The Role of Innate knowledge in Second language Acquisition

Abstract:

This article will reflect upon the concept of second language acquisition, as to whether the knowledge of second language is innate or acquired overtime? This article will reflect on the answer to this question using the acquisition-learning hypothesis proposed by Stephen Krashen in his book “Stephen Krashen’s theory of second language acquisition”. If the knowledge is innate, then how can one use this innate knowledge in the learning process of a second language? What factors contribute to a person having an innate knowledge of a second language? When a person eventually starts to learn a language other than his mother language, he for sure counters many adversities, but does having an innate knowledge deep down within ones soul contribute to him acquiring the second language knowledge faster? These are the major questions which shall be reflected upon in this research and produce a satisfactory conclusion which will serve the purpose of clearing all doubts regarding the role of innate knowledge in second language acquisition.

 

 

 

 Introduction:

 

Innate knowledge:

Innate knowledge is one of the most controversial topics for researchers who study human behavior and try to explain the phenomenon of how each human mind works. Some people think that innate knowledge does not exist, as when a child is born, he has no knowledge of any worldly language or behavior. As a child matures with age, he picks up thing like walking, eating, dressing and knowledge of his first language from his parents and people around him. They think that when a person acquire a second language, it is completely because of listening to other people and learning about the language through experience, hard work and teaching by experts.

But, others believe that innate knowledge is a truth about the human behavior. They believe in the philosophy that everyone is born with an innate knowledge about one thing or another. Some people tend to pick one thing better than others because they possess the necessary innate knowledge regarding that field. Like, some people are born with the innate knowledge to play football hence those people learn most of the things about football even before their teenage years.

Similarly these researchers believe that people having an innate knowledge about the second language drastically increases their skills in the process of learning a new language as these people are born with a natural born ability regarding this new language. This is the basis on which these researchers believe that in some aspects of life some people are better than the other, hence everyone can never learn everything.

 

Second language:

Second language knowledge is one of, if not the most important skill a person must acquire in one’s life. Although a child acquires his first knowledge primarily through his innate ability as every child is said to be born with the basic knowledge of his first language. Moreover, by listening and observing his parents and the people around him he acquire this knowledge quite easily. But the second language acquisition is a totally different ball game and most of the time it requires special classes with professionally trained experts. People who are born with an innate knowledge tend to acquire the terminologies and phrases relatively easily as compared to people born without any natural knowledge, as they tend to take much more time and require much more hard work to acquire knowledge of a second language.

There are many factors that contribute to acquiring the knowledge of a second language. Factors like age, motivation, intelligence, cognitive style and personality all have a role when it comes to learning a new language. Linguists believe that people with younger age who are motivated and intelligent acquire the second language knowledge through hard work, but because these factors favor them, they find is relatively easy to gain the knowledge of a new language.

There are basically two types of people when it comes to gaining the knowledge of a second language. One who wants to acquire a second language and one who wants to learn a second language, so anyone who want to study about the role of innate knowledge in second language acquisition must know the difference between language learning and language acquisition as one of them require innate knowledge as a necessity and the other one can be achieved without any natural born talent and only experience and hard work.

Language Acquisition:

When acquiring a second language the person simply acquires the knowledge of basic words, phrases and terminologies of the new language and does not have the knowledge of any grammatical terms and sentence structure regarding that language. But, human researchers say that for second language acquisition the person does not require any expert or teacher, rather it is an innate ability with which he is born and in his subconscious mind already has basic knowledge regarding the new language.

 

Language Learning:

Second language learning on the other hand is a completely different term than language acquisition. In language learning the person learns all the grammatical terms and internal structure of every sentence of this new language and does not have any innate knowledge of the new language whatsoever. Language learning requires one to learn from experts and professionals of the language and takes a lot of time, hard-work and experience to gain proficiency and fluency.

 

Article Commentry:

Up to this point the article has focused on providing researched information regarding innate knowledge. In this modern era of internet anyone can publish anything regarding any topic and some of that information can be very useful to the reader and clear the concepts of many people, but there are those which are based on personal theories rather than researched facts and can be a misleading source of information for the reader. Hence, by using the knowledge we have gained so far let us now analyze some of the articles regarding the role of innate knowledge in second language acquisition and conclude as to what degree the provided information in those articles is correct and which provides misleading information.

 

Article No 1:

SLTinfo short for speech and language therapist information write articles on many topics regarding language and communication of humans with each other. In the context of the topic of role of innate knowledge in second language acquisition they have written in their article that:

“The theory which asserts that human beings are genetically pre-programmed to learn language has been popularized most effectively by the American linguist Noam Chomsky.

