A Critical Examination of the Beliefs about Learning a Foreign Language at Primary School

aspect of language development is under discussion, environmental factors
might play qualitatively and quantitatively different roles. Phonological
development, for example, might proceed with minimum exposure to language
data and is likely to be completed by a certain age, whereas lexical
development will depend much more on the quality and quantity of language
input and, rather than being submitted to maturational constraints, is a lifelong
process and a prerequisite for lifelong learning and concept development.

In a Chomskyan sense 'knowledge of language' represents 'knowledge of
grammar* comprising phonology, morphology and syntax. The gap between
available language data and eventual 'knowledge' or 'competence', the question
of how children come to know what they know, presents 'the logical problem of
language acquisition' (Hornstein & Lightfoot, 1981). The question of'how it was
possible for children, on the basis of insufficient evidence about or severely
limited experience of their language, to acquire the complex and rich system
that represents their knowledge of language' was the starting point of
Chomsky's inquiry. In his response to Skinner's Verbal Behavior¹ (1957)
Chomsky (1959) argued that behaviorist views of language learning as a
process of habit formation through stimulus, response and positive
reinforcement could not explain the fact that most children, irrespective of
background, intelligence or exposure to language go through similar
phonological and syntactical stages in their first language development and
achieve comparable spoken competence by the time they reach school age.
First language acquisition cannot simply be a response to external stimuli but

67

<<   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   >>

More intriguing information