Human is a Social Being

"Learning our own language is one of the major accomplishments of our lives...."

One of the most complex thing for a human to accomplish would be the mastering of a language. Such acquisition will then allow such person to communicate and learn about the world outside his/her own...

So do we wonder on how amazing it is for our little ones to be able to learn our mother tongue?

I happen to stumble across an article that writes about the work of a famous linguists, Micheal Halliday. He wrote a book titled 'Learning How to Mean" in year 1975. It was a famous landmark publication for materials related to children speech development. Its about theories on how about children learn their language.

The following table is the summary I made on Halliday's Theory:

Stages	Functions	Significant & Features
Phase 1: Photo-language (9-16.5months)	1. Instrumental: used to gain goods & services. Example of wanting stuff. 2. Regulatory: Used to control others’ behaviour. Example of telling other what to do. 3. Interactional: used to interact with others. Example of me & you activities. 4. Personal: used to express the child’s uniqueness. Example of our kid telling us where he/she is and what they are up to.	At this phase, the child will be using “photo-phase” words. Here language is just a basic communication function. Sometimes the child may imitate the adult’s spoken words to refer to something, but most of the time the child might be using words they made up by themselves to refer to something. Like Miya, when she wants milk she will say “Mama? Emeh..”. So the child will just try to communicate to express something on wishing or telling.
Phase 2: at 18months	1. Heuristics: used to explore the child’s world. Example on the child is asking why or what. 2. Imaginative: used by a child to create their own comfort zone. Example is when a child is playing pretend.	Only after phase 2 has begun does the child begin using words resembling the adults’ words and speech tone. Here vocabulary will increase dramatically and dialogues begin.

So i guess, we can help them achieve better, if we can know their development stage. Then we can encourage apa yg patut, kan?