Recently there has been increasing awareness, by the psychologists, of the important role that children's early social interactions play in the development of language skills. Both (Nelson, 1981) and Bloom (1956) stated that the development of the children' IQ from pregnancy to four years old is about 50%, after that from four years old to eight years old, children's IQ increases more 30%. During this period, children's acquisition of language develops in a good way. That's why mothers' verbal input would affect children's language acquisition. This statement made the researcher understand that at this period children's acquisition of language becomes a vital issue.
During the development of the children, parents are the first teachers for the child, and family becomes the first teaching atmosphere. (Huang, 2004) As Olson (1986) stated that mothers are able to give children the most input. And from that verbal input, children can learn the language more gradually. Snow (1977) also expressed the importance of mothers' speech to the language of their children. Mothers play the most important role in children's language development. From the researchers' points, they can realize the importance of mother's verbal input. However, even the researcher assures on the importance of mothers, there are still lots of variables to consider. The difference in the social class of mothers will affect the children's language development. (Hoff-Ginsberg, 1991, Lewis & Wilson, 1972) For example, Kagan and Tulkin (1972) said that mothers from middle class engaged in meaningful verbal interactions. While low-income mothers don't often talk a lot to their children. (Hoff-Ginsberg, 1991) Through those evidences, we want to know if those variables will affect children's language learning. As a result, this study focused on the relationship between different social class mothers' verbal input and the language acquisition of the children. Moreover, in order to observe the relationship between children's acquisition of language and mothers' verbal input, this study adopted both qualitative and quantitative research to examine the significant difference among different social class mothers. In addition to that, the researchers used correlation research to study the relationship between mother-child interactions. Furthermore, from this study I hope that our government will develop some ideas for children's education policy.
The aim of this study is to investigate whether different social class mothers would have different effect on their children's language acquisitions. Moreover, from the findings of this study, the researcher wants to give a suggestion to the education policy in foreign spouse children.
There are two research questions involved in this study.
1. Is there significant difference between middle-class and working-class mothers’ speech?
2. Is there any significant relationship between different social class mothers’ input and their children’s language acquisition?
Looking at these two research questions, the researcher is going to adopt T-test correlation research to find the relationship between those variables.
The hypotheses of this study are in the following:
1. By considering previous studies, the researcher supposed that middle-class mothers are going to provide more positive input to their children.
2. The researcher supposed that there is apparent relationship between mothers' verbal input and their children's acquisition of language. (Lieven, 1994, Olson, 1984 & Snow, 1977)
Term definition
1. Mother-child interaction:
During talking to their children, mothers provide children with lots of verbal input and the children receive it. The children give the output to their mothers. During the process they should keep the conversation coherent. The main goal is that the child may be able to attain optimum psychological development.
2. Middle-class:
Social class can be decided from three main factors—educational degree, income and career. The middle class refers to people that aren't very poor not very rich. In today's usage, the term is often applied to people who have a degree of economic independence, but not a great deal of social influence or power in their society. According to Chambers (1995), by a historical accident, the non-manual workers are the middle-class.
3. Working-class:
Looking at the previous definition, the working-class is a social class contrasted with middle-class and upper-class. The main characteristic is that peope in this class are obliged to depend on their managers to survive. Moreover, we can define the manual workers as the working-class.
Review of the Literature
In this chapter, related studies and variables will be reviewed and discussed. At the start, the basic theories of language acquisition will be first described. After that from the social interaction theory, the main concern is the mother-child interaction. After discussing the importance of mother's speech, the factors that influence the mothers' talk will be concerned in the following section. At the end, a brief summary will be given and discussed.
Imagine that you are faced with the following challenge. You have to discover the internal structure of a system that contains tens of thousands of units, all generated from a small amount of materials. These units, in turn, can be gathered into an infinite number of combinations. Although only a subset of those combinations is correct, the subset itself is for all practical purposes infinite. Somehow you must converge on the structure of this system to use it to communicate. And you are a very young child.
This system is human language. The shapes of units are words and the materials are the small set of sounds from which they are constructed, and te conminations are sentences that they can be assembled in them. By giving the complexity of this system, it appears improbable that mere children could discover its underlying structure and use it to communicate. However, most do such thing with eagerness and ease, all within the first few years of life.
