Essay: Exploring Child Language and Literacy Development Theories

This essay delves into the multifaceted domain of child language and literacy development, providing a comprehensive exploration of the cognitive processes involved in language acquisition and literacy skills. The essay examines three prominent theoretical frameworks: nativist, behaviorist, and sociocultural theories, each offering distinct perspectives on how children acquire language and develop literacy from birth to age five and beyond. The essay details how these theories explain language development through different stages of childhood, from pre-speech to complex sentence formation, and how environmental factors such as parental interaction and cultural experiences influence learning. The essay provides examples of how these theories manifest in real-world scenarios, such as rewarding and punishing behaviors, and how children adapt to new environments. Ultimately, the essay emphasizes the critical role of language development in a child's overall development, including their ability to communicate, express, and understand feelings, and highlights the interconnectedness of language and literacy in fostering cognitive and social growth. This essay is a great resource for students seeking to understand the theoretical underpinnings of language and literacy development.

PROJECT 2 - ESSAY
UNDERSTANDING LEARNING
AND LITERACY

INTRODUCTION
Literacy understood as ability to read, write and use numeracy in at-least one method of
writing. This is termed out as the fundamental skill that assist to unlock the learning offers
individuals with means to pursue knowledge. During the early phase of childhood, children
abilities to understand, to process and to produce language flouring in amazing way. In addition
to this, language development termed out as process in which children come to communicate and
understand language during early childhood.
The present report is based on understanding language and Literacy. Thus, study will
cover that how children language development can be understood by theories such as nativist,
socio-culture and behaviourist at the early stages of language acquisition.
MAIN BODY
Explain each theory of development of listed age range of childhood.
During the first year of life the child is in pre-speech stage. Developmental aspect in
relates with speech will include acts such as development of gestures, to making the adequate
eye contact, cooing, babbling and crying. In addition to this, it can be stated that language
development is termed out as the crucial aspect of children early development as this enhanced
the send of belonging, develops confidence and independence as they start to grow. Thus, child
language development will define with age such as-:
Birth-2- Language development is the critical part of child overall development. In the first 12
month babies develops various foundation that underpin the language and speech development.
They use to keep developing language skill in the amazing way in the first two years of life.
Thus, best way to encourage child is to do lot of talking with them. Thus, nativist theory argues
that child born with innate ability to organize the laws of language that enables the children to
easily learn native language at the early stage. Therefore, behaviourist theory stated that children
develops and enhance their learning in the certain ways. This theory identified that children
enhancing their learning through their interactions with the environment. In the age till 2, the
child uses to develop their language learning throughout the external environment of their
parents. Thus, it can be stated that sensorimotor area can get developed during the first two years
of a child’s life. Therefore, at this stage child uses to focus on their immediate surroundings,
experimenting with the things around them with help of playing with them, biting them or

throwing them. This aids to enhance the learning of child in crucial way in their early age of
development. For example- Child throws a fit that the reward for displaying alternate behaviours
and punishing the tantrums that will help to change how the child behaves in the future.
Henceforth, this can be stated that this theory holds that kids can unlearn old behaviours and
learn new ones if they are rewarded for them. Thus, rewarding and punishing the child at the
tantrums will help the change that how the child will behave in future. On the other hand, at the
early stage of birth-2 children are born with the skills for the language development that mainly
get affected their learning with the shape by culture and social experience. In addition to this, it
can be stated that active development of subcultures aiming at expanding and enhancing learning
is one likely towards the current approach.
Over 5 years of age- By the age of 5 child uses to speak increasingly complex sentences. Hence,
child uses to develop the ability to talk about the things that have happened in past and will
happen in the future. Therefore, Nativist learning development is one of the rapid learning
process. By the age when child gets 5 the vocabulary tends to enhanced tremendously and
communication is performed with ease. It is theory that highlights the fact that aspect that
language can be developed in effective manner. In addition to this, it can be stated that
behaviourism is termed out as learning theory that focuses on observable behaviour. Thus,
behaviourist theory plays crucial role in terms to understanding the early significance to the role
of first language acquisition. As per the behaviourist theory children uses to develop the
understanding more complex language. At the age of 5 child uses to go to school and they use to
meet with various people from the outside world. Hence, they start to enhance their learning with
interaction and environment of surroundings. Thus, behaviour theory suggest that children starts
to grasp some concepts within specific developmental stages from the surrounding due to the fact
that certain sections of the brain would only further develop at certain ages by looking over the
environment. For example- The children age between 2 to 5 years, child begins to listen to his
parents and he starts to unconsciously recognise that which kind of language he is dealing with,
he will set his grammar to the correct one. It is known as setting the parameters.
In addition to this stated that behavioural perspective defines the dictated by our
environment and that our behaviour is a response to external stimuli through operant
conditioning and this is the process through which behaviour changes with positive and negative
reinforcement. Thus, behaviourist theory termed out as learning and development were the result

of association, punishments and rewards. After the age of 5, the child starts to get evolve in
cultural aspect and they enhance their learning by seeing socio-culture aspect. In addition to this,
it can be stated that Sociocultural theory termed out as the emerging theory in psychology that
looks at the important contributions that society makes to child early age development. It is one
of the theory that stresses the interaction between developing people and the culture in which
they live. Sociocultural theory also suggests that human learning is largely a social process and
this enhance the learning of child in manner as they use to interact with others. In the early
childhood phase, the cultural differences become the significantly increasing.
CONCLUSION
Hereby, it can be concluded that language developed can be termed out as the critical part
of the child overall development. This support the child ability to communicate, express and
understand the feeling at their early stages of age. Also, this can be stated that development is
termed out as process on which children come to understand and communicate language during
their early childhood.

REFERENCES
Book & Journal