7/24/2019 How Can We Tell What Children Know

1/8

HOW CAN WE TELL WHAT

CHILDREN KNOW?METHODS FOR THE STUDY OF

LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

7/24/2019 How Can We Tell What Children Know

2/8

INTRODUCTION

We need to know what children know and dont

know about the grammar for their language.

Psycholinguistics, the study of how the mindrepresents and processes language , based on

behavioral studies of language use.

7/24/2019 How Can We Tell What Children Know

3/8

KNOWING VS. DOING

We need to assess what children know about

language on the basis of how they use language,

how they speak and understand language, or

make metalinguistic judgments about it.

However, when we observe a child speaking,interpreting or judging any particular utterance,

this single behaviour will never reveal the childs

knowledge.

7/24/2019 How Can We Tell What Children Know

4/8

Example

1. a.Mary: what do you want to do now?

2. b.Jessica: go homeIf a child utters a sentence like (1a), Jessica may answer

with (1b).we cant estimate Jessicas knowledge on the

basis of her utterance alone. if we did, we could

mistankely think that Jessica doesnt know thatEnglish requires overt subjects in sentences.

We must also discover what children do not do in

principle. If Jessica ramdonly produced not only (1b)

but also (2) at other times, this would suggest that, forJessica, word order was random.

7/24/2019 How Can We Tell What Children Know

5/8

COMPETENCE AND

PERFORMANCE

On the basis of children performance with

language, we must infer their competence.

Competence/ performance

CompentenceTacit knowledge of the generative grammatical

system that underlies language.

Performance

Behavior with language, speaking, comprehending ormaking judgments about language in real time.

7/24/2019 How Can We Tell What Children Know

6/8

We must dissociate various factors which interact with

childrens expression of linguistic knowledge in their

performance.

LANGUAGE PROCESSING

THE RESEARCHER CONSULTS BOTH CURRENT

LINGUISTIC THEORIES OF GRAMMATICAL

COMPETENCE, AND ALSO CURRENT MODEL OF A

LANGUAGE PROCESING. THE LATTER ATTEMPT TOFURMULATE HOW TACIT MENTAL COMPUTATION

ACTIVATES AND RELATES EACH FORM OF

LINGUISTIC REPRESENTATION IN THE VARIOUS

MODES OF BEHAVIOR WHIT LANGUAGE, E.G.

SPEAKING, HEARING JUDGING, READING,WRITING. EVERY BEHAVIOR WITH LANGUAGE

WHICH WE OBSERVE IN CHILDREN INVOLVES

THIS COMPUTATION AS WELL AS THEIR

LINGUISTIC KNOWLEDGE.

7/24/2019 How Can We Tell What Children Know

7/8

LANGUAGE KNOWLEDGE AND

PRAGMATIC FACTORS

The researchers job is made even more complex

when we realice that every act of speaking or

understanding language which we observe in

chioldren involves their use of language in a

particular time and place.Children adopt certain strategies.

When asked to interpret sentences such as the

red truck is pushing the green truck, they

respond quickly if the green truck, not the redtruck, is already placed on the track

7/24/2019 How Can We Tell What Children Know

8/8

LANGUAGE ACQUISITIONAND

PERFORMANCE FACTORS

Childrens behavior with language is also

affected by numerous performance

factors, e.g, their memoryand ability to

deal with length of linguistic utterances.The ralation between these factors and

linguistic knowledge is complex

Earlier research has shown that memory

and cognition are not independent in the

child.