The Aquisition of Language Skill by Children

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to examine the possibility of improving pedagogical procedures designed to promote language skill by utilising recent developments in psychology and linguistics. Three experiments were designed to investigate the performance of child subjects on unstructured and structured strings of words using the method of immediate recall. A first experiment examined the measurement of short-term memory for words by comparing the 'traditional' method of calculation with methods based on informational calculus. A second experiment investigated the subjects' performance on structured strings which were described in terms of transformational grammar. A developmental trend was suggested by the results and the importance of the frequency of occurrence of words comprising the structures indicated. A third experiment examined the relationship between structure and vocabulary in greater detail. An interaction effect between structure and vocabulary was found and a developmental pattern confirmed. Vocabulary chosen for low frequency of occurrence in the speech of the subjects was seen to depress performance markedly. In the second and third experiments, the expected high correlation between memory tasks and the recall of structures was confirmed. In addition, different levels of basic STM capacity were seen to facilitate the processing of structures of differential .:complexity. In the conspectus, the findings are here interpreted in terms of extending basic STM capacity by the active organisation of input through structuring. These learning characteristics point the way to the utilisation of the results in pedagogical procedures and materials.