Paper 3 Section B

  In this text, Raina is a child that is 5 years old speaking with her mother while being outside. Children that are ages 3-5 are considered “preschoolers” and are considered to be advanced in English compared to younger children, but still learning how to properly structure sentences and how to implement grammar in everyday language. It is fairly obvious while reading the text excerpt that this child’s language capabilities shown in the transcript are accurately portrayed for the age of a developmental 5 years old. 

First of all, Raina’s language is pretty typical for a 5 year old; pretty advanced and easily comprehensible, but sprinkled with some misuses of words. Throughout the text, approximately two times, Raina uses the word “this” instead of “that” while referring to a certain thing. For example, she asks her mother “can we go in this field?” while she’s not even close by the field (indicated by her wanting to skip over to the described field). The proper way to express this sentence would be saying “that field”. Another interesting misuse of a word comes from the second to last sentence when she says “mum I’m /gana/ skip over there…”. Instead of saying “I am going to..”, she merges the words into the word “gana”. Everything else in the transcript, language wise, is correct, but this is clearly the language of a child in the developmental stages of learning the English language.

Second of all, the structure, similarly to the language skills, are pretty well expressed and used in an advanced manner. However, there are examples of forming improper sentence structure throughout the transcript. In a specific part when Rainer wants to go somewhere she wants, she says, “look (.) this way (.) I’m going to (.) going to (.) go over here”. While Raina has the idea of what she says, she obviously is having trouble putting her ideas into words. In this sentence she pauses a lot and even stutters while trying to utter the right sentence. This type of situation is common for preschoolers. As their minds are developing so fast, it is hard for them to properly communicate everything that they want to say.

Third of all, some of Raina’s certain linguistic choices that are used throughout the transcript are actually due to her mother. In language, there is a concept called LASS (Language Acquisition Support System) that says that young children frequently learn and use words that people around them like family or friends use themselves. For example, people found in the southern part of the United States use the word “y’all” a lot to refer to a group of people so many young kids grow up with this and use it because everyone around them uses the word. An example of this in the excerpt is when Raina refers to her mother as “mum” and right after her own mother refers to herself as “mummy”. The word “mum” is typically a term from the United Kingdom for “mother”. The use of this word clearly indicates that the daughter learned this from the environment around her. 

Another point that is fairly obviously seen in this excerpt is that imitation theory. The imitation theory is basically where one person sees someone else doing or saying something and decides to adopt their behavior. This theory can be found working its magic when the two are talking about a butterfly mentioned in the excerpt. Both of them use the word “LOOK” to refer to the butterfly that they see. It is not a coincidence that they both said this word because of the fact that the mother yelled the word first (indicated by the all caps) and was copied a few lines later by her daughter.

Overall, just in these few lines of text in this excerpt, readers can pick up on many different factors that go into the thought process and evolution of a young child’s mind. All the time around parents’ speech, cultural speech tendencies, and every other experience make up a big part of a young person’s future linguistic development and capabilities.