Allison, Rachel, Pat, Laurel

These articles were all very interesting. We found the Nativist Theory to be interesting because it explains how when we are infants we learn to speak, even our noises is us learning to speak. The theory of Social-Integrationists, explains that as children we learn our language by listening and imitating what the people around of say, mostly our parents. The example that was provided in class, of the girl that says “actually” several times a day, truly backs up the idea that children learn their language by imitating the people around them. The article Mama teached me talk: explains that there is a critical period between the ages of 2 and 6 that a child learns whatever language they hear. The article also provided examples of two children that weren’t exposed to language and they never fully learned to speak.
We believe that language acquisition has a great deal to do with reading. We may first learn how to speak before we can read or write but once we learn how to do all three it becomes our way to communicate all the time.
In closing I added a few things from the article about learning another language. . We all know that learning languages can be challenging. There are so many rules that you need to follow and the rules are different for every language. They say the critical ages to learn language are before you are 6, so I guess that is way it is important to teach a second language at a young age. I am nor saying that it is impossible to learn another language when you are older my guess is it is probably harder.