阅读Language learning begins with listening. Children are greatly different in the amount(数量) of listening they need before they start speaking, and children who start speaking late are often long listeners. Most children will"obey (服从)"spoken instructions some time before they can speak, although the word"obey"can almost not describe the cooperation (合 作)shown by the children. Before they can speak, many children will also ask questions by gestures and by making noises.
People agree that babies enjoy making noises, and that during the first few months babies use one or two special noises to show their happiness, pain, friendliness and so on. But since these are not a kind of communication, language. From about three months old they play with sounds for enjoyment, and by six months they are able to add new sounds to their words. This self-imitation (自 我 模 仿) leads to deliberate(故意的) imitation of sounds made or words spoken to them by other people. The problem then appears — can people take these imitations as speech?
It is a problem we need not get our teeth into. The meaning of a word depends on what a special person means by it in a special situation, and what a child means by a word will change as he or she gets more experience of the world.
Playful and meaningless imitation of what other people say continues after the child has begun to speak for himself or herself. I wonder, however, whether anything is gained when parents try to use this ability to teach new sounds.