In the following description, we state three recent lines of research that examine learning of language, comprehension and genesis by children. We start with asking how infants break into the system, finding the words within the acoustic stream that serves as input to language learning. After that we consider how children get the ability to rapidly combine linguistic elements to determine the relationships between these elements. Finally, we search how children impose grammatical structure onto perceived input even to the extent of creating a new language when none is available. This study provides insight into the ways in which children extract, manipulate and create the complex structures that exist within natural languages.
Children’s language acquisition
In this chapter, the researcher examines the basic theories of language acquisition. Many scholars provided many different viewpoints. In this chapter, the researcher briefly discussed the vital and famous theories such as Skinner' behaviorism, Chomsky' rationalism and Vygotsky's interactionism.
There are various theories about language acquisition. As we know, different scholars have their different thoughts about language acquisition. One of the best-known theories is Skinner’s behaviorism. Skinner was famous for observing animals' behavior in the contribution of observing. Still, Skinner also devoted in education through active mechanical way of teaching and focused on stimuli-response connection. (Brown, 2000) Skinner (1957) expressed that idea or meaning is explanatory fiction, and that talker is merely the central area of verbal behavior, not the cause of it. However, in 1960s, Chomsky (1959) had a highly critic about Skinner’s behaviorism. (Brown, 2000) According to Chomsky (1965), he said that the existence of innate properties of language to explain the child's mastery of a native language. Chomsky saw that people have inner knowledge about language learning. More recently, constructivism brings a new school of thought in learning language. Vygotsky (1978) stated a new theory called ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development) which means that it is a distance between a child's actual cognitive ability and the level of potential development. Children can achieve their potential ability through others’ teaching. In addition to that, Vygotsky also said that language is a type of communication. Everyone can acquire language through the social interaction. In the following there would be additional detailed explanation about social interaction and language acquisition.
Interaction and children’s language acquisition
Social interaction
Social interaction is an important factor in language acquisition. Vygotsky stated that the social interaction has a significant role in the development of cognition. The inner development of children will start only when they interact with others in the social environment. So, social interaction will become one fundamental part of children's development. Also in the thoughts of Gleason (2005), he declared that dialogue may be learned in early interactions such as taking turns and the way they express. As a result, the process of development through life was relying on social interaction and that social learning actually leads to cognitive development. In addition to that, in general, the children's social interaction is initially occurred in the family. Thus at the start, children's language acquisition will take place with their parents. Parents will become the first teachers of children. (Huang, 2004)
In addition to that, from birth mothers and children have the most familiar relationship; Children learn language from their mothers. Just as Brown (2000)’s expression, language will be acquired through imitation. Snow (1977) stated that the acquisition of language is a process of interaction between mother and child from birth. The purpose of mothers’ speech is to show children all the languages. Also Olson (1986) expressed the significance of learning environment. Mothers will give children much input so that children can learn the languages fast. So the input of mothers' speech is going to affect children's output. But in children's development, there may not be just variable of mothers' input. There are other different variables that affect the acquisition of language like social status and cultural difference.
The social class and children’s acquisition
Social class can be divided into two subcategories, which mean the social status and cultural difference. Meaningful psychology phenomena may be found in both class and culture variables. (Lewis & Wilson, 1972) We aren't able to just discuss one single part. In the following the researcher reviewed and examined the two variables of social class.
Sometimes social status plays a vital role in children’s language acquisition. We understand that learning languages should depend on numerous input. As instance, in Lewis and Wilson's study (1972), they categorized mothers' input into many categories like reading, looking, smiling, and vocalizing to others. In this study, they proposed that different social status would have different affects on their children. Moreover, education, career and economy would affect the forming of social status. According to Hoff-Ginsberg (1991) in his study, he examined the low-income mothers and children's development. This research showed that poor and working-class children may have less chance to experience interaction of the sort suggested to aid the development of the language. In addition to that, as concluded from Kegan and Tulkin's study (1972), they stated that middle-class mothers would like to give their children stimulus things and hove more interaction with their children. Based on those researchers, social status and children's language development have close relationship. However, when discussing social class, it is important to remember that it is not the only variable in children's development. The cultural differences should be included. (Lewis & Wilson)
According to Moerk (2000), he examined some different culture background mothers and their children. He stated that in some of the cultures, some parents don't talk to their children. For example, Harkness and Super (1977) declared that Kipsgis mothers take don't have significant role in teaching their children talking. On the other hand, French mothers and African mothers are different as African mothers don't often talk to their children during care or diapernig ( Rabain- Jamin 1994). From those support, we get that cultural differences affect the mothers' input.
