Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Well I'm am 90% finished with this book for my upper division linguistics course, and I honestly have to say it is probably one of the most dull books I have ever read. I don't think the subject is that boring, but the book certainly is repetitious. Some of the words that are "highlighted" are self explanatory to the point where you really do not need them to be christened darker to make the student notice them. Furthermore, it goes into too much detail. Do we really need two full pages at 8pt font talking about the high amplitude sucking technique? This can be explained in one-non wordy sentence. I think that the arguments between the various theorists are amusing, but it gets way out of hand the more you read. Why not just have a big list at the end of the book, rather than spreading it out over 250 pages? Some of the sentences are rather long as well, and this makes it more dull. Students aren't so dumb that we need 18 word sentences to explain something.
Also its highly overpriced- the book is worth about probably what they are paying the author, my guess is somewhere around $40.00. Not $120.00 My college requires around 87 students to buy this book per semester. However, my teachers lectures cover all the information in this book in a much more concise way. I suggest using something else.
Also it focuses so much on first language acquisition it becomes annoying to those that find FIRST language acquisition NOT what they are interested in. This book pretty much overlooks L2 and L3 acquisition, and only devotes one meager chapter to it! Not all of us care about babies cooing and if it means something culturally or cognitively.
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This comprehensive text offers a balanced, in-depth presentation of a variety of information on how children develop language, beginning with the perception and production of speech sounds in infancy and moving through the development of vocabulary, grammar, and communicative competence. Also included are chapters on language in special populations, childhood bilingualism, and the biological bases of language (which covers such topics as evolution, chimps, and aphasia). Written by an author who has a background in both speech pathology and psychology, the text uses theory to motivate and explain the research and to put the research findings in perspective. It is also the most current resource available with many of the latest research developments referenced from 1999 and 2000.
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