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Linguistic Theories In The Classroom Essay

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Linguistic Theories in the Classroom
Stuart Edmund Davies
Thongsook College

Abstract
This paper attempts to offer an insight into two of the greatest linguistic theories of the mid 1900’s. It looks at Skinners early behaviorist’s theory and compares it with Chomsky’s Universal Grammar. In addition, it also attempts to establish which of the theories fit into today’s modern classroom. The study shows Skinner’s theory is far less complex and easier to incorporate and that Chomsky’s theory is overly complex and possibly detrimental to learners of a second language.
Keywords: Chomsky, Skinner, Behaviorist’s Theory, Universal Grammar
Linguistic Theories in the Classroom
Throughout the early 20th century linguists proposed many different theories …show more content…

He further proposed that languages share “certain structural properties” and that the ability to learn is “innate and is embedded somewhere in the neuronal circuitry of the human brain”. This theory he formulated is called “ universal grammar” (Chomsky, 2014).

Universal Grammar
In Chomsky’s theory of Universal grammar, he states that language is innate. This means that humans have the ability to learn language inbuilt into the subconscious brain. It also allows people to unconsciously see when sentence structures are correct and to make sense out of incorrectly written or spoken utterances.
Chomsky and his team stated that for this to be true languages must “share a set of syntactic rules and principals” and set about studying different languages. Their studies concluded that over 5000 languages do in fact share the necessary rules to support his theory (Chomsky, 2014).
The study also showed that “Universal Grammar” gives children the necessary ability to turn verb and noun phrases in to grammatically correct sentences. The only real work left for learners is to amass a suitable vocabulary to speak the target language (Kurzweil & Hawkins, 1983).

What do the critics

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