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This essay is a 3-page in-depth piece that answers the overall question: 'The best way to explain children’s language development is to focus on what they use it for.'
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Molly White“The best way to explain children’s language development is to focus on what they use it
for.”
Referring to Data Set 1 in detail & to relevant ideas from language study, evaluate this view of
children’s language development. (30 Marks)
Data set 1 is a spoken transcript that surrounds a 3-year-old boy named Theo who is
interacting with his caregiver Nana, whilst playing in the bathtub. Referring to the text, it is
clear that Theo is in the post telegraphic stage of development due to his strong ability to
communicate and form clear sentences with appropriate pronouns. However, slightly lacking
strong understanding of pragmatics, such as politeness. The child clearly has strong
communicative competence as his grammatical understanding of syntax, phonology and
social knowledge are prevalent. The child can easily get his needs across and can
communicate his wants to his caregiver. His caregiver Nana uses repetition when testing
Theo’s pragmatic skills by elaborating on his ideas with tag questions. In terms of language
levels, Theo is quite advanced in his speech, as he has almost fully accomplished the post
telegraphic stage. Through the analysis of lexis and semantics, awareness of pragmatics and
applied acquisition learning theories, the way to explain children’s language development by
focusing on what they use it for will be fully discussed and analysed.
Halliday’s functions could be applied to this transcript, explaining why children use certain
areas of speech in order to get what they want. The transcript between Theo and his
grandmother displays imaginative, heuristic, representational & personal functions of speech.
Evidence of imaginative speech in the transcript can be identified through the idea of the
imaginary monster playing in the bath. “I think the chain is broke by the monster”. The
reference to a monster shows that Theo has wider concepts of objects or people that he cannot
exactly witness first-hand. This phrase is also in the incorrect past tense ‘broke’. Which
highlights the fact that Theo is unable to grasp the idea of tenses and that although he has
communicative competence, he still frequently makes virtuous errors. ‘Is it just a monster?’/
‘It’s a pretend one in the bath’. Additionally, by Nana questioning Theo about the imaginary
monster, he is able to grow his conversational maxims by fulfilling Grice’s theories. In order
to avoid violating the maxim of quantity by not adding enough detail in his speech, Nana
encourages and influences Theo to elaborate on his internal ideas. Furthermore, the
understanding of the concept of Santa Clause could also be argued to be a part of Theo’s
imagination. As he grasps the notion of Santa when his Grandmother asks ‘Have you written
your letter to Santa?’ In relation to Theo’s heuristic functions, it is evident that he uses this
function in order to ask questions about his surroundings. Evidence of heuristic views in his
language can be pointed out when he asks questions to gain a deeper understanding of his
environment. ‘How much am I?’, in this sentence, Theo is questioning his weight. However,
can not yet distinguish the difference between suitable vocabulary for certain topics. In
addition, this would be a virtuous error, although his logic behind the phrasing is coherent.
This phrase is then followed by a correction from his caregiver, ‘Do you mean weight?’. This
correction can also be highlighted as positive reinforcement towards Theo, in hope that he
will repeat the correction in the future.
Theo’s caregiver, Nana, plays a big role in the development of his speech. She can often be
seen to correct his grammatical mistakes through the use of positive reinforcement. Positive
reinforcement is used to increase the likelihood of a behaviour being repeated, according to a
psychologist named B.F Skinner. Similarly, in terms of Theo’s pragmatic development, he is
beginning to contextualise his skills in order to apply them to everyday situations. Which
means that his rate of development is in line with the average as pragmatics should only start
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