ANIMAL COMMUNICATION AND LANGUAGE TEACHING TO ANIMAL

INTRODUCTION

Animal communicate through a wide variety of means. In general, they have the same reason in communicate with one another. At basic, they communicate to get food, to find mate, to warn, to threaten, etc (Steinberg, Nagata, and Aline, 2001:160). Many animal use sound signal, but many also use other modalities substances involving smell as signal, as in the case of ants. Visual signal may be used by dogs and body movement may be used by bees. Animal are obviously able to communicate at some level with one another, even sometimes with human being as well.

If animal have their own system of communication, is it possible to teach them some sort of human language? Several studies which have been conducted show that although animals do naturally can talk like human being, this does not mean that they are incapable of talking human language. Scientists have made attempts to teach language to chimpanzees. Such scientist attempts were conducted by psychologist in the 1920s through 1940s. The result of other examination will be discussed in here.