Every researcher who believes in the existence of innate knowledge has an opinion on the fact that the staggering rate at which children acquire language skills can only be explained if one supposes that children are genetically pre-programmed with the knowledge of acquiring the language. They claim that the child does not come to the language learning task with a blank mind but has an innate ability to acquire the knowledge of the language.

This claim is put into perspective when we note that the average five-year-old has an expressive vocabulary of around 2000 words and that by the age of seven years this will have doubled. In addition, the size of the comprehension vocabulary will be much higher than this. Their speech will be intelligible to familiar and unfamiliar listeners, as they will use all but the most difficult speech sounds. Moreover, the child will be able to use language for a variety of reasons: to express feelings, to make requests, to disagree, and so on. This remarkable feat of a human beings is considered to be a miracle in and of itself.”

Comment:

Sltinfo is one known for writing well researched articles and providing proof of every word they write so that the reader can acquire satisfying knowledge regarding his that topic and in my opinion, this article is no different and I completely agree with their views about the role of innate knowledge in the language acquisition of human beings. 

Innate knowledge as we discussed earlier is a very controversial topic. It’s very hard to convince anyone that people are born with knowledge regarding language learning but, this article provides with enough researched proof that anyone having doubts will have a clear mind after reading this. This article basically takes its substance from the book ‘Why do we talk’ written by Noam Chomsky and Noam Chomsky is considered by many one of the greatest linguist and philosopher and his research is considered a result of many years of observation and experience.

This article reflects on the theory that children are born with the pre-program knowledge of language learning. By using this they have explained that how a five year old child can speak certain worlds of a language and by the age of seven he doubles hi vocabulary. At this young age children cannot learn everything, but they learn their language very quickly as compared to how they learn other things and the only reason for this that is fitted to be accepted by the human mind is that children have the innate knowledge of that language hence it takes them less time to learn all the terminologies and phrases of a language.

Moreover, this article very beautifully explains the factors that lead to the acquiring a second language and the biggest factor among all of them is the innate knowledge and based on what we’ve learned so far, I completely agree with the content written in this article. As I’ve written above that children which are born with the natural knowledge of their first language and this helps them very well in their acquisition of a second language as in the back of their mind they already know the basics of the language that they are about to acquire.

 

Article No 2:

Hasanbey Ellidokuzoðlu is an article and is known to take real life examples from nature and animal behavior to explain the of how a human being learns languages either be it the first or second language and backs up his view by writing the views of linguists like Plato and Chomsky and how they explained the role of innate knowledge in second language acquisition.   

In his article Hasanbey Ellidokuzoðlu writes:

“Some kinds of migratory birds which fly thousands of miles toward their destination by calibrating the positions of stars against time of day and year, poses no serious problem for many scientists, as they can easily attribute this amazing success to this instinctive behavior of birds. It is apparent, after all, that these animals cannot learn such complicated astronomical facts through a trial and error fashion as they neither have enough time nor necessary cognitive capacity to carry out such feat.

The same scientists, including some professional linguists, are hesitant to believe that the infant who has taught himself to speak a language at a staggering young age of four to five years old have a natural born knowledge of that language . They believe that an infant is no less a complicated task than that of the birds as the linguists themselves have spent decades (or even centuries) to solve the complexity of the very same system and with no final theory. Infants, on the other hand, not only arrives at an almost complete knowledge of grammar in their minds but also accomplish this task within less than a decade.

It would be unwise to suggest that a cognitively immature child can accomplish a task which has yet to be accomplished by professional linguists. A child may well not have grasped the property of conservation of volume nor be able to perform but the most rudimentary arithmetic calculations, still he’ll have the knowledge of rules which linguists formulate as the basic principles of language acquisition.

 

PLATO’S PROBLEM AND CHOMSKY’S SOLUTION:

Our knowledge of language is complex and abstract; the experience of language we receive is limited. Our minds could not create such complex knowledge on the basis of such sparse information. Both Plato and Chomsky had beliefs that this knowledge of language is born with a child when he comes into this world. Chomsky believes that this knowledge is pre-programmed in a child’s brain before birth, whereas Plato believes in his theory that this knowledge is the result of the memory of a prior existence.

Chomsky believes that child’s mind is equipped with the principles and parameters of the Universal Grammar (UG) which underlies the grammar of any human language. With the help of this language-specific knowledge children can figure out roughly what the shape of his or her mother tongue is like. That is, UG provides a skeleta knowledge upon which the child is supposed to dress the flesh.”

Comment:

As A student of language based on my knowledge and research of the innate ability in language acquisition I completely agree with content written by Hasanbey Ellidokuzoðlu in his article. He used both scientific and linguistic research in order to explain the concept of innate ability and answered the question of whether humans actually have an innate knowledge or is it just a theory?

