Language Acquisition Theories Of Second Language

ABSTRACT First language acquisition studies have been an interesting issue to both linguists and psycholinguists. A lot of research studies have been carried out over past several Decades to investigate how Language or child language acquisition mechanism takes place. The end point of Language acquisition theories leads to interlanguage theories which eventually lead to second language acquisition (SLA) research studies. In this paper, I will show that there have been at least three theories that have offered new ideas on Language acquisition. However, two theories of Language acquisition have been very prominent as they have propounded two revolutionary schools of thought: Behaviorism and Mentalism. Therefore, in the first segment of this

Some have argued that language acquisition device. Some have argued that language acquisition device provides children with a knowledge of linguistic universals, such as the existence of word order and word classes; others, that it provides only general procedures for discovering how language is to be learned. But all of its supporters are agreed that some such notion is needed in order to explain the remarkable speed with which children learn to speak, and the considerable similarity in the way grammatical patterns are acquired across different children and languages. Adult speech, it is felt, cannot of itself provide a means of enabling children to work out the regularities of language for themselves, because it is too complex and disorganized. However, it has proved difficult to formulate the detailed properties oflanguage acquisition device in an uncontroversial manner, in the light of the changes in generative linguistic theory that have taken place in recent years; and meanwhile, alternative accounts of the acquisition process have

Several controlled studies have been carried out investigating the link between the stages of cognitive development proposed by Piaget and the emergence of linguistic skills. The links have been most clearly shown for the earliest period of language learning, relating to the development of what Piaget called ‘sensori-motor’intelligence, in which children construct a mental picture of a world of objects that have independent existence. For example, during the later part of this period, children develop a sense of object permanence they will begin to search for objects that they have been hidden and some scholars have argued that the ability to name classes of objects depends on the prior development of this cognitive ability. However, it is difficult to show precise correlations between specific cognitive behaviours and linguistic features at this early age. The issue is a highly controversial one, which increases in complexity as children become linguistically and cognitively more