CLA Flashcards
(29 cards)
What are the 5 theories of CLA and their Authors
1 - Behaviourist, Skinner
2 - Nativism/Innatist, Chomsky
3 - Interactionist, Bruner
4 - Cognitive, Piaget
5 - ZPD (Zone of proximal development), Vgotsky
Is their any theory that has been debunked?
Yes, the behaviourist theory
What is the Behaviourist theory?
Suggests = - Children are blank slates
- Children imitate patterns through positive reinforcement
What is Evidence for the Behaviourist theory?
Evidence = - Child repetition
- Adult positive reinforcement of childs utterance
What are some Problems with the Behaviourist theory?
Problems= - Children follow observable patterns regardless of
reinforcement given by parents
- Children can understand and produce utterances for
greater no. situations than prior exposure (apply to new
context)
What is the Innatist theory?
Suggests = - ability to acquire language is innate
- brain has LAD which indicates brain= hard-wired if enough
exposure
What is some Evidence for the Innatist theory?
Evidence = - Children create own rules to create own utterances
- acquisition occurs without carefully planned eg of language
What are some Problems with the Innatist theory?
Problems= - Focused on children hard-wired not how develop language
- Never did experiments relying on hypothesis (others did it)
What is the Interactionist theory?
Suggests = - Agreement with Chomsky but added that assisted by
carefully-constructed input from caretakers (motherese,
parentese etc.)
What is some Evidence for the Interactionist theory?
Evidence = - Simplified sentences
- Repetition
- Rising intonation (etc.)
What are some Problems with the Interactionist theory?
Problems= - Despite parentese, children acquire language at own pace
- Children produce language not just repeated from
interaction with care-givers
What is the Cognitive theory?
Suggests = - Child lang. acquisition: part of childs wider development
- Language comes with understanding
What is some Evidence for the Cognitive theory?
Evidence = - Child can’t linguistically articulate concepts they don’t
understand
- Children avoid language related concepts they don’t
understand
What are some Problems with the Cognitive theory?
Problems= - Evidence of children with severe learning difficulties who
still manage to use language far beyond understanding
- Suggest link is not as strong as Piaget though
What is the ZPD theory?
Suggests = - A learner can do something with guidance
What is some Evidence for the ZPD theory?
Evidence = - Children can ‘correct’ utterance with adult guidance
- Children repeat older siblings
- Adult input prompts development
What are the 6 stages of CLA and their age range?
1 - Pre-verbal, 0-3mths
2 - Babbling, 3-12mths
3 - One-word (Holophrastic), 12-18mths
4 - Two-word, 1-2yrs
5 - Multi-word (Telegraphic), 2-3yrs
6 - Later Multi-word, 3-4yrs
What is in the Pre-verbal stage?
- Babies can tell speech from other sounds
- Babies experiment with articulators
- Babies produce different cries for different meanings
What is the Babbling stage?
- Babies engage in turn-taking
- Babies have no meaning associated with sound
- Repeated sounds eg: ‘ba ba’ and ‘la la’
What is the One-word stage?
- Children name things in immediate environment
- Children use content words; especially nouns and lexical verbs
- Discover connection between sound and meaning
- One-word only
What is the Two-word stage?
- Rely on content words
- ~50-200 words in vocab
- Ordering of SVO conforms to standard word order
- Only Two-words
What is the Multi-word stage?
- Range of functions words and inflectional morphemes
- Children joining utterances in standard word order
- Vocab ~1000 words
What is the Later Multi-word stage?
-Engage in make-believe
- Pronouns used (Me ,I ,You)
- Sentences longer (4+ words)
- Range of plural and past tense evident
What do you need to write in theory CLA Questions? (4 points)
1 - Theorists
2 - Main hypothesis
3 - Evidence with metalanguage
4 - Weakness (problem)