Input and interaction are essential and crucial in the language development of the children. From above discussion, the researcher comes to know that mothers' input may influence children's language acquisition. In addition to that, when focusing on the mother's importance, the researcher must also take in consideration the variables of mothers, like social status and cultural differences to see if those variables affect the language acquisition of the children.
Method
The goal of this study is to investigate the significant relationship between different social class mothers' input and the language learning of the children.
The study is working on answering two major questions which are: (a) is there significant difference between middle-class and working-class mothers’ speech? (b) Is there any significant relationship between different social class mothers’ input and their children’s language acquisition?
Thus, in order to correspond with the research goals and research questions, this chapter explains 4 major parts: subjects, instruments, procedures and data analysis.
Subjects
All of the subjects came from the school Institute of Tainan County. The subject children chosen by the researcher are 2-6 year-old children. There were eight boys and two girls. At each age, I chose two children. One was from a Taiwanese family and the other was from a Vietnamese Family. There is a difference in the degree of education, career and income. The Taiwanese family represented for middle-class because the parents of this group were graduated from colleges. Also their careers were professionals, managers or owners. On the other hand, Vietnamese Family represented for working-class because they were under college and their careers were like clerk, skilled manual workers and labor.
Instruments
Recording and interview were used in this study. The researcher asked some background questions, such as family situation, mothers’ personality, and children’s personality. After that, the researcher implemented tape-recording at home to record the conversation between mothers and children. Each recording lasted 30 minutes. While recording those conversations, the researcher tried to make them as naturally as possible. He tried to avoid some unnatural talk happened during conversations.
Procedures
At the start, the researcher used interview to examine the background of every subject to be able to control the variables like personality, family, background and others. Then he started to recode the conversation between mothers and children. However, in order to decrease anxiety and avoid it, he tended to involve in the situation. For example, he started to establish a close relationship with the family before the recording. He tried to reduce the tension atmosphere. The researcher needed to record 30 minutes in every subject and then got these recordings transcribed, At the end, after the data collection, he researcher analyzed the data and described the findings. Then the research could infer the conclusion and suggestions from analyzing consequences.
In the following there is the basic research design.
Data analysis
This study used both quantitative approach and qualitative approach to examine the link between mothers' input and children's language acquisition. About quantitative approach, the researcher used both inferential statistics and Descriptive statistics to investigate the data.
T-test was used to examine the difference between different social class mothers' input. The researcher also listed six basic domains to calculate how many times the verbal input would happen during the time of recording and then got the Mean score. These six domains were control, negative response, response to the speech, guiding, positive response and negative emotion. For example, “Hurry up. Eat your meal quickly.” was belonged to “control domain.” “No, don’t do that.” was belonged to “negative response domain.” If mothers or children response to others’ talk, those were belonged to “response to the speech domain.” Also, “You are so great.” was belonged to “positive response domain.” “At the beginning, you have to put it on the top, and then…..” was belonged to “guiding domain.” Finally, “You are not good. You are stupid.” was related to “bad emotion domain.” After categorizing the verbal input, the researcher used T-test to examine the difference.
Then the researcher used Correlation analysis to determine if there was any apparent difference between mothers' verbal input and children' input. From the six domains, the researcher investigated if mothers verbal input would affect children' language acquisition.
Results
In this section of the study, the researcher analyzed the observed data in the context of the research questions presented in chapter one. As the two hypotheses predicted the relationship between mothers' verbal input and children's acquisition of language, the results are reported in relation to the T-test and Correlation coefficients. In this chapter, the first section presents the significant difference between social class mothers. In this section, the researcher used T-tests to report the final results. The second section presents the significant difference between mothers’ verbal input and children’s language acquisition. The researcher used Correlation coefficients to report the findings.
