1.1. Different forms for the introduction of the language

1.1.1 Auditive

The first introduction a child has to the language comes from the sounds the child hears. All the sounds produced by his or her environment are forming the child capability of distinguish the sounds that are exclusive for the language. “In order to understand others and to be understood, the child must acquire the ability to hear and produce the sounds of his language as the adults around him do” (De Villiers & De Villiers, 1978). As De Villiers said, the first stage in the acquisition of the language is the auditive part, when a child hears the speech sounds.

But as we said, it is important to distinguish between the speech sounds and de nonspeech sounds, in the book “Language Acquisition” De Villiers says that in this part, the way the child makes this process is basically an ability from birth. This means that this is form by the other senses like hearing and seeing when a sound comes from a person or a thing. “The ability to discriminate speech sounds from nonspeech sounds develops very early in infancy, and may even be innate” (De Villiers & De Villiers, 1978). 

When this process has been completed, a child can now be in contact with the first speech sounds. Some concepts we need to know to understand what are the speech sounds are these three taken from the words of the authors Jill and Peter De Villiers (1978):

1. Phones, the separate speech sounds that are produced by speakers of English and how they are articulated.
2. Phonemes, the sound types that function in the language to distinguish between different words.
3. Phonological rules, by which the sounds are combined into words and which account for systematic variations in the form of word endings in different phonetic contexts.

Even when a child cannot know these concepts, it is important to say that the phones and the phonemes, using the sense of hearing, are being transmitted to the child in this auditive stage. So the language is being introduced as the speech sounds the child hears. 

1.1.2 Repetitive

We though the repetition of the sounds is an important theme to explain. In this part we are considering that the child is moving from hearing to producing speech sounds. And the first sounds the child produce are the ones from the babbling. 

“At about three or four months of age the children begin producing sounds that approximate speech” (De Villiers & De Villiers, 1978). Babbling is the sounds a baby makes, sounds that an adult can distinguish as the beginning of forming words. When a baby starts babbling we can notice that the sounds that comes from the mouth are similar to the words we say to the baby. This detection (De Villiers & De Villiers, 1978) can tell us that the repetition actually has something to do with the produced sounds. “Thus the child’s own speech sounds will gradually approach those of the parents and the sounds that the parents do not produce will drop out of the child’s repertoire” So the babbling sounds the baby produce are a reflection of the sounds the parents produce and send to the child. “While imitation of adults sounds may well be an important process in the learning of first words, this theory has nothing to say about any consistent order in which children might acquire the different sounds of the language” (De Villiers & De Villiers, 1978).

The babbling can also come from the maturation of the child, (De Villiers & De Villiers, 1978) this means of how the child develops the making of sound with the mouth. The vowel sounds refers to the phonemes, these phonemes are formed in different parts of the mouth, as the baby grow up, the vowel sounds that the child makes moves from different parts of the mouth. “The range of speech sounds produced by the child is therefore somewhat restricted initially and gradually expands to incorporate, by twelve months of age, most through still not all, of the sounds of the language” (De Villiers & De Villiers, 1978).

“The Child learned to speak by copying the noise-patterns heard around him, and through stimulus and response, trial and error, reinforcement and reward, he would refine his own production until it matched the language of his adult models” (Crystal, David. 1976.) As we can see, it is possible that child learn the language by the repetition of noises and words, and his brain is creating a bank of words that it helps the child to have a better communication with the persons around, and it will be more easier to know what’s the baby wants to say. 

1.1.3 Visual

The visual method is a very natural and one of the most common, and is related to the other two –auditive and repetitive- in this step, the mother show to the child an object and says the name of it, with this is giving to the child a relation word-image. The child start to memorize it, so in the future he/she would be able to speak even if the pronunciation is wrong, the mother will know what the child is trying to say. The visual step, relating sound-image, start since the birth, when the child start babbling and then speaking a few words is when he/she does the word-image. 

"Meaning however, arises from the way in which forms are used in relation to the extra linguistic world of object, ideas and experience" (Crystal, David. 1976.)