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211Learning Goals 13-1 Describe the building blocks of language. 13-2 Explain the evidence for each of the competing theories of language acquisition. 13-3 Summarize the stages of language development. What if you couldn%u2019t share your thoughts and ideas with others? Our awesome ability to communicate is perhaps the most impressive of our cognitive, or mental, abilities. Language includes our spoken, written, or gestured words and the ways we combine them to communicate in a meaningful way. Without language, a tremendous amount of our technology would be useless%u2014phones, computers, social media, music streaming services, and televisions are all, in essence, tools that help us communicate. But communication was healthy long before the advent of hightech tools. Even before we had books, newspapers, and letters, the spoken word was everywhere. And all of this depends on language, as do the relationships we cherish with family and friends. Remove language and we sever our link to our past, forcing each generation to rethink, reinvent, and re-experience all the things our ancestors could have taught us. Language Development Module 13 Reshetnikov_art/Shutterstock Our lives are awash in words. This book is literally filled with them. How is it that language has become such an important part of our lives? Let%u2019s find out! SDI Productions/E+/Getty Images kali9/E+/Getty ImagesLessons in Culture Language is one important way children learn about their culture. Human culture as we know it would not exist without language, which lets us transmit our ideas across barriers of time and space. %u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Do not distribute.