1873.10 - Language acquisition and child language


Course number
1873.10
Title
Language acquisition and child language
ECTS
10
Purpose
The course aims to introduce students to child language acquisition theories, in particular, informing them about innate language skills and language development in young children up to school age. Research and studies on Faroese children’s language will also be a part of the course.
Content
Already in their first three years of life, children learn thousands of words. They are capable of generating and understanding compound sentences and they master the phonetic system of their language. All this occurs before they even know how to tie their shoelaces. How do children acquire language? And how can they learn it so quickly and so well? Is it just a matter of children absorbing what they hear, or are entirely different factors part of the language acquisition process? We will examine how children seem to actively use both their environment and their creative language learning capacity to learn the mother tongue. Reading list Louise Bjar & Caroline Liberg (eds.): Barn utvecklar sitt språk. 2003. Studentlitteratur. Lund. Gisela Håkansson: Språkinlärning hos barn. 1998. Studentlitteratur. Lund. William O’Grady: How children Learn Language. 2005. Cambridge University Press.
Learning and teaching approaches
The course is organized into lectures and student presentations, based on the literature in the field as well as practical tests and studies.
Assessment method
Written exam (6 hours) or open take-home assignment
Contact
Zakaris Svabo Hansen