BF Skinner's theory of operant conditioning is built on the idea of reinforcement and strengthening certain linguistic behaviours through positive and negative rewards and punishments. Positive reinforcement could be anything from praise, attention, smiling, echoing and approval - these would bring the child pleasure. An example from the Tom transcript is when Tom says 'it makes noises' and his Mother directly repeats this back to him as a sign that it was the correct phrasing. Echoing strengthens the language choice as it's a sign to the child that they're correct. On the other hand, negative reinforcement is anything from a bold face threatening act, like being shouted at and told you're wrong, to hedging and mitigating the negative participle no by either saying 'try again' or 'maybe it's not that'. I think that without imitation and reinforcement from the primary caregiver or parents, a child would struggle to differentiate between what's right and what's wrong. A clear example from the text of a negatively reinforced correction demonstrates this:
Tom: the bike (.) the dad bike
Mother: dad's bike
Tom: yeah (.) the dad (.) dad's bike (.) dad's bike mum (.) dad's bike
If the Mother hadn't corrected Tom then he wouldn't have been able to establish the missing suffix ''s'.
This quote is also evidence for another imitation based theory, Lev Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development. Vygotsky's theory focuses on social interaction and scaffolding (when the caregiver interacts to help when they sense it's necessary). Tom's mother understands that knowing when to use certain suffix' is out of Tom's ZPD, therefore she gives him the answer. Tom then goes on to logically work out why the possessive suffix following the noun is required and then uses it correctly and doesn't make the virtuous error again later on. The reason for Tom's faux pas is likely a case of overgeneralisation as he would describe his bike using the possessive pronoun 'my' followed by the concrete noun 'bike'; so when describing Dad's bike he sees no need for pluralisation.
Bruner's theory of CDS (Child Directed Speech) also supports the argument for imitation. He says that parents simplify their language, slow it down and only speak in short utterances so their child can pick up on certain linguistic features. This is evident when Tom is learning to say 'Dad's bike' as that's all his mother says to help him. If she were to not use CDS she'd have said a much longer sentence which 'Dad's bike' features in; however this makes the job of working out what the correct phrasing is very hard for Tom as he has to sift through a lot of information to get the key aspect. By getting straight to the point and simply outright correcting him, it's obvious what the main subject of the sentence is and he can then take this and use it. MIT researcher Deb Roy found this to be the most effective strategy for CLA and didn't realise he was doing it until much later on. He said that he and his wife were 'subconsciously changing their language structure to meet his needs'.
However, a theorist whose ideas refute the hypothesis that imitation and reinforcement are the most crucial tools would be Noam Chomsky. He believes that children have a built-in Language Acquisition Device (LAD) and that this acts as an innate set of rules and structures that a child knows to follow. This could be used to explain Tom's error as I mentioned earlier he overgeneralised and this is likely to have come from on of the innate rules. If imitation were the most crucial and effective tool for CLA then these miscues wouldn't occur as parent's and adults around the child do not make these mistakes so they can't have picked them up from them.
Good selection of key quotes. Look to use multiple quotes to show awareness of patterns and go into them much more deeply with multiple uses of terminology - aim for 4 or 5 per paragraph.
ReplyDeleteAlso look for subtler exploration of the theory making connections and contrasts in every paragraph and looking at how one quote, or several quotes, could support one theory to some extent and another to an extent also for the A.
Check participle/particle. And be careful - I don't have the transcript here but I'm pretty sure Tom says "it make noises" and she models the adult use of the inflection to create agreement rather than simply echoing.
Revisit the theory - Vygotski is more about scaffolding (providing supportive strategies) than offering a model, so it is more in contrast to Skinner than you've indicated and the use of the possessive inflection is IN Tom's ZPD because he is ready to learn it with support. The fact that she models it and he imitates it you could definitely link to Skinner so you could show how the two theories actually show different aspects of learning at work in synthesis because of the CDS strategies Tom's mother is using.
Good use of linking Bruner to Roy and a learned quote - very effective.
'Miscues' is about reading because the cues are the information that children apply in order to guess/check what the word is. Use 'virtuous errors' here and/or be specific, offering examples (pre-learned ones and ones from the text) with terminology applied.
Avoid stray apostrophes e.g. in "as parent's and adults around the child do not make these mistakes".
Avoiding contractions also raises the level of formality and is more suitable for academic writing.