This essay is about how children acquire language from their family members, caregivers and social environment. Children do not go to school to speak and use their mother language. How they can say a word, sentence and sometimes long phrases and sentences are amazing. Many researchers tried to find the answer from this puzzled question long time ago.
Children acquire language from their mothers or caregivers. How they acquire language will be the focus of this essay. I use the word “acquire” I do not use the word “learn”. New born children can not speak any languages. They only cry and coo to express their feeling. When their mothers or caregivers talk to them they listen, distinguish the voice then they store all those sounds and voice in their brain. This is not a learning process but this is an acquiring process. Children will acquire all words addressed to them. Those words, types of syntaxes and intonations will be the foundation to their language competence in the future.
While mothers are holding and talking to their children, the children listen and store the entire mothers’ utterance. The mothers’ intonation, syntaxes, and accent will be copied. They are going to be language patterns for the children. When the children grow up and they are ready to speak, they will use those language patterns in their spoken language. Language acquisition process can be divided into some stages. Each stage has different language competence. The older children are the better their language competence. Here are some stages and competences.
Beginning 0, 0 to 0, 2 months old, children can response to human voice, mainly their mothers’. After 0, 2 months old they usually reduce crying and cooing to hear noise and sound.
In normal situation they can distinguish between noise and human voice even they can recognize their mothers’ voice (Sanger 1955) (Tampubolon, 1933. Mengembangkan Minat dan Kebiasaan Membaca pada Anak, Bandung, Angkasa).
There are three utterances in children at the age 0, 0 to 0, 5 years old. They are crying, cooing and babbling. Crying is the most used expression before they reach 0, 3 months old but they have produce cooing. Crying is considered as training to articulation organs to prepare producing words. When children are at the age 0, 4 to 0, 5 months old they like babbling. They produce words like “ Ba-ba” and “ ah-ah”. Their voice has intonation at this stage. Their voice has not had any meaning because the voice looks like sound. Children will be more responsive until they reach 1,0 year old but they still use babbling , cooing and less crying to convey their emotion.
Children can say one word at the age 1,0 to 2,0 years old but the period between 1,0 to 2,0 years old is not fixed. The period varies among children. At this stage children can speak one word like ‘Mama’ to call their mom. The word represents a simple syntax. When children say “Mama”, it can mean that they say “Mama is here “. One word has a sentence pattern behind the utterance. I have a year old baby. She often says “ Pee-pee”. I know she is going to say ‘ I am pee”. Environment and people have strong influence in this language development process at this stage.
Children can speak two or three words between 1,6 to 2,6 years old Lenneberg (1967)( Tampubolon, 1933. Mengembangkan Minat dan Kebiasaan Membaca pada Anak, Bandung
However, this competence does not become standard to all children. There is no specific time mentioned from many researchers. Prof. Dr. Tampubolon Medan (1911) followed his grand children language development. He recorded that competence of saying two or three words was 1,0 – 2,0 or 2, 0 – 3,0 years old. The development at this period has been built at the previous period. Children can utter two or three words. Their achievement shows that children have acquired types of syntaxes even though children’s utterances are not clear due to the immature of articulation organs.
The ability to say full sentences takes place from 3,0 to 6,0 years old. It means that children can say simple sentences. They can say “This is book” or “I want milk”. The development of language competence grows continuously. Children can produce more complex sentences. They have used prefixes and suffixes to speak.
When children enter kindergarten at the age 4,0 or 5,0 they have skill to transform all language syntaxes Menyuk (1971) .( Tampubolon, 1933. Mengembangkan Minat dan Kebiasaan Membaca pada Anak, Bandung
Verbal and visual stimulations are very important aspects that influence language development in children. Language acquisition process in children starts from 0,0 to 3,0 years old. After these periods, the language develops and extends to reach the ideal patterns. Parents, caregivers and educators should know these stages and periods so that they will be the best figures to be copied.
Verbal stimulation in children can accelerate children acquire language more quickly.
Children acquire language from listening what their parents, caregivers say. Their brain finds and analyzes rules of the language intonation, syntaxes, and vocabularies. Hearing organs are parts of important organs in language development in children. Children who suffer from hearing problems will face language retardation.
L.G Alexander, Practice and Progress, Longman, Stated that learning language had to follow these rules. He said that nothing should have been spoken before it had been heard; nothing should have been read before it had been spoken, and nothing should have been written before it had been read. From these principles, let’s compare with children language development at the early age. Dr. Soetjinigsih, DSAK, University of Udayana, Bali said that verbal stimulation was a very important aspect in language development in children at the first year of growth.
