Chapter 5

As someone who has spent a considerable amount of time with young children, I have witnessed language development in multiple family settings. As Michelle mentioned, Tomasello's conclusion is that children learn through imitation, whether simple vocabulary words or sentence construction. Obviously, I cannot evaluate other languages' learning techniques because I am only fluent in English, but I was curious about the link between the child's imitative learning and the adult/parents' teaching methods. Many parents, when teaching their children to speak, simply point at objects and state the noun used to describe the object. The next obvious progression is then pairing those nouns with actions, or verbs, and most parents or influential individuals in a child's life do this. My question is this: If this is the teaching method that is employed by most parents, what choice do children have but to begin speaking in such a matter if most of their learning is indeed imitative?