Introduction to Language Acquisition Exam
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Course Introduction
Introduction to Language Acquisition explores the processes by which humans acquire language, from infancy through adolescence. The course examines major theories of first and second language acquisition, including behaviorist, nativist, interactionist, and sociocultural perspectives. Students will analyze key milestones in phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic development, as well as the roles of biological, cognitive, and environmental factors. Through a combination of case studies, experimental findings, and cross-linguistic comparisons, the course provides a comprehensive overview of how language capability develops and the factors that influence its trajectory.
Recommended Textbook
Language Development 4th Edition by Erika Hoff
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Chapter 1: Introduction to the Study of Language Development
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Sample Questions
Q1) The social approach to researching child language acquisition:
A) recognizes the principle that there is a "Universal Grammar" for all children.
B) is based on examining the social phenomenon related to children's language development.
C) is based on the view that language development occurs as a domain-general cognitive process.
D) relies on the examining the relationship between developmental milestones and social-emotional needs of the child.
Answer: B
Q2) The reasons to study language include:
A) It is required.
B) It provides an opportunity to meet parents and preschool children.
C) It provides understanding for applied and social sciences.
D) All of these answers are true.
Answer: C
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Chapter 2: Biological Bases of Language Development
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Q1) Researchers agree on the view that creolization, language creation, and language acquisition:
A) develop in the same way.
B) demonstrate a number of nonlinguistic cognitive mechanisms that seek a solution to communicate.
C) demonstrate how children analyze and adapt language input in their development of semantic, syntactic and morphological structures.
D) provide evidence on how the language development process is an intrinsic part of human nature.
Answer: D
Q2) Neural plasticity means:
A) parts of the brain are able to take over functions that they would normally not serve.
B) all parts of the brain are equally capable of performing all functions.
C) individual parts of the brain rejuvenate after injury.
D) the brain becomes more flexible with increasing age.
Answer: A
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Chapter 3: Communicative Development: Foundations and Functions of Language
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Q1) The question of influences on pragmatic development can be explained in terms of:
A) the nature of children's social interactions and language development.
B) biologically based developmental milestones.
C) communicative intent in initial stages of development and in the following stages of growth.
D) None of these answers are true.
Answer: C
Q2) When children initiate conversation, they most frequently bring up topics about:
A) themselves.
B) absent or intangible things.
C) the environment.
D) None of these answers.
Answer: A
Q3) Research on children's conversation with peers indicates:
A) a skewed view of how children carry on dialogue.
B) young children can sustain a topic with each other without adult input
C) young children cannot sustain a topic with each other without adult input.
D) None of these answers are true.
Answer: B
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Chapter 4: Phonological Development: Learning the Sounds of Language
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Q1) Using infant-directed speech is significant to the language acquisition process because:
A) infants show a preference for rhythmic and stress in listening to speech.
B) emphasizing stress or prosodic patterns provide cues for infants to isolate words and grammatical patterns.
C) infants' hearing and auditory skills are in early stages of development.
D) infant's learning process is in an early stage of development.
Q2) The phonological bootstrapping hypothesis suggests that infants use:
A) prosodic clues in speech to process language.
B) phonological clues as a major part of their language learning.
C) prosody and phonological clues to process speech signals.
D) None of these answers are true.
Q3) Discuss the limitations of studies on the prelinguistic speech sound development of children.
Q4) Sounds in the English language that differentiate meaning are called:
A) phones
B) allophones
C) phonemes
D) distinctive features
Page 6
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Chapter 5: Lexical Development: Learning Words
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Q1) Speech segmentation has been studied in relation to:
A) how caregivers use child-directed speech.
B) the child's articulation abilities.
C) phonological memory.
D) adult-directed speech.
Q2) Some researchers use features to distinguish how children use language, including:
A) referential, or context-bound language users.
B) risk-takers and social language users.
C) referential and expressive, which refers to children who use object labels and personal or social words, respectively.
D) None of these answers are true.
Q3) Discuss the difference between referential and expressive approaches to lexical acquisition and the effect that these two approaches have on children's development of lexicon.
Q4) The relational relativity hypothesis refers to:
A) children learning verbs before nouns.
