are taught. This seems so simple, but it is not. I believe in the phrase “Caught not Taught.” I know that I can teach a concept in a whole variety of ways and it will not stick in a child’s long-term memory. I had the experience of taking two years of Spanish in high school and two more years in college. But the most Spanish I ever learned was “caught” while I was working as a waitress one summer and all the bus boys and cooks spoke Spanish. I also had a strong opinion about #17 that says students can simultaneously learn both language and academic content. I disagree because of personal experience. When I lived overseas in Indonesia, we moved to another city for three months and had intensive language lessons all day, each day. I was not expected to go to Indonesian school and learn an academic content area [CALP] at the same time I was learning the language [BICS]. I know I would have been completely overwhelmed if I had been expected to do both. I wonder if my opinion will change after reading this book?
I enjoyed reading the first chapter about first language acquisition and I got out my 12-year-old son’s baby book to see if I could match up any of the utterances he was making with the various milestones and theories. I found an example of Behaviorism. One of the things I did with my son was teach him baby signs but I didn’t know how to start. My teacher-friend and I decided to do a “Fishy Unit” with our then-8-month-olds. [No kidding!] We read fish books to them, sang fishy songs, played with plastic fish and as a culminating activity took them on a “field Trip” to the Shedd Aquarium. We had a wonderful time and I bought a stuffed Nemo fish as a memento. A few weeks later I noticed my son making smacking noises with his lips. I ran to get the Nemo fish and held it up to him and made the fish-smacking noise with my lips. He repeated the noise and I gave him the fish. Over the next few days every time he made the noise, I grabbed the fish and gave it to him. I took his natural behavior of lip smacking, imitated it, he imitated me and I reinforcing the behavior with the reward of the Nemo fish. I attached the behavior of getting the fish to his lip-smacking action….pure Behaviorism!!! It worked so well that I saw according to my notes that he had six more signs right after that one, making our communication so much easier and fun too.
I am happy to see that I am recognizing many terms and people in the reading, like Piaget and his object permanence and Chomsky and his universal grammar. I’m sure I had a class on the subject 20-something years ago in college. It will be good to have that knowledge in the forefront as I plan for next year’s 4th graders.
Chapter 1, Lightbrown and Spada
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed this chapter. It reminded me of my own 4 children learning to speak. I felt like I was back at each stage with them. I was really able to relate to the reading because I had experience with each stage, from the initial sounds a baby makes, to the Ba-ba-ba syllable speak, one word utterance, etc. I relived the “no” stage at around age 2 and then the “why” stage when children are testing the world.
However, I did find it interesting that children miss the list of morphemes in an order as they are developing their language. I guess I didn’t realize that a child will usually not skip a stage and that each stage can take a different amount of time.
I too felt this was a refresher of the different theories of language acquisition that I learned in college. Relearning the studies of Piaget, Vygotsky, Skinner and Chomsky, is much easier to comprehend than in my college days. When I think of the critical period hypothesis and watching The Wild Child, I could see how this could be true. I do think that social interaction is important to the development of language and a person’s well-being, even if this interaction is ASL. My son started to learn sign language when he was an infant. Before he was able to speak he had well over 300 signs. This way of communication helped his frustration level when trying to communicate. As he began to learn words at around the age of 2, he slowly began to drop the sign language as he didn’t need it to communicate any more. Even with a disability, he too still went through each of the mentioned stages like my other children. He just went through them a little later.
Like many others I too enjoyed this chapter. I think it is fun understanding language acquisition for children between the ages of 0-6. My son is 4 and the reading helps me to understand the stage he is in. There are some things he does that really stand out to me like confusing 'her' and 'she'. He will say something like, "hers coming to our house." Or when he says "fink" instead of "think."
ReplyDeleteI also found the Critical Period Hypothesis very interesting. It just shows how important it is for us to talk to our children everyday, all the time. It becomes very apparent those children that don't get talked to or read to as much as other children. There language lacks so much. It's almost as if a mini-class should be offered to parents when they are expecting their first child. Not to joke about it, but parents should be educated on this, not just teachers. Maybe a mandatory class while you are waiting to see the dr. wouldn't be such a bad idea. I digress, but what a difference it could make if every parent would just talk to their children.
