Week 2 - Language Acquisition

The language acquisition (LA) page on Wikipedia suggest that children acquire language from their innate capabilities (nature), through environmental factors (nurture), or a combination of both. After reading the LA page, it would be very difficult for me to gravitate towards one side of the nature v. nurture debate on language acquisition. I believe there are both innate and environmental factors that contribute to the LA of a child. The innate components of LA acquisition in children allow them to process, understand, and speak their native language. The later would appear to be valid because if a child had a physiological impairment such as frontal lobe damage, more than likely they would be unable to speak. The latter was confirmed through the experiments of Paul Broca a french neurologist. Broca's experiments focused on the areas in the brain that were responsible for speech.
The other assigned links Ciaran O'Riodan's language learning site and Mama Teached Me Talk appeared to echo the sentiment of the language acquisition page on Wikipedia. Ciaran O'Riodan's page primarily focused on the acquisition of a foreign languages. Within the scope of the O'Riodan page, the enclosed tips for foreign language acquisition involved external factors: auditory (cds/tapes), visual (books and other forms of print media), as well as social interactions with native speakers of a given foreign language. Whereas the page entitled "Mama Teached Me Talk" attempted to advocate the position of the nature side of the debate by citing experiments such as "The Wild boy of Aveyron" and " "Genie".
All three articles have direct relationship with reading because a child has to be able to acquire their native language in order to read or be literate in their native tongue.