Speech and Language Developement - Essay Example

? Speech and Language Development Lev Vygotsky’s theory that children learn because of the adult influences that they have in their lives and not just because they are going to learn no matter what, is how I like to believe my children learned their communication skills. Being a hands-on mom and having had a hands-on mom myself, I realize that it was that interference, that helpfulness that I had growing up that I then instilled into my children. When she was young, my daughter would watch me constantly and try to be just like me, copying behaviors and speech patterns that I had. At nine months of age, she was especially fond of the telephone, and when I wasn’t looking she grabbed the phone and dialed a random number and ‘spoke’ to the voice at the other end. I was quite startled when a police officer called my number back and asked if anyone in the household had called 911. My daughter had randomly put 911 together and ‘spoken’ to the operator. It wasn’t enough for her to use any of her many toy telephones, she had to go to the real thing, since that is what I did. My mom likes to tell a story about when I was about 18 months old. I was quite stubborn and wanted to put my own shoes on. Of course that took a lot of time and when people are waiting to go out, you can understand the frustration of the parents. Apparently I would tell them “I’m capable” when they wanted to help me. I learned that phrase from my parents, or overheard them tell people that someone was capable of doing something alone, and I took that to mean that I too was capable of putting on my own shoes, keeping up with the others. I can only presume that at one point or another my mother told me I was capable of putting on my own shoes, so that is what she got back each time she tried to help me. Piaget vs. Vygotsky: Language Development Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky were both prominent psychologists who studied the development of language in children, though with two very different views on how it is achieved. Piaget was firstly a scientist, and as such used his powers of observation and his own children as the starting point of his theory. He devised a system of stages that each person goes through, in order to gain understanding of the world around them. Using his stages we can pinpoint where different things are learned; his pre-operational stage runs from age 2-7, thereby encompassing language acquisition. Piaget felt that people are in the world and manipulate it to suit their needs; you can’t do things until you are ready to do them, and things follow a logical order and flow until the ideal is achieved. This holds true for the development of language, you learn as you go, you learn words when it is your time to learn words and you never deviate from the system. Being a scientist, his theory has a very scientific base, something works or it doesn’t, things happen in order, there are no right or wrong answers; it is the way in which you come to the answer that matters the most. Vygotsky on the other hand believed that young children function in the world surrounded by adults who are there to lead, guide and help them on their journey, people like parents, grandparents, teachers, friends; people who validate the child’s knowledge, causing the child to seek more of it. This is a very different approach to that of Piaget, because there are no steps, no systematic search for the answers, just learning through people who have learned before. Of course it matters in his theory which adults the children are using for models, since they will learn from the adult. The better the adult is at teaching, the better the child will fare. Both of these theorists believe that language acquisition is one of the biggest things we as human beings learn. It separates us from all other forms of life on earth; we are superior because we have language. Piaget believed that language and all other forms of acquiring knowledge is a physical process first, and then when it gets internalized it becomes a mental process. We learn as we go and because we are curious about our world. He saw speech as an egotistical thing, we as children can’t communicate like adults can, so we talk to ourselves or our toys, modeling the behaviors that we see, but not being fully a part of it. Vygotsky believed that speech is a social tool, one which children learnt from their elders and built upon from the very beginning, and he thought that children learned the best when they were faced with challenges just slightly above their developmental level, thus always growing and never getting stagnant. Vygotsky’s theory, then, would be the one of choice to explain the relationship between thought and language development, because his theory pushes the boundaries of what children know and when they learn it. His theory does not employ a wait and see attitude about learning, dependent on stages of growth and development, instead it is full of potential; the sky is the limit in terms of knowledge. Children are free to develop at their own pace, so long as they get the proper guidance as they grow. In the school setting, this theory out of the two makes more sense. Looking at a classroom of children would certainly highlight the differences in the development they had attained thus far. We are all social beings, but we acquire knowledge at different speeds. If you looked at Piaget’s theory, all the children who were the same age would therefore be at the same development level, but in reality, this isn’t always the case. In a classroom you inevitably have the kids who excel, the ones who fall behind and the ones at the ‘proper’ developmental level for their age (according to the school system). Using the theory set out by Vygotsky, then, the ones having the difficulty would be the ones who get the special attention, not only from the teacher but from specialists whose job it is to help those children attain their full potential. With Piaget’s theory, it would be the case of the child can’t possibly be at ‘X’ level yet, he isn’t capable of being there yet, but with Vygotsky’s; it would be ‘why isn’t the child there? He could be’. Read More