Professor Clark outlined the transformations that highlight the language acquisition process, explaining the extraordinary task that is involved in children's learning how to talk. From early infancy on, children are observing the speech of the people around them. Thus, during early childhood, children can learn an average of ten words a day, With their growing vocabulary, children make use of the grammatical structures they know and combine the words they have learned in ways that make sense to them.
Children approximate their language to become closer to the adult model.
The adult's role in children's language development should center around providing a supportive model. Clark's research points to indirect correction as the most effective way of supporting our children's language development. Part of the impetus for Professor Clark's interest in linguistics was the language development of her own child. She spent about twenty hours per week creating a detailed journal in which she transcribed her son's vocabulary and grammatical structures. After she had examined patterns in her own son's language development and had refined her methodology, she extended her questions and observations to a larger group of children.