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AFL1501 ASSIGNMENT 1 SOLUTIONS
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- University Of South Africa (Unisa)
Answers for AFL1501 assignment 1
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By: cafemkhaya • 4 year ago
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AFL1501Assignment 1
Learning to speak our mother tongues is one of the most amazing cognitive
achievements of human beings. In this part of the essay, I will explore the ideal
conditions about how I came about acquiring my mother’s tongue, and the role
played by the parent or caretakers in supporting a human being to acquire language
development, in this regard, a child. Once you are done reading this extract, you will
be able to understand how I came about acquiring second additional languages, how
and when do I use them, how do I change from one language to another, and finally I
will conclude by stating a writer’s point of view as to whether I agree or disagree with
a notion that a language can have either a negative or positive impact in the person’s
identity or cultural beliefs.
All children acquire a language to which they are exposed. Except in rare cases, for
example where an infant is kidnapped and kept in a dark room where there is no
sound of a radio, television or human voice for years. All babies hear one or more
languages from the time they are born. This is the language or languages that they
will eventually speak fluently at a letter stage in life. This means, for example, that if
a Tswana child is exposed to French as a dominant language in her environment,
she will acquire French, not Tswana. From this we can conclude by saying I, in my
youth, had a potential to acquire any language not just IsiZulu.
Language acquisition came easily to me as a child and didn’t seem to require any
conscious effort, by the age of 3 I had a higher degree of linguistic competence and
can use language appropriately in various situations. I know this because I saw it
now from my niece as she grew up. Parents didn’t sit down to teach me the words
and grammar of their language. However, a small amount of explicit teaching did
took place, for example when a mother shows a child a new object and says, look
this is a bell. Caretakers also sometimes have to explicitly teach children what to say
in specific social situations. For example, if your child receives a gift, you might have
to tell her to say “thank you for the present”.
I know and understand the message delivered by a Xhosa speaking person but I
don’t speak Xhosa. Around the age of 5 I was able to distinguish if a person is
speaking Xhosa or Zulu. I acquired the knowledge of Xhosa language spontaneously
when watching television drama or listening the music. By the time I was able to read
and write, I gained even greater knowledge of the Xhosa language, on television
dramas usually, the characters are allowed to speak their language of preference. As
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