About the difference between class mothers basted on Table 1, the researcher divided all the verbal input to six different basic categories which are (A-control, B-negative response, C-response to speech, D-positive response, E-guiding and F-bad emotion.) Moreover, the results show that only category E (guiding) has significant difference between different social class mothers. Other categories do not have significant differences. As the researcher discussed in the previous chapter, mothers that have low-income talk less to their children. Also, some low-social class mother would lack the concept of having a conversation with their children. As a result, when they talked to their children, they only direct them on control them to do some tasks. On the other hand, middle-class mothers might try to guide their children to complete the tasks because of their higher educational degree. Those findings present in the Table 1.
Table 1 Significance of Differences between Different Social Class Mothers (Taiwan V.S. Vietnam)
Mean, Standard Derivations and T-test
Categories Nation
|
n
|
frequency
|
Mean
|
SD
|
Significance
| |
A
Control
|
Taiwan
|
5
|
31.00
|
6.20
|
2.16
|
.111
|
Vietnam
|
5
|
48.00
|
9.60
|
3.64
|
.119
| |
B
Negative response
|
Taiwan
|
5
|
18.00
|
3.60
|
3.36
|
.639
|
Vietnam
|
5
|
14.00
|
2.80
|
1.48
|
.645
| |
C
Response to speech
|
Taiwan
|
5
|
70.00
|
14.00
|
9.82
|
.052
|
Vietnam
|
5
|
19.00
|
3.80
|
1.92
|
.080
| |
D
Positive response
|
Taiwan
|
5
|
21.00
|
4.20
|
1.64
|
.390
|
Vietnam
|
5
|
15.00
|
3.00
|
2.44
|
.393
| |
E
Guiding
|
Taiwan
|
5
|
64.00
|
12.80
|
3.70
|
.004**
|
Vietnam
|
5
|
27.00
|
5.40
|
1.94
|
.007**
| |
F
Bad emotion
|
Taiwan
|
5
|
10.00
|
2.00
|
1.22
|
.296
|
Vietnam
|
5
|
3.00
|
1.58
|
.298
| ||
p< .05 has significant difference
Resulting from this table, the findings show that Vietnam mothers used more control input to their children. Moreover, comparing with the Mean in C (Respone to speech), Taiwan mothers are more talkers to their children. On contrary, Vietnam mothers tended to talk less to their children.
Furthermore, the researcher deduced that only in E (guiding) there is significant difference between Taiwan and Vietnam mothers verbal input.
In addition to that, about the research question two, the researcher preferred to use Correlation coefficient to examine the relationship between mothers' input and children's acquisition of language. From the findings, the researcher came to conclude that only in A (Control), B (Negative response), D (Guiding) and F (Bad emotion) there are apparent relationship between mothers and children in Taiwan families. This means that mothers used verbal input such as control, negative response, positive response, and bad emotion that influence the children and thus children will come to use similar output. Those findings are presented in the following tables.
