The mentalist/innatist position

THE MENTALIST/INNATIST POSITION (Chomsky)

1. Behaviourism vs. Innatism. Are they so different? Explain Chomsky´s position.
Behaviourism focuses on the environment and holds that all things thatpeople do should be regarded as behaviours. Innatism lies on the principle that there is something in our mind that allows us to learn a language. These two theories were opposed. Innate theory isopposed to the behaviourist theory which claims that a language is a set of habits that can be acquired thanks to environment.
Chomsky says that in our mind we have the Linguistc Acquisition Divided,which allows us to develop the skills to be able to speak a language.

2. Explain briefly Chomsky´s Generative-transformational grammar and its main linguistic concepts.
The LAD creates an internalgrammar in our brain that allows us to generate, to produce new multiple structures. We don´t reproduce; we create form new, new structures that we haven´t heard before.
But for that we need to beexposed to the language, to get input for generate new strucutres.

3. Methodological application of Innatism. Give an example of an innatist lesson.
An innatism lesson should not be based on theexplanation of the grammar, because this theory holds that we have a kind of universal grammar from our birth. An innatism lesson could be for example a listening exercise followed by some comprehensionquestions to check if the students have understood the exercise. That we could envisage some exercises where the students practice and create new sentences using some grammar structures of thelistening exercise.

4. The social factorvs. LAD in the innatis position by Chomsky.ç
The LAD is not enough for the language acquisition, it´s the most important part, but there are also the socialfactors, the inputs and the environment, that help; they determinate the rate of acquisition.
There is also a predictable parth of learning; there is a sequence of learning in all the kids. Before...