2nd assignment continued

The "Mama teached me to talk" article seems to agree with the Critical Period hypotheis theory. While the Critical Period hypothesis theory looks at the age of 12 as the critical period, the Mama article stresses that the age range from 2 - 6 is the most important to develop proper language skills. After this the child continues to learn and master the language, but the it is really important to develop the foundation at an early age. Reading to me, only further emphasizes how you can use language to continue to develop language and other forms of communication. The article discusses that children may not use the language in the proper form when they first begin to speak, but eventually develop the proper way to speak. It does indicate that adults generally attempt to correct grammatical errors, but often times children repeat the same errors.

The "My experience" article speaks about the difficulty of learning a language at a later age when you have to acquire the tools and the tools may not be good enough or accessible enough. One good point was that "learning a new language means learning the mechanics of that language, the grammar." She stressed that reading newspaper articles is a very useful way to see the language in everyday action. Perhaps if children eventually learn to read a newspaper (becoming a lost art), than this would absolutely further enhance their ability to read and understand language as a whole. Again, the more reading, whether it is textbooks, pleasure books, magazines, newspapers, whatever, is great for everyone, particularly children. Generally what is learned as a child will be taken into adulthood.