Table 2 The Mean and Derivation of the six Categories between Mothers and Children (Taiwan)
Descriptive statistics
Categories
|
n
|
Mean
|
SD
| |
A
Control
|
Mother
|
5
|
6.20
|
2.16
|
Child
|
5
|
5.40
|
1.14
| |
B
Negative response
|
Mother
|
5
|
3.60
|
3.36
|
Child
|
5
|
4.60
|
3.91
| |
C
Response to speech
|
Mother
|
5
|
14.00
|
9.82
|
Child
|
5
|
12.20
|
5.58
| |
D
Positive response
|
Mother
|
5
|
4.20
|
1.64
|
Child
|
5
|
4.00
|
2.82
| |
E
Guiding
|
Mother
|
5
|
12.80
|
3.70
|
Child
|
5
|
1.80
|
2.49
| |
F
Bad emotion
|
Mother
|
5
|
2.00
|
1.22
|
Child
|
5
|
3.80
|
4.14
| |
Table 3 The Significant Relationship between Mothers’ Verbal Input and Children’s Language Acquisition (Taiwan)
Correlation Coefficient
Categories
|
Correlation between child and mother
| |
A
Control
|
Pearson correlation coefficient .971**
Significance .006
| |
B
Negative response
|
Pearson correlation coefficient .973**
Significance .005
| |
C
Response to speech
|
Pearson correlation coefficient .793
Significance .110
| |
D
Positive response
|
Pearson correlation coefficient .968**
Significance .007
| |
E
Guiding
|
Pearson correlation coefficient -.494
Significance .398
| |
F
Bad emotion
|
Pearson correlation coefficient .886**
Significance .045
| |
p< .05 (Significance)
** Correlation Coefficient: r> .80
Table 3 presents that the significant relationship between Taiwan mothers and Taiwan children. In this table, it showed that in Category A, B, D, and F, there are significant relationships. The researcher found that in the four categories, there are significances. (P<.05) In addition, there are high correlations in the four categories. From the table, the Correlation Coefficient is high (r> .80). From the finding, the researcher saw that in this table, most categories of mothers' verbal input and children's acquisition of language have high correlation. However, about Category C and E, the researcher found that there is no significant relationship in Taiwan mothers' verbal input and Taiwan children's language acquisition.
Table 4 The Mean and Derivation of the six Categories between Mothers and Children (Vietnam)
Descriptive statistics
Categories
|
n
|
Mean
|
SD
| |
A
Control
|
Mother
|
5
|
9.60
|
3.64
|
Child
|
5
|
7.00
|
2.64
| |
B
Negative response
|
Mother
|
5
|
2.80
|
1.48
|
Child
|
5
|
3.80
|
1.78
| |
C
Response to speech
|
Mother
|
5
|
3.80
|
1.92
|
Child
|
5
|
3.80
|
1.48
| |
D
Positive response
|
Mother
|
5
|
3.00
|
2.44
|
Child
|
5
|
3.00
|
1.58
| |
E
Guiding
|
Mother
|
5
|
5.40
|
1.94
|
Child
|
5
|
3.20
|
2.16
| |
F
Bad emotion
|
Mother
|
5
|
2.00
|
1.22
|
Child
|
5
|
3.80
|
4.14
| |
Table 5 The Significant Relationship between Mothers’ Verbal Input and Children’s Language Acquisition (Vietnam)
Correlation Coefficient
Categories
|
Correlation between child and mother
| |
A
Control
|
Pearson correlation coefficient .959**
Significance .010
| |
B
Negative response
|
Pearson correlation coefficient .358
Significance .554
| |
C
Response to speech
|
Pearson correlation coefficient .946**
Significance .015
| |
D
Positive response
|
Pearson correlation coefficient .968**
Significance .007
| |
E
Guiding
|
Pearson correlation coefficient .568
Significance .318
| |
F
Bad emotion
|
Pearson correlation coefficient .435
Significance .464
| |
p< .05 (Significance)
** Correlation Coefficient: r> .80
Table 5 presents that the significant relationship between Vietnam mothers and Vietnam children. In this table, it showed that in Category A, C and D, there are significant relationships. The researcher found that in the three categories, there are significances. (P<.05) In addition, there are high correlations in the three categories. From the table, the Correlation Coefficient is high (r> .80). However, about the other categories B (Negative response), E(Guiding), and F(Bad emotion), there isn't a significant relationship between Vietnam mothers' verbal input and Vietnam children's acquisition of language. From the finding, the researcher came to find that in this table, three segments of mothers' verbal and children's language acquisition have high correlation.
In general, about the research question one, those findings show that only on the category E (guiding) there is an apparent difference between different social mothers. Other categories do not have high significant difference. From the findings, the researcher gets to know that the different social background mothers would have some effect on their children.
Moreover, about the relationship between mothers and children, the researcher gets to know that only in category A (control) and D (positive response), Taiwan and Vietnam families have the same conclusion. There is a high relationship between mothers’ verbal input and children’s language acquisition. However, in category E (guiding), there is no significant relationship. Other categories present that there are different conclusions in different social mothers.
