Child language acquisition — how children acquire their first language — is one of the most reliably assessed topics in A-Level English Language. It’s also one of the most genuinely interesting: the question of how any human being goes from no language to fluent communication in just a few years remains one of the most fascinating puzzles in all of linguistics.
Here’s what you need to know — and how to write about it effectively in exams.
The Key Theories
Behaviourism (Skinner)
B.F. Skinner proposed that children learn language the same way they learn any other behaviour: through imitation and reinforcement. Children imitate the speech they hear from adults; correct utterances are reinforced (praised or responded to appropriately); incorrect ones are not reinforced or are corrected. Language is, on this view, entirely learned from the environment.
The problem: children routinely produce utterances they have never heard (“I goed to the shops”), suggesting they’re not simply imitating but applying rules. They also acquire language with remarkable speed and accuracy even without explicit instruction.
Nativism (Chomsky)
Noam Chomsky proposed that humans are born with an innate language acquisition device (LAD) — a built-in capacity for language that allows children to extract the grammatical rules of any language they’re exposed to. The evidence: all children acquire language in roughly the same sequence regardless of the language being learned; children acquire language at similar rates regardless of explicit teaching; and children produce systematic errors (overgeneralisation, like “goed”) that suggest they’re applying rules, not just imitating.
Interactionism (Bruner)
Jerome Bruner argued that neither innate capacity nor imitation alone explains acquisition — the social context of language learning matters too. He proposed the Language Acquisition Support System (LASS): the scaffolded interactions between child and caregiver (joint attention, turn-taking, the motherese or child-directed speech that adults naturally use with young children) that support language development. Language is acquired through social interaction, not just exposure.
Key Milestones
- Pre-linguistic stage (0–12 months): Cooing, babbling, intonation patterns. Children produce sounds before words.
- Holophrastic stage (12–18 months): Single words used to convey whole meanings (“Milk!” can mean “I want milk”, “there is milk”, or “I spilled the milk”).
- Two-word stage (18–24 months): Two-word combinations (“Mummy gone”, “More juice”). Grammatical function words (the, is, of) are absent — this is telegraphic speech.
- Telegraphic stage (24–36 months): Three or more word utterances. Content words dominant; function words appearing. Systematic overgeneralisation of grammar rules (“I runned”).
- Post-telegraphic / beyond (36 months+): Increasingly complex sentences; grammatical morphemes acquired; most grammatical rules mastered by age 5.
Key Terms to Use Accurately
- Overgeneralisation / overextension / underextension: Different error types at different stages
- Virtuous errors: Systematic errors like “goed” that demonstrate rule application rather than mere imitation failure
- Child-directed speech (CDS) / motherese: The modified speech adults use with young children — higher pitch, simplified vocabulary, shorter sentences, exaggerated intonation
- Scaffolding: Adult support for language learning through structuring interaction appropriately to the child’s current level
In exam responses, always connect the theoretical framework to specific evidence from any data provided. Don’t just name the theory — show how the data supports or complicates it.
Language acquisition — along with all the other major topics in A-Level English Language — is covered in depth at Thorogood English. Join the waiting list for January 2027 classes.
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