B) children learning nouns before verbs.
C) how children learn meanings for nouns.
D) how children learn meanings for verbs.
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Chapter 6: The Development of Syntax and Morphology:
Learning the Structure of Language
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Q1) Describe the features of adult's knowledge of language structure and discuss application the perspectives on descriptive versus prescriptive rules.
Q2) Behaviorists' accounts of language development claim that:
A) children use input to formulate language rules.
B) children imitate what they area and are reinforced when they are correct.
C) children use a universal grammar to develop language.
D) social interaction is critical to language development.
Q3) Describe the meaning of semantic bootstrapping, compare and contrast literature on the significance of it in child language development.
Q4) Mean length of utterance (MLU) is a useful tool to:
A) identify the nature of a child's grammar.
B) identify the child's mean use of morphemes.
C) predict the level of complexity in structures after acquiring the stage of 3.0.
D) measure the level of production of language up to an MLU of 3.0.
Q5) Compare the development of grammatical morphemes to that of sentence forms, including complex sentence forms.
Q6) Describe the research on how children develop comprehension of structured speech.
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Chapter 7: Language, Culture, and Cognition in Development
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Q1) Describe how the Whorfian Hypothesis relates to the discussion of language as an influence on cognition. Include a discussion of the roots of Whorf's early research.
Q2) Parents and caregivers across cultures:
A) implicitly teach language to their children.
B) vary in how often and how much they explicitly teach language to their children
C) teach mainly through nursery rhymes a singing.
D) routinely correct their children's language errors.
Q3) Describe research regarding the influence of language on the development of thought?
Q4) Psychologists hold the view that:
A) language determines how babies and children develop cognitively.
B) cognitive development determines how children acquire language.
C) babies have thoughts independent of language.
D) None of these statements are true.
Q5) Identify and briefly describe the main points in the text regarding the cultural influences on language development.
Q6) Describe findings in research on the encoding of spatial relations in language and in thought.
Page 9
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Chapter 8: Childhood Bilingualism
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Q1) Describe what language differentiation is and how it occurs in early childhood stages.
Q2) Generally, research on bilingualism focuses on:
A) two major issues.
B) why bilingualism is good for children.
C) early bilingualism and language acquisition and simultaneous bilinguals.
D) three major hypotheses.
Q3) Children attending bilingual school programs generally:
A) speak their home language the most.
B) use both languages equally.
C) use the community's dominant language the most.
D) None of these statements are true.
Q4) Present the issues relevant to the study of bilingual development as a topic and indicate the difference in bilingual first language acquisition from second language acquisition in childhood.
Q5) Discuss how cultural perspective influences bilingual language development.
Q6) Discuss the effect on children's language and cognitive development of growing up in a bilingual family or community.
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Chapter 9: Language in School Years
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Q1) Applying oral language skills to literacy development is:
A) common to all linguistic communities that have a written language tradition.
B) a natural step in education of children.
C) not intrinsic to human nature.
D) the purpose of education.
Q2) While children's vocabulary develops and expands,
A) the number of different words they use stays the same, but their use of content words increases.
B) the lexical properties of their language changes.
C) the number of different words they use expands.
D) the ratio of content words to total words used decreases.
Q3) The social world of girls is based on the view that:
A) the popular girls should initiate or dominate conversation.
B) attracting an audience is inappropriate.
C) homogeneous grouping and language use is preferable.
D) All of these answers are true.
Q4) Describe the stages and processes involved in children's phonological, lexical and morphosyntactic development after age five.
Q5) Describe research on how children acquire phonological awareness in different languages.
Page 11
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Chapter 10: Language Development in Special Populations
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Q1) An aspect of language that is affected in children who have blindness is:
A) humor
B) past tense
C) verbs that imply place and manner
D) topic initiation.
Q2) Some research indicates that children who have blindness have difficulties in acquiring use of ______________.
A) auxiliary verbs
B) nouns
C) complex language structures
D) clauses
Q3) Research on language acquisition for deaf children demonstrates that deaf children:
A) require special education.
B) acquire language when provided access to communication, whether through oral/auditory input, sign language, or a combination.
C) are deprived of language.
D) have lower intelligence scores.
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