Educational Theory

Human beings are social beings that need to interact with one another using their own code, a code being the written and spoken form of language, interpersonal engagement is central to human communication which can be verbal or non-verbal. Language is made up of sounds and when constructed correctly create words, those who are then able to decode the words are able to understand the meaning, when one is able to understand two or more codes they are known as multilingual.

When discussing first language acquisition we know that language acquisition does not take place in isolation, the words we learn are stored in the brain in a jumbled fashion but are coherent in sentences. Language rules are not taught and we know that children understand more than they are able to say at every age, children learn to produce unique utterances each time they speak and children learn the social use of their language appropriate to their culture. As a child acquires one language they are forming the foundations to learn to speak another.

There are different theories around language acquisition one being the cognitive theory of language acquisition refers to the cognitivist process of thinking, each learner having a cognitive structure into which any new learning is absorbed thus emphasizing the development of basic thought structures preceding the development of corresponding linguistic structures, this theory is also referred to as the mentalistic theory because all the cognitive interpretation of language learning relies on the psychological base of thought itself. Language acquisition (learning) is a meaningful process as learners will take already existing knowledge and connect to their new input which will then result in the learner connecting previous experiences with this one.

Cognitivists closely link language and mobility as when children are able to crawl and then progress into walking, they are then able to explore their surrounding environment which happens at around 12 months, they require new words to map out the new discoveries they make thus ensuring language development. This theory believes that the child must first learn about the world and then apply language to past experiences, it also speaks of inner speech and the relationship between language and thought.

The cognitivist theory can be applied in many ways for example by a remedial therapist or teacher, they may describe strategies for gaining new knowledge, such as the complexity of a sentence, the amount of words un the sentence, how fast the sentence is staid these can all contribute to the child’s understanding of the sentence. A child who suffers from delayed or disordered language will benefit from a therapist adjusting on or all the above variables. By doing this the sentence may be manipulated in such a way to slow down and simplify the sentence for better understanding for the child. The theory is most appropriately implemented through learning strategies.

Refernces: Anon, (2019). Theories of Speech & Language Development. [online] Available at: https://languageacquisitionpsyc220.weebly.com/theories-of-speech--language-development.html [Accessed 17 Apr. 2019].

Bester, M., Meyer, E., Evans, R. and Joubert, I. (2019). Literacy in the foundation phase.

H.Van der Haar-Lockie.(2018).Teaching methodology and practicum 1A.[notes] Available at: https://ulink.uj.ac.za/index.html [accessed 18 Mar.2019].