Learning to Speak: An Introduction to Child Language Acquisition

None of us were born talking. We all had to learn it. How did we do that? We start the journey by looking at the perception of sounds before birth. We follow infants as they discover the sounds of their native languages. We talk about how the infant mind breaks the speech stream into words, phrases, and sentences; how it makes sense of language and uses it to convey thoughts and feelings. We finish by discussing how the majority of children in the world learn two or more languages at once. The course content will introduce you to major topics in child language acquisition. Assignments will help you develop skills in collecting, analyzing, and reporting empirical data. The class project involves collecting data from children at the Bing Nursery school on campus as well as the analysis of a large dataset of children's speech online. Class discussion and projects focus on giving you a hands-on experience with critical and scientific thinking.