Parents or caregivers have significant roles to stimulate language development in children. Their language will be their children’s model because children copy all forms of conversation. Talking to 0,0 to 1,0 year old children stimulates children’s language acquisition device in the brain. Language acquisition device (LAD) was stated by Mc. Neil and Chomsky in 1968. Copying is an acquiring process in children’s brain. Mothers who are talkative or talk a lot to their young children tend to have talkative children. As parents, we can create as natural as situation to stimulate our children language development. We have to talk clearly and in good intonation to other members of family so that our children listen and copy all models of our conversation.
Telling names of things around the house can be another way to stimulate children verbally. When children want to take a bath ask them in clear and stable voice “Let’s take a bath! “ Children hear the command and try to understand it. The more often parents talk the more input children receive. My 12,0 months old daughter can response my order. When I say to her “stand up!” she stands up and when I say “get to sleep” she finds her pillow and lay down.
Children acquire language from their environment. They have language competence before they can speak any language. They can response orders from their parents when they are about 11,0 to 12,0 months old. They cannot talk because their articulation organs are imperfect. Vigotsky said that children have pre-linguistic phase. Children have acquired language models and language rules at this phase. This competence is called inner speech. Inner speech becomes external speech when children can use the language to talk and it still exists because it is the foundation of the external speech.
It is important to know that all the processes only take place to normal children. Children with hearing disorder are different. They need special treatment. Normal children will imitate models of their parents’ language. Parents should give the best samples because they are models so that children will only receive the best inputs to the brain.
Visual stimulation to optimize children acquire language more quickly
Another aspect that influences how children acquire language more quiclky is visual stimulation. Children will remember an object better if they see the object. It is difficult for them to memorize abstract objects. The development of visual perception is also various. It can be divided into some stages.
Children try to follow objects by their eyes at 0,0 to 0,3 months. They extend their sight at 0,3 to 0,6 months. They recognize their family members at the age 0,6 to 0,9 months. Their visions have perfectly worked out. Children will be interested to an object that is colorful but they do not know the names of the objects. When parents put a colorful balloon in front of their young children, the children will crawl and try to grab the balloon. It shows that the children are interested in the color or the shape of the balloon. When the children see the balloon, their visions send to their brain all the information that attracts the brain to do an action. In the end, they will crawl and catch the balloon.
Children will memorize the names of objects if parents or caregivers tell the names of the objects. They will listen and see what their parents say and give so that all inputs that their parents give will be stored in their Language Acquisition Device (LAD). At this situation, verbal and visual stimulation takes place.
Parents or caregivers have to talk and say names of objects that they give to their children because children will always receive double stimulation at once. They have to say “balloon “ or “ this is a balloon”. They are not allowed to use baby talk for example saying a balloon “ aoon”. Baby talk is allowed to keep children cooing and babbling. Parents who always use baby talk when they speak to their children have given bad language models. Their children will copy all words that come out of their mouth. Talking in good pronunciation must be stressed out because children brain will only receive proper pronunciation even though the children cannot pronounce the words correctly.
Children start to talk and say a word at the age one year old. Their curiosity to know names of objects grows. My one year old daughter always asks” this, this, this “ and points her fore finger to an object she sees. One day she pointed to a box of biscuits that I usually give her. She said “ cit, cit, cit”. My wife and I wondered what my daughter meant. I knew that she pointed to a box of biscuits. That experience taught me and reminded me that my wife and I said “biscuit” to my daughter when we gave her some biscuits.
Visual stimulation is very important to accelerate how children acquire language more quickly. Parents will find difficulties to explain what an elephant is to their children if the children have never seen an elephant in a picture or at a zoo. However, visual stimulation must be followed by verbal stimulation. Children will not only receive information from their eyes but also from their ears. Children who like playing out and socializing with their friends become better language acquirers and learners because they learn how to give sympathy, control emotion, have empathy while getting along with their friends besides getting visually and verbally stimulated.
Bibliography
Fauzi Ahmad, 2003. Children Language Development, The Faculty of Letters and Culture, “Yogyakarta “ University of Technology .
DSAK, Soetjiningsih,1955. Tumbuh Kembang Anak, Bali , Universtas Udayana.
Tampubolon, 1933. Mengembangkan Minat dan Kebiasaan Membaca pada Anak, Bandung
LG Alexander, Practice and Progress, Longman
