In this essay, you are required to address the following:
Describe and discuss children’s oral language development using relevant theoretical perspectives and references to support your statements and discussion.
A tip: When planning for the components of your essay, you can consider including the following: the components of language development (i.e. phonological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic development) a theory that explains children’s oral language development from the nature perspective a theory that explains children’s oral language from the nurture perspective.
Your essay should include the following sections:
Introduce the topic.
Identify the key terms you that will address in the essay.
Include a thesis statement that outlines the way you will respond to the question you are required to describe and discuss for this essay.
The body of the essay will consist of a series of paragraphs through which you will describe the process of language development and discuss the influence of nature and nurture.
Each paragraph should begin with a topic sentence that introduces the main idea or theme of that paragraph. Typically, you would then support this topic sentence with research-based evidence. Carefully consider how many issues you are going to cover, and how these issues are related to each other and answer the essay question. Make sure you write in the third person only, and that you develop a detailed explanation across the body of the essay with well-reasoned points. Try and keep to one topic per paragraph and keep in mind the word count.
Summarise the information provided in the essay.
Make one final statement about the roles of nature and nurture in language development.
Take note: While you will have personal views on this topic, this assignment requires you to define and explain from an informed perspective. This means that your work should be supported by evidence that you have found from scholarly sources, a relevant curriculum, and other relevant sources. Such evidence should help you to construct and validate your descriptions and discussion points.
As stated earlier, your essay should include at least 5 references and it must be properly referenced with in-text citations and a reference list using the APA style. Note that the reference list will not be included in the word count.
Throughout your teaching journey, you will be required to use your relevant National and/or State or Territory Curriculum. To help you build capability in this area, and to help further prepare you for placements, here at Swinburne Online we allow you to choose whether you would like to use the relevant National and/or State or Territory Curriculum in your assignments. For further information specific to your assignments for this specific unit, please seek advice from your eLAs and/or your Unit Coordinator.
The following resources will assist you with completing this assignment:
Review the 'Essay writing' area of the Academic writing and presenting (Links to an external site.)section in the Study Resources section of the Student Hub. The Student Hub contains a wide range of useful Study resources (Links to an external site.), including guides on Exams and assignments (Links to an external site.) and Referencing (Links to an external site.) (this includes guidelines on how to cite and reference ACARA and EYLF).
You are strongly advised to engage with all learning materials and resources provided in Weeks 1–5. It is also imperative to participate in the collaborative activities as these will help you build your understanding of the key concepts and theories related to the essay, and practise and develop your writing and referencing skills. The essay writing guide section of the Student Hub contains references to support you in planning, structuring, writing and referencing essay assignments:
The ' Essay planning and structure infographic' in the Essay writing (Links to an external site.) section of the Study resources highlights the Topic sentence, Evidence, Explanations and Linking sentence (TEEL) approach to structuring paragraphs.
The ' Understanding word limits infographic' in the Essay writing (Links to an external site.) section of the Study resources shows how to distribute the number of words to each section of the essay in order to fulfil the allocated word limit of an essay.
Oral language skills in children play a significant role in their growth and development as it is known to be the foundation for their ability to comprehend language as well as read and learn new things (Jarvis, 2019). As per the MBA Assignment Expert, it accounts for the skill to learn the sound of different words what the word means or the sentences to initiate active communication. In the following assessment, the prime aim is to analyse and evaluate the process of oral language development in children with relevance to different theoretical perspectives that are used in early childhood education and growth.
During early childhood education and growth nurturing the skills to use oral language helps children sustain a significant and effective foundation towards learning to speak read as well as listen. The process of language and speech development during early childhood is known to be a complex process which focuses on a wide range of factors these factors often include physiology of the speed system anatomy interaction as well as neurological growth and development of a child (Nation, 2019). It is often used in the teaching process during early childhood education and development as children are involved in reading, listening or visualizing stories or rhymes in a specific language. It has also been found that oral language development is also related to the cognitive ability of an individual. According to semantic cognitive theory, language development is related to the interrelationship between the cognitive ability of an individual as well as the language learning process (Li & Jeong, 2020).
Oral language skills in children account for four chief components which include phonology, pragmatics, semantics as well as syntax which all together help them in developing their ability to use oral language in their growth and development years. Phonological development in children is often accounted as the process where the children learn to organize and evaluate different sounds into language or meaning. It accounts for the ability of an infant or a child to notice analyze as well as evaluate different sounds into spoken words thus it is known as the foundation of oral language which helps children read spell write or communicate using oral language during early development years (Bernhardt & Stemberger, 2019).
It has also been evaluated that syntactic development focuses on the ability of a child to combine different words to develop a sentence and thus has been accounted as the next stage of language development. Syntactic development takes place around the age of 18 to 24 months when children develop their ability to combine two or three words to communicate (Koizumi, Saito & Kojima, 2019).
