Answer the following questions Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Answer the following questions - Assignment Example According to the expert, language and society are closely connected as it is society that creates the language. Each baby growing up learns some quantity of words in his native language. However, the language gives more than just a speaking skill. The first language helps learn a lot of functions, not only speaking. This refers to much more important thing – social life. Through the language young children learn how to play, to respond to different events, to co-operate. Language is a tool that, if applied properly, can open many doors. At the beginning a child cannot perform all kinds of language operations as grown ups do. Intonation helps young children to put together the available vocabulary and to express their intentions. In similar expressions they just replace the words and come up with new formulation. According to Halliday, children invent the protolanguage themselves: â€Å"there is no obvious source for the great majority of the child’s [vocal] expressions , which appear simply as spontaneous creations of the glossogenic process† (1975, p. 24). ... etation that the child’s linguistic efforts are reinforced, and in this way the meanings that the child starts out with gradually come to be adapted to the meanings of the adult language† (Halliday 1975, p. 24). This proves that language means for children not only their speaking skills but also their competence to interact in a society. In the works of 1974 by Keenan it can be seen that even young children turn language to their account. Playing together means co-operating which is impossible without conversational competence. Thus, language is a very important skill from the early childhood. 2. According to Vygotsky, people could be personalities only in the society, with the help of other people: â€Å"we become ourselves through others† (Vygotsky 1989, p. 56). His theory was about social interaction. As he confirmed, the second language was tightly connected to psychological operations and these operations derived from social co-operation. Vygotsky made this c onclusion, because a person could act on the people in the society and then on himself: â€Å"the law of sociogenesis of higher forms of behavior: speech, being initially the means of communication, the means of association, the means of organization of group behavior, later becomes the basic means of thinking and of all higher mental functions, the basic means of personality formation† (Vygotsky 1998, p. 169). Our interaction with people forms us as personalities and makes us express the features of our character. The process of second language learning is closely connected to the psychological state of learners. Active communication facilitates the process of second language acquisition. Thus, those learners who are active communicators in everyday life usually acquire the second language easily and start