Free English Language Dissertations - Children Have An Intuitive Understanding Of The Meaning Of Words In Any
Children have an intuitive understanding of the meaning of words in any language, whether they are familiar with it or not. It seems likely that the basis of this understanding is their instinctive power of interpretation of gesture and facial expression which will accompany the spoken words (Arnold 1999) The child knows that the gesture and facial expression, the accompanying touch are all indicative of the underlying intention and are practically the same in all countries. However, in other cultures, gesture and facial expression are used far more than in our own. The child is extremely accurate in associating ideas and is very particular to keep all the links already forged quite separate from one another (Drummond 1993). The child originally hears all sounds as patterns and people who talk with a slightly different accent or intonation from that which the child is familiar will be entirely unintelligible, as though they were talking in a foreign language
Every language is a unique and uniquely important way to make sense of the world. Language is a palette of sounds, a dictionary of words made up of those sounds, and a grammar of rules for combining the words meaningfully. Every child that learns to speak practices sounds, builds up a dictionary and works out a set of rules. Every child does this all largely unconsciously, with incomplete help and unreliable guidance from parents and friends and teachers who, themselves are only half conscious of the rules. And so the numerous functions of language enable young people to be heard, to cry out in pain, to acknowledge agreement, to express hunger, thirst, anger, pain, sadness, bewilderment, contentment, joy and love. It is through such a miraculous invention that language can be said, not just to be a social instrument, but the main social instrument.
References
Arnold, C, 1999, Child Development and Learning 2 5 Year: Georgia’s Story. Hodder & Stroughton, London.
Barnes, P. (ed), 1995, Personal Social and Emotional Development of Children, Open University, Blackwell, Oxford.
Bartholomew, L and Bruce, T, 1999 (2nd Edition), Getting to Know You: A Guide to Record-Keeping in Early Childhood Education and Care, Hodder & Stroughton, London.
Brice-Heath, S, 1983, Ways With Words, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Drummond, M J, 1993, Assessing Children’s Learning, David Fulton, London.
Holt, K S, 1991, Child Development, Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford.
Lee,V, & Das Gupta, P, 1995, Children’s Cognitive and Language Development, Blackwell - Open University, Oxford.
Minett, P, 1994, Child Care and Development, John Murray, London.
Oates, J (ed), 1995, The Foundations of Child Development, Blackwall - Open University, Oxford.
Pinkers, S, 1994, The Language Instinct, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth.