The semantic development in early childhood often accounts for the understanding children sustain regarding different words as well as the relationship between different words it is known to be a gradual process that initiates before the ability to use words. It often takes place in three different factors where initially the child understands the relevance to the word followed by understanding the meaning of the word that has been used and further learns to connect the word to different other meanings (Mouzaki et al., 2020). It helps children learn the process of forming sentences with two different words and plays a significant role in their oral language development.
The oral language development in children is also associated with the social situation as they grow and develop. According to pragmatic development, social situation has a major influence on the ability to use language as a mode of communication (Paul et al., 2020). It also accounts for the ability of a child to use language or words in social situations such as greet, request, command or demand. It occurs as the child learns to use different words understand their meaning and form sentences using more words as a mode to communicate and interact using verbal language
It is also necessary to focus on analyzing oral language development from nature and nurture perspectives to understand the concept in a significant way. According to nature's perspective, the ability to understand and use oral language is considered to be an innate ability which is regardless of the surroundings or the environment a child grows. It focuses on the ability of a child to learn a native language in a much easier manner when compared to another language. It is often found that children develop their ability to use oral language based on their innate ability (Ramacciotti & Eccles, 2019). According to the nativistic theory oral language development is known to be a physiological, innate as well as genetic factor that is often transmitted from parents to the child it states that children learn their native language or the language the parents use in a much easier manner due to having innate ability (Zhao, 2022).
Also, the nurture perspective in children accounts for the fact that the ability of a child to use oral language depends on the environment and children growing up in similar surroundings can have common oral language development (Ramacciotti & Eccles, 2019). It has also been found that oral language development is also related to the behavioural factor as according to the behavioural theory language is known to be a range of verbal behaviours that can be incorporated within a daily behaviour to initiate change towards desired behaviour (Ladányi et al., 2020). Thus children can learn the oral language as a verbal behaviour which is guided as well as reinforced into development years to ensure better attainment of the ability to use oral language.
To conclude the assessment it can be stated that the development of the ability to learn oral language depends on different factors which altogether assist a child towards learning and using oral language during early childhood years. It is necessary that while initiating the process of oral language development in children factors such as environmental behaviour nativism as well as the cognitive ability of the child is altogether considered. It is because both nature and nurture perspective plays an equal and necessary role in the process of oral language development. Nature focuses on the nativist factor of the child while the nurture perspective resembles the surroundings and environment a child is growing.
Bernhardt, B. M., & Stemberger, J. P. (2020). Phonological development (Vol. 10, p. 223). John Benjamins Publishing Company. Retrieved from: https://www.torrossa.com/en/search/?rows=20&fq[0]=publisher_code:FZ4850&start=0&sort=pub_date_sort%20desc&page=0&fq[]=file_type_code:pdf
Jarvis, E. D. (2019). Evolution of vocal learning and spoken language. Science, 366(6461), 50-54. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aax0287
Koizumi, M., Saito, Y., & Kojima, M. (2019). Syntactic development in children with intellectual disabilities–using structured assessment of syntax. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 63(12), 1428-1440. https://doi.org/10.1111/jir.12684
Ladányi, E., Persici, V., Fiveash, A., Tillmann, B., & Gordon, R. L. (2020). Is atypical rhythm a risk factor for developmental speech and language disorders?. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 11(5), e1528. Retrieved from: https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/wcs.1528
Li, P., & Jeong, H. (2020). The social brain of language: grounding second language learning in social interaction. npj Science of Learning, 5(1), 8. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-020-0068-7
Mouzaki, A., Spyropoulou, E., Ralli, A. M., Antoniou, F., Diamanti, V., & Papaioannou, S. (2020). The dimensionality of oral language ability: Evidence from young Greek children. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 63(8), 2732-2751. https://doi.org/10.1044/2020_JSLHR-19-00008
Nation, K. (2019). Children’s reading difficulties, language, and reflections on the simple view of reading. Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties, 24(1), 47-73. https://doi.org/10.1080/19404158.2019.1609272
Paul, R., Paatsch, L., Caselli, N., Garberoglio, C. L., Goldin-Meadow, S., & Lederberg, A. (2020). Current research in pragmatic language use among deaf and hard of hearing children. Pediatrics, 146(Supplement_3), S237-S245. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2020-0242C
Ramacciotti, M., & Eccles, C. (2019). Language, learning, and development: perspectives on language acquisition and brain function. Revista EntreLinguas, 104-120. Retrieved from: https://periodicos.fclar.unesp.br/entrelinguas/article/download/12789/8375
Zhao, L. (2022, July). Study on child language acquisition—behaviorism, nativism, and sociolingustic approach. In 2022 3rd International Conference on Mental Health, Education and Human Development (MHEHD 2022) (pp. 1226-1229). Atlantis Press. https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.220704.222