Theories of Language and Literacy Development in Early Childhood

This essay delves into the crucial aspects of language and literacy development in children, focusing on the foundational theories that explain how children acquire language and develop literacy skills. It examines three primary theories: the nativist theory, which posits an innate language acquisition device; the learning theory, emphasizing the role of repetition and reinforcement; and the interactionist theory, highlighting the importance of social interaction. The essay provides examples of developmental milestones and how they serve as practical indicators of language and literacy progress. It also explores how these theories can inform developmental plans to support children's language and literacy growth. The essay concludes by summarizing the key points, emphasizing the significance of understanding these theories for fostering effective communication and literacy skills in children.

Running head: LANGUAGE AND LITERACY
Language and literacy
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note

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Introduction
Speech and language are the most important part of life. It begins from the infant
period and continues to develop in the adolescence period. It is assumed that the speech of a
child develops in the childhood period which is considered to be six years approximately.
The pace of the development of the speech and expression varies from child to child. It
begins specially at the age in which they start communicating with others. There are two
types of category of language, one is known as receptive language and the other is known as
expressive language. The receptive language is the understanding of words and sounds. The
expressive language is the use of speech which includes the sounds and the words. It includes
any particular signs or bodily gestures which are usually used to communicate the meaning of
some thoughts that needs to be communicated. The essay analyses the concept of
development of speech and language among the children. In order to do such the theories of
the early language acquisition and development has been taken into account. Three theories
has been explained in this essay, that are the nativist theory, the learning theory and the
interactionist theory. In order to explain the theory an effective example of the development
milestone behavior, the function or phase behavior has been explained. Towards the end an
effective developmental plan has been suggested which would add in the development of the
theories. It further sums up the key points of the essay which serves as a summary of the
essay.
Theories of child`s language and development
Nativist theory
One of the most well-known theories about the language acquisition is the nativist
theory. This theory suggests that every individual is born with something in their own genes

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that allows each and every individual to learn the language. This theory proposes that there is
a certain language acquisition device (LAD) somewhere in the brains of every individual that
is responsible for the learning a language. It reacts in the same way as the hypothalamus
reacts to the body temperature (Nassaji, 2016). It states that no physical language organ exists
in the brain and the language acquisition can be hampered if there are certain disorder causes
problems with the language while leaving the intelligence apart. This theory also suggests
that there is universal grammar that is shared across the different languages because this
grammar is part of the genetic make-up. The majority of the languages of the world consist of
verbs and nouns which makes a sentence grammatically correct. The presence of verb and
noun is essentially required to make it a complete and meaningful sentence, although this is
not true in all the instances. This theory can be applied in order to explain the way the young
children can learn certain complicated ideas quickly or to understand the reason of why there
are so many similarities in language around the world. This theory is comparable to how one
thinks of numbers regardless of the cultural background and the calculations included in
mathematics. They all work in the same manner (Little, Dam & Legenhausen, 2017).
The learning theory
The other effective theory of the language acquisition is the learning theory. Another
way to look at the learning of the language is to treat it like learning a new skill. This theory
of language acquisition involves the idea that the children learn the language much like they
learn to eat their first meal or to tie their shoes (Schmid & Köpke, 2017). It can include the
first attempt of their counting the numbers. It includes the repetition and reinforcement. As
the children grow older they are praised for speaking properly and they are corrected when
they misspeak. Thus, it can be said that language arises from the stimuli response. While this

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is logical, it fails to explain the way the new words or phrases come about since the children
are only parroting the things they have heard from others (Gass, 2013).
The interactionist theory
This theory is also called the sociocultural theory. This theory combines the idea from
the sociology and biology in order to explain the process of development of the language.
According to this theory the children learn language and speech of expression in order to
interact and express their feeling around their surrounding world. The language is dependent
upon the interactions that are social. A language can be best expressed when it becomes is
socially practiced because the main purpose of using any particular language is to express
one`s own feeling to the outside social world. The interactionist approach claims that if the
language ability develops out of a desire to communicate, then the language is dependent
upon which the individuals want to communicate with (Ellis, 2015). This means the
environment has a heavy influence on the language of an individual and on the speaking
power of an individual. It will affect how well and how quickly one learn to talk and to
communicate by speaking. For example the infants are found to raise by their mother are
more likely to learn the word, mom and there is less chance for him to develop the call, dad.
Among the first words one learns are the ways to demand attention (Ortega, 2014). The
influence of this theory is found while learning a new language. The language classes often
teach the commonly used vocabulary and it phrases initially and then focuses on building the
conversations rather than focus on building conversations compared to simple rote
memorization. Even when one expand the vocabularies in the native language. It is highly
observed that the word one speaks the most is remembered the most (Bjorklund & Causey,
2017).

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Developmental milestones
The development milestones serve as one of the best example to understand the
theory of learning the languages. These are a set of functional skills or age-specific tasks that
most children can do at a certain age range. This is used as a tool to check the progress of the
development of the progress of the child. It is a matter of fact that each milestone has an age
level, the actual age when a normally developing child reaches that milestone can vary quite a
bit. Every child is different in his own way (Barrouillet, 2015).
Conclusion
The theoretical milestones are effective examples of the child development stages.
The learning of the development of the child which involves the studying patterns of growth
and development from which guidelines for the normal development that are drawn up are
effective and beneficial. Each child develops in different ways. The essay concentrates on the
patterns of development by recognizing the wide variation between the individuals. The essay
briefly described that the theories help in the development of the communication of the child
and they are effective and helpful. It helps to measure the progress and formulates plan for
the development in the activities of the children. Therefore, these activities should be applied
in future.

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References
Barrouillet, P. (2015). Theories of cognitive development: From Piaget to today.
Bjorklund, D. F., & Causey, K. B. (2017). Children's thinking: Cognitive development and
individual differences. SAGE Publications.
Ellis, R. (2015). Understanding Second Language Acquisition 2nd Edition-Oxford Applied
Linguistics. Oxford university press.
Gass, S. M. (2013). Input, interaction, and the second language learner. Routledge.
Little, D., Dam, L., & Legenhausen, L. (2017). Language Learner Autonomy: Theory,
Practice and Research. Multilingual Matters.
Long, M. H. (2017). Problems in second language acquisition. Routledge.
Mitchell, R., Myles, F., & Marsden, E. (2013). Second language learning theories.
Routledge.
Nassaji, H. (2016). The interactional feedback dimension in instructed second language
learning: Linking theory, research, and practice. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Ortega, L. (2014). Second language learning explained? SLA across 10 contemporary
theories. Theories in second language acquisition: An introduction, 245-272.
Schmid, M. S., & Köpke, B. (2017). The relevance of first language attrition to theories of
bilingual development.

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