Theories of Language Acquisition

According to this theorist, the speech structure mastered by the child become the basic structure of his thinking and the structure of the language he habitually uses influences the way he perceives his environment.

• Lev Vygotsky

• Jean Piaget

• Benjamin Bloom

• Noam Chomsky

He asserted that language development is related to cognitive development. The development of the child's thinking determines when the child can learn to speak and what the child can say.

• Ivan Pavlov

• Noam Chomsky

• BF Skinner

• Jean Piaget

Behaviorists believe that children come into this world with a _____ , a clean slate, bearing no preconceived notions about the world or about language.

• blank sheet

• tabula

• tabula rasa

• blank slate

_____ claims that children are biologically programmed for language and that language develops in the child in just the same way that other biological functions develop.

• Noam Chomsky

• Ivan Pavlov

• Jean Piaget

• Charles Fries

He emphasized that both positive and negative reinforcement can form behavior, and this subsequently impacts their language acquisition capability, as such, a lack of any reinforcement can also shape behavior.

• BF Skinner

• Ivan Pavlov

• Charles Fries

• Leonard Bloomfield