The Cross-Cultural Study of Language Acquisition.

Abstract

One approach to studying the nature of diverse speech exchange systems across sociocultural groups starts from the premise that all learning is cultural learning, and that language socialization is the way individuals become members of both their primary speech community and their secondary speech communities. Researchers must recognize that the uniquely human aspects of socialization as cultural communication rest on the individual and the primary social group's orientation toward the future. The pace of the child's development is determined by the growth of conceptual and communicative capacities in conjunction with schemata of cognition, which are influenced by language socialization practices. One way to understand how the child grasps that which is available for perception is to examine the range of genres in discourse. Several genres are universal forms of extended discourse in child language learning: recasts (bringing to present attention experiences from the past in which the speaker had a role), eventcasts, accounts, and stories. There is social group variation in the space, time, and social organization of genres. Preliminary comparison of situations and genres across societies suggests that academic success depends not on the specific language children know but on the ways they know of using the language. (MSE)