Language and Thought Questions and Answers

Answer: B

Such verbalization is likely to be helpful because language facilitates thought process.

Speaking one's reasoning aloud is a form of the private speech Vygotsky described: children use language to plan, monitor and guide their own problem solving. Putting thoughts into words also lets Raman and his teacher see exactly where he is stuck.

It is not futile or unproductive, because language and thought are closely linked. Nor is it useful only for children with learning disabilities, and those children's difficulty is not, as a rule, in auditory processing; thinking aloud helps all learners.

Answer: B

The term is sensitive periods of development.

A sensitive (or critical) period is a time in early life when a child is especially ready to develop a particular ability given the right experience. If a child hears no language during this time, language development is seriously and permanently impaired, as cases of severely isolated children have shown.

Nativism says language ability is innate but does not itself explain why missing early exposure causes lasting damage. Sociolinguistics studies language in society, and semantics is the study of meaning.

Answer: C

The concept not related to behaviourism is Social interaction.

Social interaction as the driver of language development is the social interactionist (Vygotskian) view.

The behaviourist view (Skinner) sees the child as an empty vessel or blank slate filled by the environment, explains learning through operant conditioning, where responses that are reinforced are strengthened, and describes learning through trial and error. Those three options all belong to behaviourism.

Answer: A

The impairment is called aphasia.

Aphasia is a disorder of language caused by damage to particular areas of the brain, often after a stroke or head injury. Depending on the area affected, the person has difficulty understanding language, producing it, or both, as with Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia.

Dyslexia is a learning difficulty in reading, dyscalculia is a learning difficulty with numbers, and dysarthria is a motor speech disorder in which the muscles used for speaking are weak; the language itself is intact.

Answer: A

The process is called cultural transmission.

Cultural transmission is the property that human language is passed on from one generation to the next by learning within a community, not inherited genetically. A child learns whatever language it grows up hearing.

Productivity is the ability to create and understand endless new sentences. Arbitrariness means there is no natural link between a word and what it stands for. Displacement is the ability to talk about things not present in time or place.

Answer: C

The period is called the holophrastic stage.

At around 12 to 18 months children produce single words that stand for whole ideas or sentences: 'milk' may mean 'I want milk'. Because one word does the work of a phrase, this is the holophrastic or one-word stage.

Cooing (vowel-like sounds) and babbling (repeated consonant-vowel syllables such as 'bababa') come earlier, in the first year. Telegraphic speech, two- or three-word utterances such as 'daddy go', comes later.

Answer: B

These are called language universals.

Language universals are features shared by all human languages, such as having vowels and consonants, nouns and verbs, ways of asking questions and of negating statements. Noam Chomsky's idea of a universal grammar is related.

Diglossia is the use of two varieties of a language for different functions. A register is a variety used in a particular situation, and a dialect is a regional or social variety of one language. None describes properties common to all languages.

Answer: A

The idea is supported by the nativist view.

Nativists, led by Noam Chomsky, hold that children are born with an innate capacity for language, a language acquisition device or universal grammar, which lets them acquire any language they are exposed to quickly and without formal teaching.

Behaviourists, such as B.F. Skinner, say language is learnt through imitation and reinforcement. Cognitivists tie language to general cognitive development, as Piaget did, and social interactionists stress learning language through interaction with others. None of them stresses an innate capacity.

Answer: B

For Vygotsky, Saina's private speech is a sign of self-regulation.

Lev Vygotsky saw private speech, children talking aloud to themselves, as a tool for guiding their own thinking and behaviour. Speech first used socially by adults to guide the child is turned inward to plan and control one's own actions, and it later becomes silent inner speech. It increases when tasks are difficult, as here.

Calling it ego-centric speech or a sign of cognitive immaturity is Jean Piaget's interpretation, which Vygotsky disputed. It is certainly not a psychological disorder; it is a normal and useful part of development.

Answer: A

Language development is facilitated when teachers use concrete examples to refer to abstract concepts.

Primary-school children understand new words and ideas best when they are linked with concrete objects, pictures and experiences they know, moving gradually from the concrete to the abstract.

Enforcing formal language, dismissing the child's mother tongue and starting from signs and symbols rather than concrete objects all make language learning harder; NCF 2005 asks teachers to use the home language as a resource.