CHILD DEVELOPMENT PEDAGOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -By observing how a human infant develops his own protolanguage, Halliday is able to show that a child not only uses language to express, but also to act, the two functions corresponding to what he calls the ideational and interpersonal metafunctions of language.

Detailed explanation-2: -For Halliday, children are motivated to develop language because it serves certain purposes or functions for them. The first four functions help the child to satisfy physical, emotional and social needs. Halliday calls them instrumental, regulatory, interactional, and personal functions.

Detailed explanation-3: -Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics understands texts as pieces of communication constructed for social purposes. When we listen to, read or view a text, and when we speak, write or create a text, we are drawing on three systems of culturally constructed meaning from which we simultaneously make our choices.

Detailed explanation-4: -These he called the ‘pragmatic’ group: they are the earliest, and their purpose is practical, getting things achieved, using language as a tool for control of self and others, managing the (social) world.

Detailed explanation-5: -Halliday (2004) argues that there are three ways of thinking about the relationship between learning and language: learning a language, learning through language and learning about language. As children are socialised, they are engaged in all three processes simultaneously.