Language Acquisition 4

What I learnt was a lot about language acquisition according to different

theories but I want to write it very briefly. First, as oppose to behavioristic
approach, the nativist approach clearly supports that we are born with genetic
capacity of using language and it criticizes behavioristic approach claiming that
children come into the world with nothing. However, nativist approach fails to
explain language acquisition because it deals with the forms of the language
not the deeper meaning of it and ignores the environmental factors.

Functional approaches mostly advocate that children learn better when they
interact with others and they give importance to communication function of
language. Children use the language as they can hear from their environment
so they need to understand input to make output. Language teachers must use
the language in the classroom for that reason.

The other thing we have talked about is that a child may understand a sentence
which he doesn’t produce. That shows us comperehension is over production. I
have known that every child acquires language but I learn from the lesson no
matter where they come from, all children get through same process of
language acquisition. We can understand this from their word order, using
verbs and other forms and even their mistakes.

What I had difficulty in almost nothing but I think I need to focus more specific
distinctions between the comprehension and production.

I believe I can teach english in context like games, activities or songs because
children learn language as a whole system. As I have learned from the lesson,
children form language according to what they learned from their social
interactions with people they know. Thinking this, I decide to make them work
in pairs and also I may give opportunity to use language as a communication
purpose. Since communication is a process; knowledge of the forms of
language is not sufficient so I can ask them listen a debate in english on TV and
I can ask them be actively engage in expressing themselves in second language.
That’s all I can say for this week…:)