The area in which I am most interested is developmental psychology and the role of
development in language acquisition. Since Liberty did not have a concentration in
psycholinguistics I chose developmental psychology to better understand the techniques of
teaching language at the various developmental stages. Factors such as cognition and social skills
often contribute to language acquisition and developmental psychologists examine how and why
a child learns aspects of a language such as sound, words, and grammar. Language is a gift from
God that provides us with the ability to understand and communicate not only with one another
but provides us a tool with which to develop a relationship with Him. He created humans in His
image and gave us this ability (Genesis 1:27-28).
The developmental stage of interest to me is that of adolescence. As an educator, it is
essential to read current research and to examine how or why various methods of language
instruction should be implemented. The division of developmental psychology publishes the
journal of Developmental Psychology. Unfortunately, not many studies from the past three
months focused on this particular stage of life. Most research focused primarily on infants or
early childhood and there were many studies that focused on communication. A study by
Gaudreau et al. (2022) investigated the effect of parental cell phone use and the number of
questions asked by their children. They found that the number of questions asked by children
decreased as the time parents spent on the cellphone increased. Another study by
Eghbaria-Ghanamah et al. (2022) investigated the effects of rhyme and repetition. They found
kindergarten classrooms that incorporated rhyming and repetition produced higher achievers at
the first-grade level than those classrooms without rhyming and repetition.
The few research topics that focused on adolescence did not focus on language
acquisition but were still relevant to my content area. Language plays a significant role in the
ability to communicate. A study by Lessard & Juvonen (2022) focused on the effects of
adolescents' ability to communicate with parents and peers. They found that adolescents who
spoke with their parents about school tended to perform better and were more likely to attend
college. Peer communication, however, did not have a significant effect on academic
performance but those who were friends with higher achievers tended to do better than those
with lower-achieving friends. Another study on communication by Novack et al. (2022) focused
on non-verbal communication between parent and child. The results show that children who
received communicative directives with hand gestures and facial expressions from their parents
could understand and reciprocate communication with their parents. The study supports the
effectiveness of non-verbal communication. Discovering studies such as this encourage me as a
language teacher to increase my communicative instruction. Teachers need more knowledge
about effective communication in order to increase academic achievement within their classes.
References
Eghbaria-Ghanamah, H., Edmond, S., Ghanamah, R., Shalhoub-Awwad, Y., Adi-Japha, E.,
Karni, E. (2022). Long-term benefits after a rhyme-repetition based intervention program
for kindergarteners: Better reading and spelling in the first grade. Developmental
Psychology, 58 (2), 252-269.
https://doi.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fdev0001284
Gaudreau, C., Golinkof R., & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (2022). What's in a distraction? The effect of
parental cell phone use on parents' and children's question-asking. Developmental
Psychology, 58 (1), 55-68.
https://doi.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fdev0001268
Lessard, L. M., & Juvonen, J. (2022). Developmental changes in the frequency and functions of
school-related communication with friends and family across high school: Effects on
college enrollment. Developmental Psychology,58(3), 575–588.
https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001003
Novack, M. A., Standley, M., Bang, M., Washinawatok, K., Medin, D., & Waxman, S. (2022).
Hands on: Nonverbal communication in Native and non-Native American parent–child
dyads during informal learning. Developmental Psychology,58(1), 32–42.
https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001279
Zondervan Publishing House (Grand Rapids, Mich). (2018). Holy Bible: New International
Version. Zondervan.
