1. Children learn best by observing the behavior of adults and copying it.

Do you agree or
disagree? Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

Children are the most important stage in the life of human being. One of the major issues in the
education fields, is the way children learnt. Through the century, many academicians try to find out how
actually children learn. From the famous Piagets cognitive development theory up to the different
school of thought by Vygotsky with his theory of socio-cultural, all these academicians tried to find out
what is the best explanation to define the way a child learn. Do children learn best by observing the
behavior of adults and copying it? I agree with this statement.
Children are the great observers. They will simply observe whatever done by the adults
especially their parents. There were few academicians who supported this idea. One of them was Albert
Bandura. Banduras theory clearly stated that behavior is learned from the environment through the
process of observational learning. Children observe the people around them behaving in various ways.
(Mcleod, S. : 2011). Children always learn from their parents. In their home, when the parents behave in
good manners, their children will imitate this action. The best example is the way their parents eat. If
the kid is born in Chinese family and the parents eat using chopsticks, most likely the children will eat
using chopsticks.
Another perspective in the issue is related with the language learning process. Children are
believed can learn the language through imitation. This idea is supported by Victoria, Robert and Nina
(2003). Imitation is involved to some extent but the early words and sentences that children produce
show that they are not simply imitating adult speech. However, the most important evidence about the
children are able to learn the language from the adult especially their parents is the mother tongue. The
acquiring of mother tongue is not just related with the culture but also is about how often the parents
use the language in front of their kids. It is very phenomenal where we can detect, around the globe,
how children are able to acquire the mother tongue, simply by listening to what their parents are
conversing.
Another evidence which proves that children learn by observing the adults are the existence of
different level of code of language used by the children in their classroom. This code of language is the
way the children speak in their classroom, in the aspect of vocabulary and sentence structure. When we
closely observe the way children speak in the classroom, we will realize it is largely related with the
language which they listen to at their home. A kid from a lower class will have limited range of words
when he speaks compared to those from upper class. This is supported by Basil Bernstein. (Amir : 2009).
The debate in this academic writing revolves around the issue of whether children learn by
observing the adults or not. I would like to stress again, that with example and evidence given above, I
strongly agree that children learn best by observing the adult.
(526 words)
Bibliography
Amir, H. D. (2009), Sekolah dan Masyarakat (2009), Tanjung Malim : Quantum Books.
Fromklin, V. ,Rodman, R. & Hyams, N. (2003), An Introduction to Language , Boston : Thomson
Wadsworth.
Mcleod, S. (2011), Bandura- Social Learning Theory , Simply Psychology, Retrieved from
http://www.simplypsychology.org/bandura.html