Means of Learning Language | Methods of Learning Language

 

Means of Learning Language

 

Educational psychologists have highlighted many means of language learning, in which the following means are the most popular:

(1) Imitation-

Imitation is a major means of language learning by children. Often the child imitates the way he hears the family members like siblings, parents, uncles and aunts, grandparents and peers speaking and after some efforts he starts speaking in the same way. In the same way, the child himself starts writing and reading after seeing other people writing and reading.

 

In this way language develops in children through imitation. Skinner (Skinner, 1957) has laid more emphasis on this method of language learning. He has also constructed a special model of language learning which has been termed as imitation-and-correction model. 

According to this model, children listen carefully to the words, sentences etc. of adults, and imitate them. If they are able to imitate correctly, So adults reinforce their behavior by praising them. This intensifies the tendency of the child to learn those words or sentences. This ideology of Skinner is also called the learning theory of language development.

(2) Play :

 

Children play a variety of games during their preschool age and first few years of school age, in which they enjoy a lot. In these games, it is important to draw zigzag lines and make letters with the materials of the game. Psychological studies have shown that in such games one learns to write, read and speak the letters of the language.

Means of language learning notes 

 

(3) Listening of stories :

Children prefer to listen to stories from adults such as grandparents, uncles and aunts, parents and other peers. According to Tinker (1990), if children are told such stories in which animals are in the form of characters and which are filled with moral and educational facts, then language development takes place more rapidly from them.

 

(4) Conversation (Talking) :

Children also learn language by interacting with their peers and family members. In conversation, children especially pay more attention to those dialects which are of interest to them. This makes it easier to learn the language.

(5) Question-answer-

 

Children are curious by nature. To calm their curiosity, children ask different questions to family members at home, teachers in school and peers in the playground. By getting answers to these questions, they understand the meaning of the object and at the same time, the tendency to speak, write and read such words is encouraged more.

Thus we see that children use many means or methods in learning language. In these, imitation is used the most.