Language Development

Language is a verbal tool that humans use to communicate and obtain knowledge. It is a combination of oral language, which can be understood as verbal communication and literacy, which is reading and writing. The development of language starts when a baby is born so that the affectation of language in early years is significantly essential. This process not only helps children in grasping and communicating but also lays a starting point for their growth in future. There are two constituents that play an important role on language development are nature and nurture. This essay will discuss about how nature and nurture affect on children language development. There are four components make up of language: phonology (sounds), syntax (words

According to Hill (2012), at the first stage infants are able to response when someone call their names. In the next stage, babies can speak usually no content words sentences then when they become toddlers, they are capable to request or say their needs with three-word sentences such as “bring me a cup”, “don’t touch it”. When they grow up, school-aged children use their rich vocabularies instead of basic words to gain semantic knowledge. Heick (2014) claimed that Children tend to use new vocabulary that fit their idea to describe a new concept. This phenomenon is called schemas. For instant, when children introduce their dog as a pet, they tend to use “Poodle”, “Jack Russel”, or “French Bulldog” rather than only “Dog”. It is obvious that nurture plays the main role in semantic development. Undeniably, children at the first stages are only capable to vowels and consonants sounds but in years after, they develop their knowledge about vocabulary and meaning of words through social experience, such as school, friends, television, books, etc. Vygotsky’s theory stated that on cognitive development depend on the zone of proximal development (ZPD), which means the influence between children and others will scaffold them in development, such as build up vocabulary to make sentences

According to Janet Fellowes and Grace Oakley (2014), pragmatic is how to response to conversation in social and culture context or in the other words “the practical use of language”. This component requires ability to use it for different language purposes such as greeting, offering, etc, and also in different social contexts such as at school or at home. Hill (2012) claimed that children have ability to pronounce words fluently in variety of contexts at stage three to five years old. In the following stage, school-aged children learn language through society, especially at school. Consequently, they develop their awareness of using words which is more complex to communicate in various situations in anywhere. Undeniably, mostly nurture contributing to children development in language in this component. Social interactionist perspective argued that the link between children with others is the key to flourish language. Additionally, it is essential for adults to scaffold and support children to encourage them to develop language which is believed that it is too complicated to do