E-learning in Early Childhood

Abstract

Preview In this chapter, we will look briefly at the language development of young children. We will then consider several explanations that have been offered for how language is learned. There is an immense amount of research on child language. Although much of this research has been done with middle-class North American and European families, there is a rich body of cross-linguistic and cross-cultural research as well. Our purpose in this chapter is to touch on a few main points in this research, primarily as preparation for the discussion of , which is the focus of this book. second language acquisition (SLA) First language acquisition Language acquisition is one of the most impressive and fascinating aspects of human development. We listen with pleasure to the sounds made by a three-month-old baby. We laugh and 'answer' the conversational 'ba-ba-ba' babbling of older babies, and we share in the pride and joy of parents whose one-year-old has uttered the first 'bye-bye'. Indeed, learning a language is an amazing feat-one that has attracted the attention of linguists and psychologists for generations. How do children accomplish this? What enables a child not only to learn words, but also to put them together in meaningful sentences? What pushes children to go on developing complex grammatical language even though their simple early communication is successful for most purposes? Does child language develop similarly around the world? How do bilingual children acquire more than one language? The first three years: Milestones and developmental sequences