Language acquisition in young children 

"Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language, as well as use and produce words and sentences to communicate.

Language is fairly unique to the human race because non- humans do not use language to communicate" (Language Acquisition Definition).

Language acquisition in children is very interesting to think about because of how complex our language is. Infants and toddlers learning and understanding the language all depends on their developmental growth and how they are learning. There are many theories behind how language acquisition occurs in small children. For example, in the article What is Language Acquisition?- Theories and Stages, it talks about the behaviorist B.F Skinner and how his theory of exposure helps the infants and children develop the language. Another theorist, Noam Chomsky, add to Skinner's ideas by saying children have a natural ability to understand language and begin imitating or mocking their parents or whoever they are around most. Language acquisition is harder to maintain as a person begins to age, which is why it is harder for adults to learn a new language than it is for children if they are growing up in a two language household. This article also talks about the "critical period hypothesis", which states that there is a time where learning a new language or learning multiple languages is easier. This critical period is younger children. During the critical period they are better at learning new vocabulary, understanding grammar, and speaking with the accent that is appropriate for where they live and the people around them that are teaching them language. As an adult, all of these steps become a lot more difficult and adults are less likely to be so quick to pick up a second language because it is significantly more difficult.


The New York Times published as article called Language Acquisition As A Matter of Exposure. This article talks about how bilingual learners may have a stronger, healthier brain because of their strong language acquisition abilities. In this article it states how, at one period in time, people were worried about the brains of bilingual children because of the added knowledge and stress it could put on such a young child. However, the article argues this and states, "The present findings are significant because they show that the brains of bilinguals and monolinguals process their individual languages in fundamentally similar ways, except for the one fascinating exception that bilinguals appear to engage more of the neural landscape naturally available for language processing more than monolinguals, which is a very good thing" (New York Times).  The article also touches on the fact that if a children is learning more than one language, their exposure to the language needs to be significant and preferably at a young age, when they are the most impressionable and their language acquisition is fresh. This goes for learning one language as well. The more an infant and toddle is exposed to language and new vocabulary, the easier it is form them to speak and the quicker they are going to pick up on the new language.

This image demonstrates a very common mistake that young children make when they are first learning language