Running Head: LANGUAGE ACQUISTION AUTOBIOGRAPHY 1

Learning Acquisition Autobiography

Kelsey Jones

11/11/2019

ENG420 Princ of Lang

Azusa Pacific University (LAPU)

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Learning Acquisition Autobiography

I don’t recall my earlies memories of spoken and written language. I vaguely remember

reading at the start of elementary, books that were short reads for beginner readers like Jan ran

etc. When it comes to writing I remember beginning with tracing dotted lines. Unfortunately, I

am not blessed to have a remarkable memory and can’t remember details of my early literature

experiences. I do remember a few memories in elementary school. We would read books to

children who were in lower grades than ourselves. This helped us come out of my shell when

reading to people and was able to form discussions with other children. I also remember writing

in a journal every week explaining what we did on our days off. My mother always spoke to us

as children, she said she would speak to us while she was getting us ready, while we were eating

and during play. She would take the time to read to us and we always had books out to access.

My mother said she did not put much on literacy as she should of and doesn’t recall how she

prioritized language because she didn’t think too much about it. As I got older, I had recognized

my lack of vocabular knowledge and comprehension skills. I used to read chapter books but not

enough because it took me a long time to finish a book. My mother told me that I should look up

every word I do not understand while reading to help my comprehension and to just keep

reading. I did this at times but felt so frustrated with myself that I would just give up. It was in

middle school that I barely started to pay close attention to syntax and how to properly structure

sentences. I just remember hating English and I regret not being able to fully learn the subject to

my best ability.

I find that today I still have a hard time when it comes to reading and writing. I have

come a long way though and am proud with some of my successes. From my experience I have

learned that I would like to stress vocabulary more with my children. I don’t blame my parents
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for not seeing the big importance because they did all they knew to do with the knowledge they

had. I am glad that I have the opportunity to expand in literacy so I could pass it on to my

children and classroom as a teacher. I have seen how much writing an essay can enhance

learning in so many ways. I don’t enjoy writing them all the time, but I do see the learning

experience involved. You don’t only learn more about the subject, you learn how to better

develop language acquisition and grammar. I know I have a better appreciation for literacy than I

ever have before and it is my goal to continue learning. One day I hope to write some children’s

literature that encourages vocabulary development and comprehension. I want to provide ways

that make it easy and enjoyable for children to learn language.

Your language development has an important role when it comes to your feelings related

to literacy later on in life. My lack of skills in communicating and reading made me feel

unprepared for the later stages of my development. I found myself always struggling and there

were many days of frustrations. A study was done on children showing that skills related to

“alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness, rapid automatic naming of letters or numbers and

objects of colors, writing and phonological memory”, relate to children’s progress in school

(Brown). The are behind their classmates and their reading comprehension is not at grade level.

If you build a strong foundation for literature will set children up for success. They will be more

prepared mentally to take on the tasks provided to them. Language is the source for

communication and every subject is learned through the means of communicating. Regardless of

a child’s circumstance the general occurrence of acquisition supports the idea of an innate

tendency in human infant to development language. (Yule, 2017). It is fascinating how the

human mind develops language through expression and communication. However, there is more

that goes in to acquire literacy that include input, correction and imitation. This is just a few of
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the many stages of progress. Using these natural stages in teaching literacy is key to form a

strong foundation. Looking back at my own experiences I see I needed more repetition and

detailed correction when forming my sentence structures and vocabulary. Children learn an

language through their own means but with some direction know how to make of better use for

their culture or environment. They also need some guidance in forming words correctly. In the

morphology stage there is often children overusing the s in words like “foots”, known as

overgeneralization (Yule, 2017, p.190). Parents will often correct this by repeating what a child

should say “foot”. The parents or elders influence the natural process of learning language. Later

children begin morphing ‘ing”, ‘in” and “on” into their vocabulary. The beginning stages of

syntax development is quite interesting. Children learn to form questions even before they can

put sentences together. We as teaching individuals take this acquired learning and help them

develop correct sentence structure when forming questions. From expressions to cooing,

babbling, developing syntax and semantics we see there is a pattern for learning. This pattern can

be thought of when teaching children. Now I understand why we prioritize the learning of

alphabet sounds before knowing the correct “letter name” for each alphabet. When language is

expressed and puts emphasis on sounds it is easier to catch on to the correct form later on. We

can truly learn from God’s creation; he hands us the techniques we need to help children learn to

their best abilities.

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References

Brown, C. (n.d.) Language and literacy development in the early years: Foundational skills that

support emergent readers. Retrieved from

https://www.nysreading.org/sites/default/files/Language%20and%20Literacy%20Develo

pment%20in%20the%20Early%20Years_0.pdf

Yule, G. (2017). The study of language (6th ed.) Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.