Practice Essay

When talking to children, imitation and reinforcement play a huge part in their language development. A child must be aware of what the correct form of English is and what is grammatically incorrect. By doing so, caregivers repeat what a child has said, they recast the utterance displayed by the child and respond to the language shown. It is an important factor needed, most definitely amongst early life stages. This is a concept conjured by Skinner.

Throughout Text A, we see many examples of the mother recasting and correcting Toms speech. 'i sitting on the bike (.) it make noises''. Firstly Tom delivers an elliptical construction, missing the stative verb 'am' in 'I sitting on the bike'. To follow, Tom re-displays this child language feature. 'It make noises', the declarative utterance contains a missed inflection, missing out the inflection 's' at the end of 'make'. This feature is most common amongst the telegraphic stage. The telegraphic stage is the final stage of child's language acquisition and is a concept that explains the utterances children produce should contain 3-4 word sentence; enough to make sense. In response to this,Tom's mother recasts toms speech and states 'it makes noises', recasting what tom has stated. The desired result of a recast is that the child would realise the mistake, correcting it next time.

Within Text B, many of the same example is shown. However, using response to reinforce instead. Tom (firstly displaying a false start) states 'is (.) is dat your talker?' the deictic reference shows Tom's speech has still not developed to correct standard. The immature pronunciation of 'dat' suggests his language has not completely developed as of yet. In response, Toms mother replies 'my talker? yeah (.) that's a tape recorder. Using a contrast of both response and reconstruction, she shows that she does understand what Tom is referring too. Like the Piaget theory, Tom is classifying the object as a single feature- most commonly seen from children ages 2-7. This is extremely relevant to Tom who is 2 years and 7 months old.

To conclude, within both text A and text B Toms mother often changes and corrects Toms language to standard English in the hope that he will understand his mistake and will display mature language development in the future.

Dominance, deficit and difference revision link

https://prezi.com/z6lg_ymisgnc/copy-of-deficit-difference-and-dominance-theroies/

Halliday 

– Regulatory: Language used to influence the behavior of others. Concerned with persuading / commanding / requesting other people to do things you want.

*EXAMPLE FROM TEXT*
'Look'-imperative

– Interactional: Language used to develop social relationships and ease the process of interaction. Concerned with the phatic dimension of talk.

*EXAMPLE FROM TEXT*
'yes I course you can mummy!'

– Personal: Language used to express the personal preferences and identity of the speaker. Sometimes referred to as the ‘Here I am!’ function – announcing oneself to the world.

*EXAMPLE FROM TEXT*
'I cutting round the edge!'

– Representational: Language used to exchange information. Concerned with relaying or requesting information.

*EXAMPLE FROM TEXT*
'

– Heuristic: Language used to learn and explore the environment. Child uses language to learn; this may be questions and answers, or the kind of running commentary that frequently accompanies children’s play.

*EXAMPLE FROM TEXT*

– Imaginative: Language used to explore the imagination. May also accompany play as children create imaginary worlds, or may arise from storytelling.

*EXAMPLE FROM TEXT*
'




Dore language development 

FUNCTION	EXAMPLE
LABELLING	Naming or identifying a person, object or experience
REPEATING	Echoing something spoken by an adult speaker
ANSWERING	Giving a direct response to an utterance from another speaker
REQUESTING ACTION	Demanding food, drink, toy, assistance etc
CALLING	Attracting attention by shouting
GREETING	Pretty self explanatory
PROTESTING	Objecting to requests etc
PRACTISING	Using and repeating language when no adult is present

Child Language Acquisition

Stage 1: 
Babbling- this occurs when an individual is between 6-8 months old
This is when infants start to utter/mumble unrecognizable words which hold different meanings. 
Stage 2: 
One word or holophrastic stage- this occurs when the child is 9-18 months old
This is where infants can state an object but never include cohesion (and, but, or)
Stage 3:
Two word stage- this will happen when the child is 18-9 months 
The closed classes in English include pronouns, determiners, conjunctions, and prepositions, a child does not use this within their language 
Stage 4:
Telegraphic stage or early-mulitwood stage- when a child is aged 24-30 months this will happen
Stage 5:
Later multi-wood stage- this stage appears at 30 months+ 

Bibliography

(http://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Fall_2015/ling001/acquisition.html) accessed 16/09/16 
(http://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Fall_1998/ling001/acq.html) accessed 16/09/16

Word of Mouth

Word of Mouth- Slang

-'...as far as I am concerned slang is what I would call a counter language'

-'...slang's essence is opposition'

-'...alternative uses for a word that is quite proper'

- slang has bad reputation due to '...criminal slang in the 1500's/16 century'

- '...associated with bad people'

- statistics show there are '...5000 slang words'