The information that most stood out to me in James Britton's book, Language and Learning, was what I read in chapter two about language and speech development. Language is an important part of a child's development. They use language not just to communicate but also as a way to make sense of the world around them. They begin by making sounds that represent people or objects. This early language may be used as a "command" such as "I'm hungry" or "I'm thirsty" but is more often used as a "comment" or verbal accompaniment to what is going on (Britton, Pg. 33). .
Britton points out that it is often viewed that children's main incentive for learning to speak is to achieve satisfaction of their physical needs (Pg. 34). This is the view that I held prior to this reading. While this is part of the child's need for learning to speak, children are motivated to speak out of self-pleasure. Before children can speak, they hear their speech all around them. Therefore, once they are able to produce the sounds related to speech and imitate intonation patterns, they are pleased in pretending to speak. Discovering that everything has a name coincides with children's speech discoveries and increases the pleasure children get from using language.
While children's speech develops and they begin to learn more vocabulary, it may appear that they are imitating or copying what they hear. Instead children are imitating the forms and systems of what they hear. I like how Britton states that children imitate people's method of going about saying things more so than they imitate the things said (Pg. 42). They use this verbalizing process to figure out how speech works and how to articulate sounds, at their own pace. Like the father who was trying to get his daughter to pronounce the word coffee properly, I too have attempted this with many children. .
I, like the father, have caused great frustration in young children by attempting to do this.
