4-+The+language+acquisition+process

 **THE LANGUAGE ACQUISITION PROCESS**

===Learning is a process that takes us our whole lifes, we are continuously acquiring knowledges and forming ourselves, in fact it is not a simple easy process. === ===Here some authors give us some theories to provide us and children strategies for a proper language & learning acquirament. ===

__**VYGOTSKY**__

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According to Vygotsky the ZPD refers to the distance between what a pupil can do with help and what the pupil can reach without any help. During the learning process, a pupil begins by copying mainly an adult's example, so this is why teachers' role has to be complete as better as possible.
 * __Zone of Proximal Development Theory __**



**__Scaffolding Theory __**

It is the assistance (parameters, rules or suggestions) that a teacher gives to the children in a learning situation. Scaffolding allows the pupils to have help with only the skills that are new or beyond their ability.



**__Thought & Language Theory __**

There are different states in the developing of language; the next four states are interlaced one by one:

**//Public speech: //**  it is the verbal communication that implies two or more than two speakers. It is being able to stand in front of people and express fluent, clear, and organized thoughts.

**//Private speech: //**  it is all of those words, sentences… that need to be expressed verbally; it is the intermediate stage in the transition from public social communication to private self direction and as the cornerstone of all higher cognitive processes, including selective attention, voluntary, memory, planning, concept formation and self reﬂection.

**//Inner speech: //** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> acts as a mediator of self-awareness, self-consciousness, and self-knowledge. Inner speech is composed by all of those words, sentences… that fail to come out verbally.

**//<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Verbal thought: //** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> the more complex and abstract state. It is the preintellectual state in the language development and a prelinguistic state in the thought development; it is not an innately and natural behavior but it is determined by a historical- cultural process and has specific properties and laws that cannot be found in the natural forms of thought and speech.

**<span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">In the link below you will find some information about Vygotsky's language acquisition theory and other information: **


 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">[|Vygotsky's theory] ** <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**[|Vygotsky's ZPD]** <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**[|Zone of Proximal Development]**  <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**[|Vygotsky's info]**

__**GARDNER'S MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES THEORY**__

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 * __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Multiple Intelligences Theory __**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Howard Gardner in 1983 estabilished that this theory states that there are at least seven ways or “intelligences” that people understand and perceive the world. These intelligences may not be exhaustive. According to Gardner there are the following ones:

**<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Linguistic. ** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">The ability to use spoken or written words.

**<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Logical-Mathematical. ** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Inductive and deductive thinking and reasoning abilities, logic, as well as the use of numbers and abstract pattern recognition.

**<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Visual-Spatial. ** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">The ability to mentally visualize objects and spatial dimensions.

**<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Body-Kinesthetic. ** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">The wisdom of the body and the ability to control physical motion.

**<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Musical-Rhythmic. ** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">The ability to master music as well as rhythms, tones and beats.

**<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Interpersonal. ** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">The ability to communicate effectively with other people and to be able to develop relationships.

**<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Intrapersonal. ** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">The ability to understand one’s own emotions, motivations, inner states of being, and self-reflection.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #800000; display: block; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">**Here I grab you one link of a complete website about the multiple intelligences, if you are interested I recommend you to enter it:**

<span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 14px;">**[|Gardner's theory]**

**<span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 14px;">Another resources: **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16px;">If you are interested on Gardner's Multiple Intelligences Theory, you should consult this book of him.

<span style="color: #008011; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 19px;">__**BRUNER**__

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 * __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Discovery Learning __**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Discovery learning is an inquiry-based, constructivist learning theory that takes place in problem solving situations where the learner draws on his or her own past experience and existing knowledge to discover facts and relationships and new truths to be learned. Students interact with the world by exploring and manipulating objects, wrestling with questions and controversies, or performing experiments. As a result, students may be more more likely to remember concepts and knowledge discovered on their own (in contrast to a transmissionist model). Models that are based upon discovery learning model include: guided discovery, problem-based learning, simulation-based learning, case-based learning, incidental learning, among others. Proponents of this theory believe that discovery learning has many advantages, including:

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> - Encourages active engagement.

