Language Development

How Nature and Nurture Affect Language Development

I. Introduction 

A. Thesis: Nature is a precursor to language development that needs the compliments of nurture for a child to be well versed with its first language

II. What is the importance of nurture in language development?

A. With respect to language development, there have been many schools of thought regarding the importance of nurture or on the flip side, its irrelevance. The importance of nurture, however, is undeniable.

B. One evidence of the importance of nurture is that children will speak the language that is at their predisposition; an American born child will both speak and be fluent in English or Mandarin depending on whether it will grow in New York or Beijing.

III. How do words and sentence develop in young children?

A. Speech and language in young children advance as they grow and the best way to improve their language skills is to by talking to them.

B. The first way children learn to speak is by listening to their parents at home. The rest they learn it from teachers and then friends.

IV. What do behaviorists say about nurture’s role in language development?

A. With respect to language acquisition in children and nurture, behaviorists posit that the environment within which a child grows is the most relevant factor in the acquisition of its first language.

B. What’s more, it has been noted that if a child is predisposed to rich language then good habit formation will take place and proper development of language will occur. The role of nurture is very important where parents and guardians play the role of a support system to better the language development of a child (Friedmann & Rusou, 2015).

C. Examples of duties that parents and guardians (teachers included) need to play is giving children attention, asking them questions, using labels and help them with naming, and generally socially interacting with children (Berk, L. (2017).

V. Major milestones in child’s development

A. Child’s development milestone is behavioral or physical signs of growth of young children. Development milestones such as rolling over, crawling, walking and talking help to provide vital information regarding a child’s early development.

B. Milestones for each age range are different. They are the behaviors that emerge with time enhancing growth and continued learning. They include Cognition, motor coordination, social interaction and adaptive (Weisz, Jensen & McLeod, 2005).

VI. Sound and meaning in language development

A. The sounds of words represent purpose and vary accordingly across languages. However, some association between sound and meaning are pervasive.

B. In phonological development, speech sounds are formed and used to communicate language. When more sounds of language are acquired language becomes more precise with fluent pronunciation and improved intonation.

VII. Functional Brain imaging studies of speech in Language development

A. Speech processing relies on accurate and specialized networks, especially in adults. The significance amount of language learning takes place first year of life in the domains of word segmentation.

B. Nature and nurture in brain developments leads to progressive language development. Research shows that Infants process verbal stimuli before learning.

VIII. Conclusion

A. Nurture and nature both play a role in language development. As such, there is no dismissing nurture with respect to influencing a child to speak well. The moment the world accepts this as a reality, the better it will be for the young ones who are developing.

B. Parents play the biggest role in nurture i.e. to help children develop their language; teachers come second in playing this role. Children’s peers also help them develop language.

C. For that matter parents should be aware of their nurturing role and pronounce words correctly when they speak near children; they should not mimic the gibberish spoken by children.