Chapter#1 - January 26, 2012

“Nature versus nurture” issues are always followed on many theories including language learning. The first chapter focuses on the historical perspective. The jigsaw activity allows an individual to focus on his or her topic and cooperate with group mates; and it also gives opportunities to learn from others by sharing. My group discussed about Chomsky’s contributions and his theories. Although Chomsky’s theories are dominantly for the first language acquisition, they are helpful to understand how a language is acquired. According to Chomsky’s theories, the innateness of human enables to acquire languages. As many other theories and data have proven, the first language acquisition requires a critical period and it is somewhat related to generic too. I believe both learning and acquiring are influenced by both nature and nurture including language, but the debate can arise from how much nature or nurture contributed to the learning and acquiring. I’d like to read and discuss more about these issues so that I can understand better.