Babies learn languages through repeatitive experiences and practices.
Will you marry me? You are my best friend! All the words and sentences we speak everyday and every time, all the words that we writes on the papers, all the sayings we hear everywhere is natural things for us. We take for granted our language ability and usually do not think about it deeply. If there is no language in our life, people may be equivalent with robots: can not understand common sense, can not express feelings, can not read books, may be no books, no beautiful lyrics, difficult in communications. This human's wonderful ability, it is wonderful how people cook their language that is totally important part of human life. Think of when you are a baby, especially when you could speak language and understand it. Most of people may can not remember then and forgot how they became genius of language. I have a cousin who is three years old. One day my sister was playing with her and she, a little baby, said to my sister "So what?". All family in that place was shocked and my sister asked a baby with surprising "Where did you learn that?' then she replied "From kindergarden." Seeing this, we can know babies influenced by the environment in their language learning. Babies learn language by repetitive practice, not by innate ability.Many people already know that people learn languages when they were baby. And there are two typical theory about learning languages. First one is being innate theory. Noam Chomskey insists that ability to learn a language is one of independent intellegence of human. Humans genetically be born with the ability of acquiring language and what humans have to acquire after they were born is very subtle things of language. For him, language acquiring is an active processing that when babies are exposed to certain environment, the innate ability to learn a language is invoked and start composing basic principles of the language with analyzing language materials themselves. Also he made a theory that in humans brain, there exists the machenism LAD(Language Acquisition Device) that makes people learn language innately. LAD can help people distinguish the sound and words of language, also can recognize the arrangement of words ans some other grammers. However, the LAD is not a real one, this its the device that Chomsky designed to explain his theory.(Korean psychological Association & naver, 2014) Then how this device is used? Let's take an example. A baby heared the saying, 'I like apple". After hearing a baby learned the expression "I LIKE SOMETHING" but also he or she can learn "I DON'T LIKE SOMETHING" with LAD. So it makes a baby modify the basic sentences. Also babies can acquire native grammer even imperfect language materials are provided. And some more things : they acquire native language irrespective of IQ, easily acquire languages without artificial training.
One more person who says language is innate ability is Lennerberg. He says that humans are born to well adepted in language acquiring and this feature makes only people can acquire language. And both insists that language is acquired in certain period.(Linda Banh, 2006)
In contrast, B.F Skinner insists behaviorism in language acquiring. Human mind is a white board that nothing is written. Behaviorism emphasizes acquired experience and education. And language acquiring is not the thinking process, it is the process of shaping habit, shaped by copy others languages and that languages are repeated. In other words the habit is shaped when the language is repeated. Skinner claims that language is learned by manipulations like other behaviors. Therefore the learner plays a minor role in learning language and parents play a major role for providing reinforcement. So if a baby is the stone, the teacher or parents are sculptors that shape the stone.
These two big theories are the typical ones on language acquiring and there are more theories like cognitivism of Piaget and Vygotsky.(Peggy A. Ertmer and Timothy J. Newby, 2013)
For two theories, some may agree with innate acquiring theory or some may agree with behaviorism. However, do you really think that human's complex and confused language ability is only shaped by innate ability? Without any stimuli, any experience, any practice can it be that complex and confused? As we all know, babies start speaking with very short words, then sentences, then flourish expression. Let's go back to our young baby time. At first, parents teach us mommy and daddy. When these words are accomplished, we learn simple sentences 'I'm 3 years old', 'My name is minji'. Then as we experience everyday, our words become flourish. This is because our language ability is developed gradually, step by step with repetitive experience and practice. My point is that in language acquiring, acquired experiences and practices and manipulations play important role.
Here is an interesting experiment that shows baby's language is influenced by environment. In America, for 2 months-old-babies,they played English and French sentences then counted time when they turn their heads to the sound. The result was that they responded to English a lot quickly than French. This shows that only two months old babies already became sensitive to their native language. This is because that they hear English everyday so they are familiar with native language.
In addition, babies could distinguish similar pronounces. This is the result of the experiment.
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| This is the result graph of the experiment. Vertical axis represents accuracy and the horizontal axis represents the ages of babies (each of them is 6-8months and 10-12months). And the blue color is data of American babies, the red color is data of Japaness babies. |
This experiment is progressed by Kuhl and his companies and they studied how American and Japaness babies distinguish pronounces. They experimented with the sound of /r/ and /l/. Interesitngly, at after 6-8month old both two countries' babies could distinguish two sounds. However, at after 10-12months old, American babies became more sensitive to that two sounds but Japaness babies became insensitive to the sounds.
To explane this phenomenone, the behaviorism is necessary. As time goes by they are exposed to certain language environment : American distinguishes pronounce of /r/ and /l/ but Japaness do not have to pay deep attention to the sound of two letters. These different environments extremely influenced in babies' lanugage acquiring.(Kim young jin, 2011)
Think of the people who go to China to learn Chinese or go to America or England to learn English. What do you think peole go to certain country to learn certain language? This shows that people unconsciously notice that the environment is important for learning language. They go abroad to learn other country's language because in there, all they hear, see, can speak is that country's language. In that country, they listen native's speaking and repeat and repeat and repeat it everytime, become the capable person of that language. This not means that learning foreign language in his or her country is not effective. In certian country, there is a better environment for repeatation of certain language, so people can more easily learn language.
If people were born to genius of language like Noam Chomsky said, why they can not reveal that ability in babies? Why they speak nonsense sound first? Also if the lanugage acquiring is innate, why we learn how to read and write in schools? Because the language is acquired with repeatitive experiences, stimuli and practices, people go language study abroad and children learn how to read and wirte in schools.
Although I supported my arguments so far, some still disagree with my arguments. They will say that only with the repetitive practices and experiences can not explain the all saying and words that they babies speak because they do not repeat every words and sentences. However, it has more doubts that how the most important part of the human can be explained by the theory with unproven machenism, LAD? Also, who agrees with Noam Chomsky will say that only changes in the form of the sentences by LAD can explain human's language ability because babies can not experience all sayings that they speak. This is also not persuasive, if the babies have innate ability to change the form of sentences and expressions, why don't they can speak all changed forms of the sentences include long and complex one when they are young(at the age of under the high school)? If the babies have the ability to utilize the languages, they can make long sentences by mixing and connecting two or more sentences, also say complex sentences by changing all elements of the basic one. Why the babies do not do these things? The phenomenone that people speak more complex sentences as time goes by is only explained by the behaviorism language acquiring that needs repetitive practices and experiments.
In addition, Most of the reasons that support innate acquiring is not experimental and hypothetical.
Languages are very important in our lives. Every time and everywhere we can see and hear the languages. We can say we are live in the languages. And because we are living in the langugages, people can develope their languages. When we acquire language for the first time is when we were babies and we have to think about how we became be good at languages. Some says that people are born to be the genius of languages, have innate acquiring ability for language. However, if all the people have innate ability fot lanuguage, all people's level of the language will be same. If all the people are born with the innate ability for language, how people developed the language for a long time. How they could make better languages as time goes by even there no exists better or poor language acquring in the world? So, we need to pay attention to the behaviorism in language acquiring. In the world, there is no work that can be done without practicing. Lnaguage is the same. We learn and practice through trial and error, and therefore we can gain more developed languages as time goes by like Korean. Therefore, language was developed and is developing and will more developed in the future.
*reference
http://www.studymode.com/essays/Question-Language-Acquisition-Lenneberg-Vs-Chomsky-65161795.html
http://navercast.naver.com/contents.nhn?rid=133&contents_id=5874
