Growing Up With Language: How Children Learn to Talk by Naomi S. Baron

by Naomi S. Baron

"It is a gift when an academic can take a difficult subject and make it not just accessible but actually enjoyable for the average reader. Anyone who is around young children will find useful information on how humans create speech and language."-- The Bloomsbury ReviewChildren learn to make sense of the babble around them and become coherent speakers and incipient readers in just five or six years. In this remarkable book, linguist Naomi Baron takes us on a journey through language, showing the variety of ways in which children crack the language code and master the means of expression, and how parents play a vital role in the process. Every parent will see something of his or her child in the numerous and vivid examples; those whose kids don't fit preconceived norms will find reassurance and guidance in these pages. Spiced with enchanting examples of children putting their first words together, struggling to understand meaning, and coming to use language as a creative tool, Growing Up with Language reminds us that underneath all their efforts is the drive to make sense of the world.

Genres: Parenting, Linguistics

Hardcover

First published May 1, 1992

About the author

Professor Baron is interested in electronically-mediated communication, writing and technology, the history of English, and higher education. A former Guggenheim Fellow and Fulbright Fellow, she has published seven books. Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World won the English-Speaking Union’s Duke of Edinburgh English Language Book Award for 2008. Her new book, Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World, will be out in early 2015.

Reviews

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Follows the language development of three typical kids. She presents them as real kids, but I believe they are probably composites of real kids,due to the fact that she contradicts herself twice. (The first time she says that Alex is vacationing with his parents and a physician is not present, despite the fact that Alex's father is a physician. The second time she says the as a toddler Alex watched the Star Wars movie on TV, later she says that he only watched educational kids' TV.)