01.+Language+adquisition+Theories

**TASK 1. LANGUAGE ADQUISITION THEORIES**


 * 1. VYGOSTKY'S THEORY **

Children construct knowledge. Learning can lead development. Development can't be separated from its social context. Language plays a central role in mental development.
 * Vygotsky's Development Theory:**

The provision for assisted performance is known as scaffolding. Common elements of scaffolding include Scaffolding may include assistance with planning, organising, doing and/or reflecting on the specific task. Such assistance is best made available in a timely manner matched to the learning needs and interests of the learner.
 * Scaffolding:**
 * task definition
 * direct or indirect instruction
 * specification and sequencing of activities
 * provision of materials, equipment and facilities
 * other environmental contributions

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 * 2. GARDNER'S LEARNING THEORY**

**Linguistic intelligence** involves sensitivity to spoken and written language, the ability to learn languages, and the capacity to use language to accomplish certain goals. This intelligence includes the ability to effectively use language to express oneself rhetorically or poetically; and language as a means to remember information. Writers, poets, lawyers and speakers are among those that Howard Gardner sees as having high linguistic intelligence.

**Logical-mathematical intelligence** consists of the capacity to analyze problems logically, carry out mathematical operations, and investigate issues scientifically. In Howard Gardner's words, it entails the ability to detect patterns, reason deductively and think logically. This intelligence is most often associated with scientific and mathematical thinking.

**Musical intelligence** involves skill in the performance, composition, and appreciation of musical patterns. It encompasses the capacity to recognize and compose musical pitches, tones, and rhythms. According to Howard Gardner musical intelligence runs in an almost structural parallel to linguistic intelligence.

**Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence** entails the potential of using one's whole body or parts of the body to solve problems. It is the ability to use mental abilities to coordinate bodily movements. Howard Gardner sees mental and physical activity as related.

**Spatial intelligence** involves the potential to recognize and use the patterns of wide space and more confined areas.

**Interpersonal intelligence** is concerned with the capacity to understand the intentions, motivations and desires of other people. It allows people to work effectively with others. Educators, salespeople, religious and political leaders and counsellors all need a well-developed interpersonal intelligence.

**Intrapersonal intelligence** entails the capacity to understand oneself, to appreciate one's feelings, fears and motivations. In Howard Gardner's view it involves having an effective working model of ourselves, and to be able to use such information to regulate our lives.

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 * 3. CHOMSKY'S THEORY**

Chomsky, then, sees the child as essentially autonomous in the creation of language. She is programmed to learn, and will learn so long as minimal social and economic conditions are realised. In Bruner's version, the program is indeed in place, but the social conditions become more important. The child is still an active participant, is still essentially creative in her approach to language acquisition, but the role of the parents and other caretakers is also seen as primordial. Finally, Macnamara sees language learning as being subordinate to and dependent upon the capacity to understand and participate in social activities.

**THE MOST COMMON NONVERBAL SIGNS ARE:** **Emblems:** Gestures with precise meaning known by a culture **Illustrators:** Gestrures that enhance verbal messages. **Adaptors:** Help a person adapt release tension, also called “manipulators”. Hands are used vey often ( scratch, touch, smood..) **Regulators:** Used to regulate, manage or control a conversation. Turn taking, control the conversation **Affect displayers:** Facial expressions showing emotions. Micro-expressions

But we also use sounds associated to words to convey meaning. Those sounds work on their own, even if we do not understand the words/ sentences those associated sounds will help us to create the context, imagine what the speaker want to say and predict a future response. This is known as PARALANGUAGE. The most common ones are:

**Qualifiers:** volume, inflection, pitch, pacing, tone, melodiousness. **Characterizers:** sounds, sights, mumbling, groans, whines, yawning, laughing, cryings ( show character, emotions, and sensations) **Segregates:** Fillers in speech, Pauses, silence or sounds: Oh! Ah-ah!, like-a, sh, Uhuh!..

**NON VERBAL LANGUAGE:** Many nonverbal signs are universal. For example, smiling and frowning mean the same thing regardless of where one travels on this globe. Often, nonverbal signs are involuntary and physiological.

**1. PROXEMICS**

**2. SEMIOTICS:** Seeks to understand how natural or constructed signs and symbols function as a communication medium. Semiotics: semantics, pyntactics and pragmatics. Sing: generic label for a unit of non-verbal communication. Cue: non-verbal sign used to promt an event, behavior or experience. Signal: used to inform as to what will happen next. All cues are signals, alla signals are signs, not all signs are signals, not all signs anda signals are cue.

**3. KINESICS:** Study of non-verbal coding systems of bodily activity as related to human communication.

** Task 1: Angela’s 4th grade classroom analysis **