How Do Children Learn Language?
Mar 29 2009Language learning is natural. Babies are born with the ability to learn it and that learning begins at birth. All children, no matter what language their parents speak, learn language much the same way. This learning takes place in three basic stages. Basic Stages of Language Learning Stage One – Learning Sounds When babies are born, they can make and hear all the sounds in all the languages in the world. That’s about 150 sounds in about 6500 languages! However, no language uses all 150 sounds. The sounds a language uses are called phonemes and English has about 44. Some languages use more and some use fewer. In this stage, babies learn which phonemes belong to the language they are learning and which don’t. The ability to recognize and produce those sounds is called “phonemic awareness,” which is important for children learning to read. Stage Two – Learning Words At this stage children essentially learn how the
