How Children Learn Language

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the book "How Babies Talk: The Magic and Mystery of Language in the First Three Years of Life" by Roberta Golinkoff and Kathy Hirsch-Pasek." It explains that the book is geared toward parents with infants who are interested in tracking how their children learn language. The paper looks at a portion of this book which is devoted to "experiments" that parents can do with their children. This also paper examines the style in which the book is written, the language used and the use of humour. Overall the writer was not impressed with this book and feels that it adds very little to the study of language development.

Outline:
Overview
In Utero
Tactile Learning
Babbling and Other Things
Toddlers
Conclusion

From the Paper:

"The authors of this book, Roberta Golinkoff and Kathy Hirsch-Pasek, claim that the fetus is being prepared to hear "the contours of our voice and the cadences of speech without ever hearing words the way that we do" (13). The words that the fetus hears, the authors state, is like the swimming pool game of guessing words spoken underwater.It is possible to hear the syllables and pitch of those words, but in most cases the words are indistinct at best. Using an experiment that monitored fetal heart rate, which declines initially before rising again when the fetus is exposed to a new experience, researchers found that babies can even differentiate between new sounds even in the uterus (14-15). Other experiments revealed that the fetus could determine differences in music and in poetry as well."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Golinkoff, Roberta and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek. How Babies Talk: The Magic and Mystery of Language in the First Three Years of Life. New York: Penguin Group-Plume, 2000.

More papers on How Children Learn Language:

• Book Review # 100669 : "Children and Language"
• Essay # 84563 : "Children and Language"
• Book Review # 130865 : "Children and the Meanings of Words"

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