Role of Language During Early Mental Development

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Language is an important requirement for a child’s cognitive, social and emotional development. This is why our education system is designed in a manner that ensures that during formative years children are exposed to more direct teaching of pragmatic knowledge, phonetics, semantic and morphemic. However, there has been disagreement among scholars of human growth and development. Some believe that children’s natural development is stinted by the regimented rote memorization of phonics and manipulation of language while others believe a systematic approach like phonics instruction is the most effective way to increase language acquisition during primary years. There are two main opposing schools of thought on the instruction of literacy. The bottom-up theories has put forward a sub-skills approach which holds that reading is learned at the beginning by manipulating the fundamental components of language, that is, alphabetical letters and words (Riley 2003). On the other hand, the top-down schools of thought propose that seeking out the meaning is the most important objective right from the start of learning how to read. Top-down theories further suggest that guessing and prediction are the main strategies for decoding words (Riley 2003). In the US these two opposing points of view have been enthusiastically discussed as phonics instruction in opposition to whole language (Hempenstall 2009). Even though on the surface the debate appears to be about teaching methods, the deeper level of departure revolves around what children have to learn so as to develop his or her language and be able to read (Riley 2003). Central concerns of the current phonics controversy revolves around fundamental questions such as which feature of languag... ... middle of paper ... ...reading potential if used objectively with other effective activities like language enhancing activities. In any case, evidence has demonstrated that those instructors who comprehend the complexity of how young ones learn to read adopt successfully a structured multi-approach strategy. Doing so holds up all elements of learning to read that are essential to development during primary years. References Hempenstall, K. (2009). The Whole Language-Phonics Controversy: A Historical Perspective. Education news Retrieved July 27, 2011, from http://www.educationnews.org/articles/the-whole-language-phonics-controversy-a-historical-perspective.html Otto, B. (2010). Language development in early childhood (3rd ed). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill. Riley, J. (2003). The teaching of reading: the development of literacy in the early years of school. New York, NY: SAGE.

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