Babies learn languages through repeatitive experiences and practices.
Will you marry me? You are my best freind! All the words and sentences we speak everyday and everytime, 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 communicaiton. This human's wonderful ability, it is wonderous how people cook their language taht 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 leran language by repetitive practice, not by innate ability.Many people already know that people learn langugae when they were baby. And there are two typical teory about learning languages. First one is being innate theory. Noam Chomskey insists that ability to learn a language is one of independent intellegences 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 tis the device that Chomsky designed to explain his theory. 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.
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.
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 coplex 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 complished, we learn simple sentences 'I'm 3years 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 repeatitive experience and practice. My point is that in language acquirng, 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.
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 my argument is very supported by many people, some still says that people have innate ability to learn a language.
First, the theory may says that babies learn language without manipulations like parents' and teachers' teaching. This argument is ignoring the influence of the society's environment in learning language. According to the theory, babies start to speak language because they have innate ability to do that. This sounds very uncompelling because it is not improved and not an experimental fact. If the language acquiring is innate ability for human, what are those things that people go abroad language study and teach the words mommy and daddy? Some says that they do not especially teach words like mommy and daddy, and the babies started to speak that words. Of course if parents did not teach them specially, they could learn those words because they hear them everytime.
Second, babies changes the sentences with basic structures. This argument also leaves doubt that how can we explain it. We can understand this arugument with behaviorism rather than innate acquiring theory. If the baby learn to speak a simple sentence they can change the sentence because they hear that type of sentence repeatedly so they know how to use that sentence.
Lastly, babies can learn native grammer even if imperfect language material is provided. Even though babies heared not correct grammer, they uses right form of the grammer. This argument is more reasonable than previous two ones. However, who speaks incorrect grammer expression in their native language? Do parents speak ' apple, I like' like this? Even if the incorrect grammer is provided, they do not use it because parents teach it is wrong.
In addition, Most of the reasons that support innate acquiring is not experimental and hypothetical.
Languages are very important in our lives. Everytime 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 lanugages, 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.
