-
Asked by brightonteacher to Sarah, Michael, Katherine, Joe, Daniel, Catriona, Anna on 20 Apr 2015.
-
Joseph Devlin answered on 20 Apr 2015:
Children are remarkably robust with respect to the language they hear so it’s unlikely to have any long term effects on their language skills, no. Babies, for instance, have to learn the grammar of their language from a shockingly incomplete set of examples, many of which have errors in them and still they (eventually) manage to get it right.
Having said that, language is fundamentally a social phenomenon and role models play an important role in the language that kids (and people in general) use. So as a teacher you are certainly a role model to them and they will be aware of the language you use. If you consistently use some agrammatical construct and they think it sounds cool, it’s likely they’ll try to use it too. But will this have a long term effect on their production? Nope.
-
-
Sarah Kuppen answered on 20 Apr 2015:
Hi. Thanks for your interesting question.
Most children are very used to hearing spoken English which differs slightly from their own. However, these variations are not likely to have a large impact upon their own language development. Some research has shown that when hearing a different regional accent, five to six year olds do not distinguish this speech as different from their own. Any substantial impact upon language development/usage is therefore very unlikely.
In regards to varieties of spoken English such as North American English or one of the non-standard English varieties, I think a detrimental impact is again unlikely. The factors related to language development are more likely to be the richness of spoken language at home (particularly in the early years), motivation to learn, reading material, engagement with teacher/social surroundings and of course a child’s genes in interaction with these factors.
Comments
brightonteacher commented on :
Thank you for these responses. Very interesting!