No, not relationship advice after forgetting that special lady's Valentines Card last week (sorry, mum), but an article on interaction and its importance in child language acquisition. For those of you looking back over your CLA notes as we finish the topic and thinking "What's all that stuff about Nicaraguan deaf schools supposed to mean?" well it was a fiendish attempt to get you to use this blog as part of your revision. If you're looking for the link, you can find it here!
But back to interaction (and not the interaction that went on back stage after the College Council auction last half term...allegedly...). We all know it's important to talk to babies, even before they can talk to us, but how important can it be? Most linguists are of the belief that at least part of language acquisition is innate (Chomsky's LAD may not be the holy grail it used to be, but his PPT and Steven Pinker's Language Instinct seem to be respected as the most likely answers to this conundrum), so if that's the case, what can interaction do to aid development?
This article from last month's Times, suggests that it can benefit children in many ways, not all of them linguistic. Read on, and if anyone mentions this article in class they get 2 (yes, that's two) packets of Skittles as a prize. And this time, that's a promise...
Useful for:
ENA1 - Child Language Acquisition
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