Vygotsky’s Theory of Child’s Language and Thought

40

2.5 Vygotsky’s Theory of Child’s Language and Thought

There is a general consensus among developmental psychologists and psycholinguists that language is the product of both nature – the make-up of the human organism, and nurture – the effect on it of the environment surrounding the growing organism. Rice in Goh and Silver 2004 identifies three crucial issues in language acquisition: 1 the nature of language, 2 what the child brings to language acquisition, 3 what the environment contributes to language development. However, there is little agreement on what proportions of each are involved, or on the precise nature and contribution of each. This thesis gives consideration on Vygotsky’s theory of child language and thought. Even though the theory is not applied sophisticatedly in the analysis, but Vygotsky’s belief underlines the analysis in this thesis, especially concerning the the important connection between social environment and language learning. Vygotsky’s theory belongs to interactionalfunctional approach to language acquisition, therefore it is different from other views, such as behaviourism and nativism. Vygotsky’s view focuses mainly on two ways; firstly, Vygotsky stressed the important connection between cultural and social environments and language learning. Children learn a language in social interactions and use it for social purposes; secondly, cognition is seen as closely related to language but not in a deterministic manner as Piaget argued. Children’s cognition is developed through their interaction with their parents and other people. Adults use language to teach children about their world by talking to them about everyday routines, naming 41 objects together and teaching them about appropriate behaviours, as shown by the following figure. Figure 2.13 Changing Relationship between Cognitive Development and Language Adapted from Goh and Silver 2004 In Vygotsky’s view, language is a means of influencing later cognitive development, while in Piaget’s view, language initially has an internal function. Vygotsky’s theory is currently most noted for his central focus on the social, and modern developments are often labeled ‘sociocultural theory’, which still concerns with the individual or individual cognitive development. Language provides the child with a new tool, opens up new opportunities for doing things and for organizing information through the use of words as symbols. In considering the early speech of infants and its development into language, Vygotsky distinguishes the outward talk and what is happening in the child’s mind Cameron, 2001:5. The infant begins with using single words, but these words convey whole messages: when a child says juice, she may mean I want some more juice or my juice has split. As the child’s language develops, the Interaction with the world and with others Cognitive development thought Language 42 whole undivided thought message can be broken down into smaller units and expressed by putting together words that are now units of talk. Vygotsky proposes what so called Zone Proximal Development ZPD to give a new meaning to ‘intelligence’. Rather than measuring intelligence by what a child can do alone, he suggested that intelligence was better measured by what a child can do with skilled help. Different children at the same point in development will make different uses of the same help from an adult. Vygotsky saw the child as first doing things in a social contexts, with other people and language helping in various ways, and gradually shifting away from reliance on others to independent action and thinking. This shift from thinking aloud and talking through what is being done, to thinking inside the head, is called internalization. In the internalizing process, the interpersonal, joint talk and joint activity, later becomes intrapersonal, mental action by one individual.

2.6 Communicative Competence