CI 775: Applied Linguistics: ESL/Bilingual Teaching

This book summarises the major theoretical debates in all of the core domains of child language acquisition research (phonology, word-learning, inflectional morphology, syntax and binding) and includes a complete introduction to the two major contrasting theoretical approaches: generativist and constructivist. For each debate, the predictions of the competing accounts are closely and even-handedly evaluated against the empirical data. The result is an evidence-based review of the central issues in language acquisition research that will constitute a valuable resource for students, teachers, course-builders and researchers alike." (Description from the WSU Online Catalog)

Maureen Cox investigates how children develop an awareness and understanding of other points of view, whether through greater sensitivity or more advanced cognitive thinking. She challenges the notion that children are egocentric, and focuses positively on what children can and can't do rather than approach them as inferior adults.
Her examination of the child's point of view is related to the development of visual perspective, drawing, and speech. (Description from Google Books)

The Discovery of Spoken Language marks one of the first efforts to integrate the field of infant speech perception research into the general study of language acquisition. It fills in a key part of the acquisition story by providing an extensive review of research on the acquisition of language during the first year of life, focusing primarily on how normally developing infants learn the organization of native language sound patterns. (Description from Google Books)

First Language Acquisition takes a comprehensive look at where and when children acquire a first language. It integrates social and cognitive approaches to how children analyze, understand, and produce sounds, words, and sentences, as they learn to use language to cooperate and achieve goals. (Description from Google Books)

In this delightful, accessible book, psycholinguist Benedicte de Boysson-Bardies presents a broad picture of language development, from fetal development to the toddler years, and examines a wide range of puzzling questions: How do newborns recognize elements of speech? How do they distinguish them from nonspeech sounds? How do they organize and analyze them? How do they ultimately come to understand and reproduce these sounds? Finally, how does the ability to communicate through language emerge in children? (Description from Google Books)

When does it start, he asks, that miracle most of us take for granted? Where does it come from, that uniquely human power to transform perception and action into thought and the singular activity we call speech? Here is evidence that, for chimp or child, the crucial factors in acquiring language have less to do with intellect and everything to do with social interaction. Here is confirmation that the "give-and-take, push-and-pull" of daily life forces virtually all of us to acquire language simply to live and work together. Author Jerry Gill offers no pat answers. Rather, he emphasizes imitation and reciprocity--for example, playing pat-a-cake with a baby--as essential to becoming part of a speaking community "and thereby becoming a human being." (Description from Google Books)

In The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker, one of the world's leading scientists of language and the mind, lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, how it evolved. But The Language Instinct is no encyclopedia. With wit, erudition, and deft use of everyday examples of humor and wordplay, Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling theory: that language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution like web spinning in spiders or sonar in bats. (Description from Google Books)

How children learn words through sophisticated cognitive abilities that exist for other purposes. (Description from Google Books)

This volume, in its 25 definitive chapters on normal and nonnormal language development, represents the authoritative and up-to-date complete sourcebook on child language development. All aspects of child language development are addressed, including phonetics, phonology, grammar, and lexical development. Connectionism and government-binding theory, as applied to language development, are fully represented. The relevance of input, cognition, and social factors to language development is explored. Chapters on methodology, particularly using computer databases, are provided for both normal and nonnormal acquisition. (Description from book jacket)

Capitalizing on the most recent developments in linguistics and cognitive psychology, this volume sheds new light on the what, why, and how of the child's ability to acquire one or more languages. (Description from Google Books)