JOURNAL ENTRY
Crying
Crying is a significant capability in the language development of a child as it is the initiates the initial means of communication for an infant. Crying plays a significant role to ensure that the infant survives, is healthy and also develops well (Gibson & Pick, 2000). Having the capacity of noticing the different kinds of crying is thus a core value in ensuring that the child’s needs are met. Infants react by crying as a way of responding negatively. In essence, crying stimulates the infant to develop the capacity to perceive negative stimuli and thus respond to it by crying.
Babbling
Babbling is the key to an infant’s capacity to coordinate the mother’s verbal responses promoting more efficient language instruction which eventually facilitates language development. Babbling increases the rate of learning opportunities for the infant (Gibson & Pick, 2000). Literally, the mother’s verbal responses enhance the child’s capacity to babble. This babbling gives the infant the opportunity to practice how to pronounce some words. Babbling is definitely a motor function that enhances language development.
Use of gestures in communication
The ability of the infant to perceive and coordinate vocal activity as well as body movements when responding to another person’s verbal or even nonverbal patterns plays a significant role in the development of the infant’s language (Gibson & Pick, 2000). The use of gestures enables the infant to exhibit his or her understanding of certain languages. Gestures offer the infant a manner in which he or she can express herself before gaining verbal expressions. Gestures create a connection between pre-verbal communication and speech. It also enables the child to convey information that would be quite hard to convey using words. Also, gesture facilitates the prediction and enhances the infant’s spoken language acquisition.
Chimps have language
Chimps do have language and communicate through gestures. Actually, they do communicate approximately nineteen precise messages to each other accompanied by sixty-six gestures.