Children’s Language Acquisition through Readiness, Practice, and Response: A Behaviorist Analysis at Ars Happy Kids Center

Abstract

This study focuses on the phenomenon in which a child acquires language based on readiness and practice through activities in their environment. The purpose of this research is to map the forms of readiness, practice, and language acquisition responses among toddlers at Ars Happy Kids Center, Padasuka Subdistrict, Ciomas District, Bogor Regency, West Java. The qualitative research method was employed as the research procedure, producing descriptive data in the form of written or spoken words and observable behavior. This study focuses on the language acquisition of children aged 3–5 years at Ars Happy Kids Center, Padasuka Subdistrict, Ciomas District, Bogor Regency, West Java, based on E. L. Thorndike’s three concepts of behaviorist theory to measure the readiness and practice provided by the institution, which in turn generate children’s responses in the form of language ability. The findings of this study show that each child demonstrates different forms of readiness, practice, and response, even though they receive the same learning scheme in the process of language acquisition at the educational institution. For example, some children are able to pronounce the [r] sound correctly, while others exhibit substitution of the [r] sound with [l] in speech due to differences in developmental growth.