Instead, the focus of his paper would be the theories of first and second language acquisition. This paper will highlight some theories arisen since the debate on a child's language acquisition begins. These theories are brought about in the hope to see the link between each theory and thus to make connections and settle at a probable answer for the mystery of language acquisition. In completing this paper, I would like to thank Dr. Hjh Jamalleah Hj. Ismail for her full guidance and endless support. .
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Theories of First Language Acquisition.
Countless theories have been proposed and criticized through the centuries to speculate the mystery of language acquisition. Such theories have been coming from scientists of numerous major disciplines, mainly psychology and linguistics. At certain level of time, these experts have landed upon amazing findings that later proved futile, with unceasing emergence of new theories that brings in new lights.
Among others, these are three popular theories of first language acquisition.
Imitation.
In the beginning stage of a child's life, he or she will learn language (or any other types of behavior) by imitating people and things around him or her. We can say that this theory arises from a child's habitual tendency to observe. At such early age, too, children are said to have excellent memory and whatever goes through their observation system will go into their memory. Therefore, a child habitual observation and excellent memory are the two major aspects responsible for the imitation theory.
However, this theory is proven wrong. Recent studies have found that children are not able to imitate any complex sentences, yet they can arrive with a structure that bears always equally the same meaning. A research done by Ervin-Tripp (1964) concluded this, when a child was able to pick up content words in a sentence produced by an adult and responded in his/her own words in an attempt to convey the same meaning.
