System and instance in first language development
Clare Painter, University of Sydney
In their preschool years, all normally developing children successfully learn to speak at least one language, apparently without conscious effort or tuition. Because of this, it has often seemed important to try and emulate some of the conditions of first language development in educational settings (Cambourne 1988), so as to facilitate literacy development in particular. If we wish to do this, however, it is important to understand the way a child’s first language develops under the guidance of more expert dialogue partners. This paper uses longitudinal case-study data of everyday language learning in an English speaking home (Painter, 1984; 1999) to demonstrate what is involved in a child’s ‘learning how to mean’ (Halliday 1975, 1993), in terms of both what and how the child learns. Central to this SFL account of language development is Halliday’s (1992: 26) theoretical insight that it is in the process of instantiation that the probabilistic system of language is ‘perturbed’, creating the potential for developmental change. Since instantiation of the child’s system in the preschool years takes place principally in the context of asymmetrical dialogue, a central issue for educators is how best to translate this insight into pedagogic practice in formal contexts of schooling. It will be argued that the SFL account sits comfortably with educational thinking based on Vygotsky’s (1962; 1978) ideas and Applebee and Langer’s (1983) advocacy of Bruner’s (1975) notion of ‘scaffolding’, but less comfortably with more individualistic approaches - particularly those of Piaget (1926) - that have influenced ‘constructivist’ and ‘learner-centered’ pedagogical practices.