Sam, this is so true. I had a student at a conference with his parents this year who sat crying and said to his mom, "All I want is for you to say, Leo, how was your day?" How sad is that? I sometimes feel like the role of parents is being downplayed when in fact, their role needs to be brought to the forefront. I don't know what the answer is.
DeleteLightbown and Spada
ReplyDeleteI think the survey in the beginning of the chapter was a great way to begin. I had some pretty confident answers in the beginning, but changed some after reading the chapter, and will probably continue to change more of my views as I work my way through this book.
Reading this did also remind me of when my own children were small and developing language. Again, I also didn’t pay much attention to the scientific reasoning behind how and why they were developing their language. It is interesting to me to now have the chance to read about the different stages, and remember and think back to that time in my life. I agree with Vygotsky’s theory regarding children developing language from social interaction, but I don’t agree that it is the only way to develop language. It is always amazing to me that at our school we have had incoming Kindergarten students who do not know their colors, cannot count to 10, or say the alphabet. It’s my own prejudice coming through that makes me wonder how nobody has counted their fingers and toes, or sung the ABC song to them. Sad. Of course, once they’re in the social setting of school, their language takes off.
A term that I was unfamiliar with was the Critical Period Hypothesis. I had never considered that humans are programmed to acquire certain knowledge and skills at specific times in life. Unfortunately, the tragic story of Genie illustrated that her lack of language due to isolation prevented her from acquiring language.
I was very interested in reading this first chapter in Lightbown & Spada. I have a son at home who will be three next month, and so much of the FLA continua rang true with him. I'm not sure if I would have been able to recognize any of this as his speech was developing, but looking back it's very clear. For example, my son began speaking in present progressives at around 18 months (give or take a month or two). Since then, his language has developed into full sentences/paragraphs of speech, complete with past forms, possessives, copula, and articles. I attribute this to what Vygotsky coined ZPD - by learning alongside peers, being spoken to by me and my husband, and engaging in high-level literacy activities, he has progressed quickly. I also hear negation from my son, many times using the correct form, such as "doesn't". He asks questions ALL the time, and enjoys acting out scenes from his favorite movies - he somehow knows all the words, complete with intonation and actions after watching something two times.
ReplyDeleteIn my linguistics class, the one I took just before this one, we barely touched on the behaviorist, innatist, and interactionist perspectives, but I do remember studying this in my undergrad ed psych classes. Vygotsky and Piaget were "critical friends" of ours in college education classes, and we soaked up all we could find on their research. I learned about the importance of interaction - the second key link (next to motivation) for learning language, whether it's L1 or L2. I don't remember learning about recasting, but I have always used this method in speaking, reading, and writing with my students. In speaking, I recast my son's language in grammatically correct way. When writing, I use dialogue journaling with my students and I choose one or two important words and then recast them in my written response, with correct spelling.
I think the obvious thing that I take away from reading this chapter is to appreciate what students can do with the language they have. I always had this idea that correcting them was the right thing to do. The exposure of the readings and the instruction I have received so far in this cohort is helping me see a whole new way about the challenges of learning a second language.
ReplyDeleteHow Languages are Learned Blog #2
ReplyDeleteAfter reading the Introduction of How Languages are Learned and taking the survey, I realized I have to think about my approach to teaching and language, since our discussion group debated a few of the answers. After listening to classmates and reading the first chapter I see their point of view, and I’m sure I will change my thinking again.
I never thought about the information in the first chapter on language acquisition. As our children develop language, we go through the negation and questioning stages with them, but I never realized, or noticed, the order in which ‘wh’ words emerge. It makes sense that what is first and where and who come next, followed by why. The why questions seem to drive many people crazy, but when you think about it, like the book states, children realize this one little word engages others in so much conversation, and answers so many questions. “Children enter school with the ability to understand and produce several thousand words, and thousands more will be learned at school. Vocabulary grows at a rate between several hundred and more than a thousand words a year, depending on how much and how widely they read” (p. 14). Many schools mix ELL and gen ed classes for specials with the intention that the L2 students will converse with the L1 students and give them more practice through peers. Being bilingual is very beneficial to children. From the brain development to the economic and social advantages, it is a skill that should be taken advantage of if possible.
The most important piece of information I took away from the readings and Secret of the Wild Child is that humans must interact with children, modeling and engaging them in conversation to develop their language and brain. Genie, Victor, and Jim (the boy of deaf parents with no speech or sign language) are examples of why this is so critical early in life.