CHILDREN LEARN THE FIRST LANGUAGE AT HOME AND AT SCHOOL

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Humans interact with each other through communication in the form of language. Communication occurs both verbally and non-verbally through conversation, writing, reading and signs or symbols. Humans communicating through language requires a process developed in the stages of age. How humans can use language, as a way of communicating has always been an interesting question to discuss so that it brings up many theories about language acquisition.

Language is a symbolization of an idea or a thought that the message sender wants to communicate and received by the recipient of the message through certain codes verbally or nonverbally. Language is used by children in communicating and adapting to their environment in order to exchange ideas, thoughts and emotions. Language can be expressed through speech that refers to verbal symbols.

The development of children’s language acquisition is one aspect of the stages of child development that should not escape the attention of educators in general and parents in particular. The acquisition of language by children is the greatest and most remarkable achievement of human beings. That is why this issue has received great attention. Language acquisition has been studied intensively for a long time. At that time, we have learned many things about how children speak, understand, and use language, but very few things that we know about the actual process of language development.

Therefore, through this paper the author would like to learn more about how children acquire language; either the acquisition of language at school or the acquisition of home language, based on the knowledge that the author has obtained from the Teaching English for Young Learners course. I hope that through this paper, the writer can understand better about how children acquire language and can share this knowledge to the readers.

CHAPTER II

CHILDREN LEARN THE FIRST LANGUAGE 

AT HOME AND AT SCHOOL

A. Why is first language development of interest to English young learners teachers

Being an English teacher is not an easy job. Language is a communication tool. It is not easy to teach English with its vocabulary or grammar to english young learners. An English teacher must patiently teach his students to write, read, listen and speak English. In addition, those who become teachers of English is also required to be creative in teaching English to be liked by students. In a way, being a successful English teacher is a difficult thing.

So, why does first language teaching become more interested to English young learners’ teacher? It is because first language acquisition is a long process that continous well beyond childhood and also very young children lack the ability to manipulate and think about language in a concious way (Pinter, 2017). It is like a chalenge for English teachers to teach English young learners.

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