Academic/General Training Module by Adam Smith First Published in 2015

 
A For over 200 years, there has been an interest in the way children learn to speak and 
understand their first language. Scholars carried out several small-scale studies, 
especially towards the end of the 19th century, using data they recorded in parental 
diaries. But detailed, systematic investigation did not begin until the middle decades of 
the 20th century, when the tape recorder came into routine use. This made it possible 
to keep a permanent record of samples of child speech, so that analysts could listen 
repeatedly to obscure extracts, and thus produce a detailed and accurate description. 
Since then, the subject has attracted enormous multi-disciplinary interest, notably 
from linguists and psychologists, who have used a variety of observational and 
experimental techniques to study the process of language acquisition in depth. 
B Central to the success of this rapidly emerging field lies the ability of researchers to 
devise satisfactory methods for eliciting linguistic data from children. The problems 
that have to be faced are quite different from those encountered when working with 
adults. Many of the linguist’s routine techniques of enquiry cannot be used with 
children. It is not possible to carry out certain kinds of experiments, because aspects of 
children’s cognitive development – such as their ability to pay attention, or to 
remember instructions – may not be sufficiently advanced. Nor is it easy to get 
children to make systematic judgments about language, a task that is virtually 
impossible below the age of three. And anyone who has tried to obtain even the most 
basic kind of data – a tape recording of a representative sample of a child’s speech – 
knows how frustrating this can be. Some children, it seems, are innately programmed 
to switch off as soon as they notice a tape recorder being switched on. 
C Since the 1960s, however, several sophisticated recording techniques and 
experimental designs have been devised. Children can be observed and recorded 
through one-way-vision windows or using radio microphones, so that the effects of 
having an investigator in the same room as the child can be eliminated. Large-scale 
sampling programmes have been carried out, with children sometimes being recorded 
for several years. Particular attention has been paid to devising experimental 
techniques that fall well within a child’s intellectual level and social experience. Even 
pre-linguistic infants have been brought into the research: acoustic techniques are 
used to analyse their vocalisations, and their ability to perceive the world around them 

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