Discussion and conclusion
The goal of this study was to check where there is a significant difference between different social class mothers and where there is significant relationship between mothers' verbal input and children's language acquisition. The researcher used T-test to examine the difference among different social class mothers. in addition to that, the Pearson Correlation Coefficient was used to examine the relationship between children and mothers.
Regarding the research question one, the researcher checked the difference between different social class mothers. However, only in category E (guiding) there is a significant difference. As discussed in the previous studies, the mothers with low income talk less to their children. (Hoff-Ginsberg, 1991) In addition, they would just control their children directly. As a result, this might be the main reason that the working-class mothers would use less guiding to their children. However, for the other categories, although in this study there is no apparent difference between different social class mothers, it doesn't mean that it is really no difference. There may be some variables impacting the result. For example, the researcher explained some facts in the following
(a) The samples are not enough. The researcher just chose ten families in this study. In addition, the recording just lasted 30 minutes. Because of the limitation of the time, the researchers just recorded once in a family. As a result, the data collection might not be enough.
(b) About the Category C (Response to speech), Rabain-Jamin (1994) discussed the difference between African mothers and French mothers. He found that African mothers don’t usually talk to their children. However, there is a big difference between Africa and France on one side and Taiwan and Vietnam on the other side because Taiwan and Vietnam belong to East-Asia culture. As a result, the researcher expected that there would be no obvious difference between Taiwan and Vietnam.
(c) The categories are just six basic domains. The researcher just categorized all the data into six domains. However, still there are much data to be analyzed. As a result, the researcher offered that in the future, other researchers can discuss more domains. Perhaps there will be many different findings.
(d) The recording topics are different in every family. So the results may not be so correct if the topics would be different. For instance, if the topic is related more to guiding works, the guiding will happen more often between mothers and children. Therefore, the researcher can investigate mother-child interaction in different communicative settings in the future studies.
About Question two in the research, the researcher examined the relationship between mother's input and children acquistion of language. The findings indicated that in categories A (control) and D (positive response), there is significant relationship no matter in Taiwan family or Vietnam family. However, from findings of some categories, the researcher got different results in different social class families in areas like negative response, response to the speech, and bad emotion. Therefore the researcher listed some limitations for future studies to be analyzed.
(a) The researcher may not collect enough data. Even the researcher recorded every family for 30 minutes; it does not mean that all the data is useful. As a result, the data may not be enough. In addition, this variable is possible to influence the results.
(b) The gender of children: At start, the research didn't put the impact of gender in consideration. However, in this study, because of the small sample, the influence of gender can't be judged. This section needs further discussion.
(c) Perhaps there is an influence that comes from there other relatives. The language acquisition of the children can involve in many aspects. However, mother is just one main aspect. The main goal of this study is to examine the influence of mothers on their children. Therefore, other variables have to be controlled by the researcher, such as fathers and grandparents.
In addition, the category E (guiding) has different relationship between mothers' verbal input and children's language acquisition. The results show that no significant relationship is noticed between mothers and children. This is because of the children's cognitive development which isn't mature enough to learn guiding skills. As a result, at this preschool age, children just follow the guidance of their mothers but they haven't use good use of guiding skills in the conversation. Hence, in this category, the results cannot support the hypothesis.
To sum up, the purpose of this study is to elicit the importance of education of children in foreign spouse family. Looking at previous studies, the researcher discussed the significance of mothers' verbal input. Moreover, the researcher stated that parents are the first teachers of the children and family becomes the first teaching place. As a result from that paper, the authorities should start to concentrate on children education of foreign spouses. Even if possible, the government can also plan the education policy for foreign mothers to make the children's education more improved.
- - -- - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- -- - -- -- - -- - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- -- - -- -- - -- - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- -- - -- -- - -- - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- -- - -- -- - -- - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- -- - -- -- - -- - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- -- - -- -- - -- - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- -- - -- -- - -- - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- -- - -- -- - -- - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- -- - -- -- - -- - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- -- - -- -- - -- - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- -- - -- -- - -- - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- -- - -- -- - -- - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- -- - -- -- - -- - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- -- - -- --
ليست هناك تعليقات:
إرسال تعليق