Tape-record at least five-ten minutes of interaction between a child (11-48 months of age) clearly in the stages of first language acquisition and an adult (not yourself). You can also search YouTube or other social media platforms for videos of children in conversation with an adult caregiver.
The child can be in conversation with another child or just alone with the adult for part of the transcript. Listen to the tape several times and transcribe the conversation word-for-word.
Highlight the parts of the recordings that are relevant to the points you wish to make about child language acquisition and caregiver speech.
Describe the stages of language acquisition as discussed in the readings. Identify and describe each stage. Discuss the language samples of child language acquisition that represent each stage. What characteristics of the stage does this data illustrate? Does the data differ? What are the differences?
Also discuss how the adult caregiver communicates with the child. What are the characteristics of caregiver speech and which of these characteristics, if any, are present in this adult’s interaction with the child?
Then, following the guidelines below, write a report of 300-500 words about the child’s language development, based on your tape-recorded data. What did you learn/confirm about first/child language acquisition? What does the data suggest? Does it concur with the stages as described in the readings? What conclusions can we make about the theories of first language acquisition based on these data? Include references to the readings.
Review and summarize the articles/research/theory on first language acquisition and caregiver speech. Based on what you have read, state what you believe to be true about first language acquisition and caregiver speech. These are the assumptions that you are examining by collecting data.
Describe specific strategies you have read about that the adult uses to help the child’s language acquisition process (repeating child’s language; asking for information; answering questions; simplifying her/his own language; expanding child’s utterances). To review commonly used caregiver strategies, please refer to the readings and/or the video clips on language acquisition or caregiver speech, e.g., http://www.babyhearing.org/LanguageLearning/BuildConversations/Affirm.asp
Methodology/Research Design
Explain what you are going to do in this mini-study to explore your assumptions. That is, who are your participants, where did you collect the data, what did you do to collect the data, and any other relevant information.
The design of your study involves the assignment described above. The description of your participants should be written in a paragraph and should include the following information:
Name of child
Age (in months) of child
Child’s L1
Name of adult
Adult’s L1
Relationship of adult to child
Setting of taping session (where? when? how long?)Data Transcription and Analysis
Transcribe a five-to-ten minute segment of the interaction between the child and the caregiver that shows how the strategies you described are used. Be sure the transcription is exact (word-for-word; parts of words; repetitions) and contains 25-50 lines of talk and follows the format of transcripts in the readings. Mark all characteristics of the child’s language that can be used to identify the stage of first language acquisition.
Also, identify examples of the adult strategies in caregiver speech. Comment on the effectiveness of the adult’s strategies in the segment you have transcribed. In other words, state whether (in your opinion) the strategies used by the caregiver help the child’s language development. Cite examples in your transcript to show how the adult strategy you have chosen helps or does not help the child’s language development.
Interpretation and Conclusion
What can we conclude about the stage of first language acquisition of the child based on these data? What can we say about caregiver speech based on this sample? State this in the conclusion.
GUIDELINES & RUBRIC
Please note: Language Observation Projects should be submitted via Assignments and posted on the wiki. Go to Child Language Acquisition lecture and then create a new page. Cut and paste your data as well as your analysis. (You can also attach it as a document should someone want to download the data and work with it.)
Please note the guidelines below for the language project.
All research projects should be in mini-research format. They should comply with MLA or APA guidelines for bibliographic references and other conventions that we use in academic writing. Please refer to any writer’s guide (go to Barnes & Nobel Reference section to buy a copy — all major publishers sell them –or to the library or check your old English composition textbooks).
What does this mean in terms of the content?
This should be a well-organized and finished paper.
Introduction:
You should have an introduction that explains what you will be talking
about: describe the project and the contents of the paper.
Body
The body of the paper includes:
i. Design of the study: What you were looking for?
ii. Motivation for the study: why you did this particular study? What were you expecting to find?
iii. Description of data: context (who and where you recorded describing the situation and the people involved, etc.
iv. Transcription of data: word by word record of what the child/caregiver said as well as what the other person said.
v. Analysis of data: focus on some parts of the recorded speech (data) that will illustrate the ideas/concepts that you want to prove or disprove. Say for instance you are doing the phases of child language acquisition, you have to find examples in the recording which illustrate the characteristics of the babbling stage, for example...what did the baby say? /ae.ae.ae.ae/ or at the two-word stage:Baby: go home
mother: you want to go home?
Baby: go home
vi. Discussion: what does this data mean? Does it support the description of the stages of child language acquisition or not? Explain how.c. Conclusion: What can you conclude about first/child language acquisition based on your research/data and the theories that we have studied?
d. Your paper should also include references to the readings and a bibliography.
1) Content __/85
q Introduction: literature review, introduction w/ assumptions
q Data – full data set (transcribed)
q Research (references to ideas from readings or other sources)
q Analysis & Interpretation
q Conclusions
2) Organization _/10
q Mini-research paper format
q Introduction/Body/Conclusion/References
q Cohesive/coherent paragraphs
3) Language Control __/5
q Academic English
q Mechanical errors &/or conventions (paragraphing, etc.)
Sample Solution