- Promotes motivation.

- Promotes autonomy, responsibility, independence.

- The development of creativity and problem solving skills.

- A tailored learning experience.


 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">The links below takes you to brief but complete online presentation, it deals with Bruners's teaching/learning theory and the modes of representation theory, there are also some information pages about the theories: **

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**[|Modes of representation]**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">[|Bruner's theory] ** **<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">[|Learning & Bruner] **

<span style="color: #1444c2; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 19px;">__**CHOMSKY**__

**__<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Language Acquisition __**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Noam Chomsky postulated that the mechanism of the language acquisition is derived from the innate processes. Innate is something which is already there in mind since birth. The theory proposed by Chomsky is proved by the children living in same linguistic community. Moreover, they are not influenced by the external experiences which bring about the comparable grammar.

He thus proposed his theory on language acquisition in 1977 as "all children share the same internal constraints which characterize narrowly the grammar they are going to construct." He also proposed that all of us live in a biological world, and according to him, mental world is no exception. He also believes that as there are stages of development for other parts of the body, language development can also be achieved up to a certain age.


 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 14px;">Here I add some links that contains a huge amount of information about Chomsky's life and theories: **

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**[|Chomsky's info]** <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**[|Language acquisition]**  <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**[|Chomsky's bio]**


 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 14px;">Another resources: **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16px;">If you are interested on Chomsky's theory about Language and Mind, here is an interesting book you should take a look to this book. __**DAVID CRYSTAL**__


 * __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">Language Acquisition Theory __ **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">According to Crystal, children acquaire language through five stages which are interlaced:

**__<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Stage One: __** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">During this stage children begin naming things with single words and then move on to relating objects with other things, places and people and objects with events. E.g: “Dadda here”…

**__<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Stage Two: __** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">Children’s questions use to begin with interrogative pronouns (what, where, when) and followed by a noun or verb. E.g.: “what hear?”… The concerning about naming and classifying things appears in this stage.

**__<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Stage Three: __** <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">Here children start asking lots of different questions signaling at the same time with a marked intonation. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">By this stage children begin to make and express more complex sentences but still simple ones: (Subject+Verb+Object+Adverb/other elements). E.g.: “You eat jam”…

**__<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Stage Four: __** <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">Now they are able to use complex sentence structures because they have more flexible language tools for expressing a wide range of meanings. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">Children begin to communicate meaning indirectly by replacing imperatives with questions. E.g.: such as “give me the paper”- “can I have the paper?” During this stage children also use negation as contradictions or deny. E.g.: “I don´t want to go!”.

**__<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Stage Five: __** <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">Children use language to do all the things that they need for. They give information, asking and answering questions, requesting directly and indirectly, suggesting, offering, stating and expressing and are able to talk about things hypothetically and conditionally with references to past and future. E.g.: “If I were you…”, “what?” …

** I grab you two links, the first one contains some information about Crystals’ life and in the second one you will find one of his books “Prosodic systems and languages acquisition”: **

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 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 14px;">Another resources: **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16px;">If you are interested on Crystal's theory about Child Language Acquisition theory, here is an interesting book you should take a look to this book.

<span style="color: #800000; display: block; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 14px; text-align: center;">__ **FUNNY VIDEO ABOUT THE INFLUENCES OF VYGOTSKY'S THEORY IN THE CLASROOM AND ITS BENEFITS** __

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** What do you think? It gives us something to think... Don´t you think? **  **THINK ALWAYS!**

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">__**DEVELOPED TASK**__

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 17px;">My group and I have worked on Vygoytsky´s theories analising one teacher's classroom ("Angela's fourth grade classroom") and relating his theories with the teaching method and magement of that teacher's clasroom.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 17px;">HERE IS THE ANALYZED VIDEO:

[|Angela's fourth grade classroom]

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 17px;">HERE IS THE DEVELOPED TASK: