Child Vocabulary Acquisition

Pre-school children acquire their mother tongue in their first three or four years without any special instruction or intentional learning. This mysterious phenomenon has aroused people's interest from the ancient times. Scholars have conducted research on it and have put forward different opinions. Philosophers want to find out the origin of language from studying child language acquisition as child language acquisition process can be considered as a reflection of how humans acquire language. Linguists think that child language acquisition process reflects how humans acquire their linguistic competence. In addition, they can proof-test the existing language acquisition theories. Psychologists believe that children's language development is a reflection of their cognitive and psychological development. From studying the observable language, people can have a scientific understanding of children's cognition and psychology, thus they can educate children in a more scientific way. Educators want to find a more effective way of teaching and learning a foreign language from studying children's successful language acquisition.From studying the existing language acquisition theories, the early vocabulary acquisition of children and the influencing factors, we find that to acquire the linguistic competence, human's specific biological conditions and the mysterious brain as well as the outside stimulus, response and imitation are indispensable. That is, language originates from the interactive effect of the environment and the brain. Child language development is based on general cognitive development. On the other hand, language development facilitates cognitive development. To enhance children's vocabulary development and the overall language development, Krashen's five hypotheses in second language acquisition should be paid attention to.There are in all four chapters in this thesis. In the first chapter, the author introduces the history of the study. In the second chapter, she lists three influential language acquisition theories and uses materials to analyze them. In the third chapter, she introduces the vocabulary acquisition stages children have gone through in their first three years. At the end of the dissertation, she presents factors influencing child vocabulary acquisition.