Universal Grammar

I had a really difficult time understanding the concept of Universal Grammar. I had to do additional research to grasp the UG idea and concept. At first I read Hawkins' article and struggled with the definition. I went to several different sites to read about UG and now have a better understanding of UG and POS (Poverty of Stimulus). I found a site that Joanne Hedges commented on and I thought she did a good job explaining UG and POS:

"This is where U.G. comes in, it is proposed that U.G. is an innate, unconscious ability present at birth, a knowledge of grammar. This is not suggesting that a child does not make grammatical errors, as we all know, children do, but it seems that they only make irregular type errors, such as "he holded" instead of "he held", so somehow they have the ability to accept these rules and apply them. It can be argued, by people such as Skinner, that these rules are simply learnt through conditioning, but how can this be so? As the child never hears anyone make these mistakes, so do not learn them that way, this is the poverty of the stimulus theory i.e. there is not enough, or indeed any, of this kind of stimulus to learn from. With U.G. set in place at birth, the child is able to take on whichever language it is exposed to, as all languages have common elements and are inter- translatable. "

I felt Ellis' article also shed some light about UG. I think I would have to agree with Ellis that UG is just a theory of "grammatical competence" and not "pragmatic." I find UG an interesting but a complicated theory because there are not enough research and evidence to back it up.

Misconceptions About Age and Learning L2`

This was a really interesting article. This article argued against the critical period theory. The author suggested that though there are some truths to the theory, it cannot rule out that adults cannot achieve master of an L2 language.

I thought the author's arguments were well thought out pointing to many factors that determines an adult's success with an L2 language. Some factors are the environment (is the adult given opportunities to have communcative experiences?), support and individual ability to learn a new language.

At the end of the article the author talked about introducing foreign language in the early years of school. I found this part to be relavent to my school district right now. Last year we started a pilot program in five schools introducing Spanish in the first grade. The district has decided to continue the program. I think the author pointed out some very important factors that will determine the effectiveness of the program. If students are learning an L2 language at a young age for a few years and stops then they will lose the language. Therefore, the investment was a lost. To make the program successful there must be a systematic plan to encourage an on-going use and learning of the language.