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WHAT IS LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

What makes humans different from other species is our way of communication through Language. There are no known species other than human beings that communicate through sentences or language. The most fascinating question is how do humans acquire their legacy of language from the previous generations? The answer is Language acquisition.

Language acquisition is a process through which a child acquires(pick up) a language. Children learn how to speak their native languages only through the process of language acquisition. The same phenomenon exists when a child or an adult wants to learn a second language. This set of skills contains the ability to perceive and comprehend language, as well as the ability to produce and use words and sentences to communicate.

STAGES OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION OF A CHILD

There are 5 main stages of acquisition of language by a child

Crying: (0-6 months) Crying begins from birth and initially the crying is loud and intense but gradually it decreases. A child starts to cry to reflect his needs to his mother therefore it is said to be the first stage of language development.
Babbling: (3-9 months) They are also called explosive sounds in which a child produces a unit of utterances that differ from situation to situation. Some simple vowel sounds are heard along with crying after some months of being born, and these sounds serve as the raw material for language development. Babbling is more found when the child is alone; he gets pleasure by hearing what he says. Sometimes when the child is trying to communicate with others he speaks words like ma ma, da da, pa pa, etc.
From babbling, normal speech develops through 4 processes:
Pronunciation
Comprehension
Vocabulary
Sentence formation

During this stage, the baby learns to make sounds but does not know how to speak although they develop communication.

Sound initiation or Echo reaction stage: (9-13 months) During this stage, the blabbering increases in quantity and he starts to repeat different sounds again and again. During this stage, the child also learns his voice by constantly blabbering and the blabbers become a bit clearer. They are able to recognize what their mother is saying, they may or may not be able to respond to it properly but they understand. The child during this stage tries to imitate what others say, therefore, it is during this stage that the family starts to teach them how to pronounce their names.
Verbal Understanding: ( After 12 months) During this stage, the child begins to make specific movements in response to sounds made by others. For instance, if the mother says ‘come’ the baby will come to her. This stage is very crucial as the child imitates words, pronunciations, and actions of others and if they are faulty, their language will be defective. This is an important stage for parenting.
Verbal Utterances: (19 months – 26 months) Here the child acquires an active vocabulary not being contented by imitating others. Speech is acquired through association theory. Learning plays a major role here. The stimulus variable, response variable, and reinforcement variable play a significant role in the development of language.
If any of the stages are not completed properly, the child will have defective language acquisition.

IMPORTANCE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Language has a great impact on our day to day life. It helps us to communicate our feelings, desires, or questions to the world. Infants communicate their desires and feelings through gestures and blabbers, but as they grow up they learn to communicate through words and sentences.

A person who wants to travel to other parts of the world for pleasure or business or to learn new cultures or for research or education needs to understand the language of the place they are going therefore they need to learn that language through language acquisition.

Growing children learn new things every now and then, but without proper language acquisition, they may face a lot of trouble in doing so. Sometimes, faulty language acquisition leads to verbal disabilities too.

Without language acquisition, communication will become weak and misunderstood. Therefore, this is a significantly important process.

In order to learn a new language too, language acquisition plays the most important part and based on how well a person developed his language during childhood his ability to learn a new language can be assessed.