In this article Hasanbey Ellidokuzoðlu has used the behavior of species like birds to explain how the brain of a human being works. He’s written that birds don’t have the concept of migrating at the time of birth, rather through experience they acquire the knowledge that staying at a single place in certain seasons is not fit for them so they migrate to different parts of the world every-time the season changes, hence they acquire new knowledge because of necessity and survival.

Unlike these birds when a human being is born, every child has the innate knowledge of their first language, hence even without any necessity at age four or five children learn to speak the basic sentences of their mother language. But, as I’ve mentioned above, some children are also born with an innate knowledge of a second language. As a result, when they tend to learn the complete language, they tend to do it quicker and with ease relative to the person born without an innate knowledge of a second language.

Moreover, the writer has used the research of linguists like Plato and Chomsky to justify the content written he’s written in his article. He’s stated that both Plato and Chomsky believe in the existence of innate knowledge. Chomsky believes that a when human beings are born, they’re pre-programmed with the knowledge of their first language and some even with a knowledge of their second language, whereas Plato believed that the innate knowledge of humans is due to the memory of a prior existence. Whatever maybe the case, they’re both true in term of the existence of innate knowledge and I think that this article is completely accurate when it says that humans acquire the knowledge of language much faster due to the presence of an innate knowledge in their mind.

Article No 3:

Simplyphycology is a website where researchers, philosophers, psychologists and linguists publish their researches related to psychology and human behavior. A man named Saul Mcleod who is a psychology teacher himself and has published an article on this site about Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development and in his article states that:

“Piaget's (1936) theory of cognitive development explains how a child constructs a mental model of the world. He disagreed with the idea that intelligence was an innate ability, and denied the theory that human beings are genetically pre-programmed for acquiring the knowledge regarding different fields of life, as he regarded cognitive development as a process which occurs due to biological maturation and interaction with the environment. According to Piaget, children are born with a very basic mental structure (genetically inherited and evolved) on which all subsequent learning and knowledge are based.

The goal of the theory is to explain the mechanisms and processes by which the infant, and then the child, develops into an individual who can reason and think using hypotheses.  To Piaget, cognitive development was a progressive reorganization of mental processes as a result of biological maturation and environmental experience.

He did not believe in the theory that people are born with an innate knowledge about language, rather they learn as they see others speak that language and learn more and more as they grow with age. He believes that children construct an understanding of the world around them, then experience discrepancies between what they already know and what they discover in their environment.”

Comment:

On the basis of my experience as a linguist and my research, I completely disagree with Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development. He states that human beings are not born with any innate knowledge of any language, rather they learn through observing people and things in their environment and acquire more knowledge as they grow older with age and gain more experience.

If that was to be the case, then this theory raises more questions than it answers, like how can a child learn to speak a language at an age when he can’t learn anything else? Why some people are good and quick at acquiring the knowledge of a second language than others? Why are some people good at some things and bad at other things? Why can’t everyone in the world think like Einstein or why can’t everyone play football like Ronaldo? And many more questions like these remain a mystery if everything could be achieved through observing and learning alone.

The answer to all the above question is, innate knowledge. People with innate knowledge about second language tend to learn that language much faster, people with innate knowledge about football and cricket become better players than who don’t possess the innate knowledge of these games, and the answer to many more questions like these is that every human being is born with an innate knowledge of a unique field, rather be it language, sports, business or any other field in which he eventually becomes an experts in a quick manner than others using this innate knowledge that he was born with. Many great researchers and linguists have denied this theory and even Piaget himself has admitted that there are a lot of faults in his theory of cognitive development.

 

Conclusion:

This article has reflected on the topics of what is innate knowledge and how can it be used to acquire the knowledge of a second language? This article has established fact that innate knowledge indeed does have a vast role in the acquisition of a second language for a human being. It is known that everyone is born with the innate knowledge of a first language, hence everyone easily acquires the knowledge of their mother language quite easily at the young age of four or five years. Whereas, there are some who are born with the innate ability to easily acquire the knowledge of a second language rather be it English, French, Swedish or even typing and computer programming are considered as a second languages by some in this modern era. This article has used this research as a criteria to determine whether other articles which provide information on a similar topics so that the reader who reads those articles are not mislead by any false information.

Theories like Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development have been proven wrong in this commentary article in the light of research and experience done by great linguists and researchers of the past and present, and as mentioned above has stated that his theory regarding the innate ability of human beings is faulty.. Linguists believe that if knowledge of language was not an innate ability, it would take about ten to twenty years for anyone to just learn the basics of any second language as he would have not prior knowledge in his mind about the language which he ceases to learn and this would be a completely new thing to him and his mind, so it would take a long to time to develop knowledge of that second language. Hence the research of this article concludes that innate knowledge of a second language does in-fact help in acquiring of said second language