ENG504 Midterm Solved Papers

Q1. UG Scope and Achievement

1. UG theory aims to describe and explain human language.
2. It is nonetheless directly relevant to the study of SL.
3. It is a linguistic theory, not a learning theory.
4. It has been hugely influential in drawing up sophisticated hypotheses regarding SLA.
5. It helps exploring interplay between the first and second language learners and facilitates understanding of linguistic knowledge learners bring to the task of SLA.
6. It is primarily concerned with the description and explanation of formal system underlying language.
7. Its scope does not include a theory of processing or learning.
8. UG is more of a property theory and not a transition theory. Therefore, it must be evaluated as such.

Q2. Note on UG

On the basis of messy input, children create mental representation of language which goes beyond the input they are exposed to and is very similar to that of other native speakers of the same language variety. Language is the most abstract piece of knowledge. Second language learners are cognitively mature and presumably much more resourceful in problem solving and dealing with abstract concepts. From a theoretical point of view, different possible scenarios are open to consideration; for example,

•  SL grammars are constrained by universal grammar (UG)
•  UG does not constrain SL grammar or UG is impaired

UG approach is concerned with knowledge of language called ‘competence.’ It is not about performance, about how language is used in real life. A complete theory of language also has to define how we access our knowledge base and how it relates to a number of sociolinguistic and psychological variables. Chomsky acknowledges this and has been concerned almost exclusively with addressing the first two issues. Notion of an innate language faculty in children argues that children go through developmental stages which are very similar across children of given language though progress rate varies.

Q3. Why Noam Chomsky prefer competence over performance.

Noam Chomsky prefers competence over performance. By competence, he refers to the abstract and hidden representation of language knowledge held inside minds with its potential to create and understand original utterances in a given language. However, there are difficulties in studying competence as language performance data are believed to be imperfect reflections of competence. The competence can only be assessed indirectly, under controlled conditions, through wide-ranging tests.

Q4. Functional Research

Functionalist research with social orientation is interested in relationship between the development of child’s formal language system and aspects of their social world. Some of this work examines children’s speech acts and their relationship with lexical or grammatical choices. Other work looks more broadly at the social context in which children interact and types of speech events they are engaged in. It also seeks to link these influences to linguistic development. The functional approaches pay attention respectively to the relations between grammatical development and prototype events, between grammar, pragmatics and text organization, and between grammar and the social world. The functional tradition is well established in SLL theory. It claims that language development is driven by pragmatic communicative needs and that the formal resources of language are elaborated to express more complex patterns of meaning. Functionalist research takes form of naturalistic case studies, mostly of adults in early stages of SLL. These studies have offered numerous rich accounts of both rate and route of naturalistic SLL. They vary in their scope of enquiries. Some adopted a ‘patch’ approach, studying evolution of forms or development of SL within ‘time’ or ‘space’ domain. Whereas others proposed SL ‘basic variety’ that represents a proto-grammar stage that all learners should pass through.

Q5. Functionalist view of the transition theory

A transition theory describes the process of language learning. UG is also a transition theory as it is interested in describing the language transition process or learning process that occurs during the learning of the second language. In that sense, it does answer the two main questions that Chomsky said the learners must know or the language theory must answer: it describes the knowledge of the language (property theory) and also moves on to explain how that knowledge is acquired by the learners (transition theory).

Q6. What are three fundamental issues carried forward from the 1970s in SSL?

From the brief and oversimplified account of 1970s first language acquisition research, following characteristics emerge: Children go through stages. These stages are very similar across children for a given language, although individual progress rate varies. These stages are similar across languages. Child language is rule-governed and systematic, and their rules do not necessarily correspond to adult ones. Children are resistant to correction. Their processing capacity limits the number of rules they can apply at any one time.

Q7. Transition theory

•  ‘Transition theory’ is more concerned with the developmental processes of language education.
•  It is interested in finding out the different stages of learning in a second language learner.
•  It can relate to the first language acquisition telling about the different learning stages in a child’s life and how that learning is different or similar to second language learning.
•  They can describe what happens in some detail and in some cases make relationships between different things, but they may not be able to explain why something happens the way it does.

Q8. Critic on input hypotheses

Major criticism on this hypothesis claims it to be vague and a-theoretical. It is impossible to verify the theory as no independently testable definitions are given. The theory specify the internal workings of the ‘Language Acquisition Device’ where acquisition actually takes place. Just comprehensible input is not enough; learners also need to ‘let that input in’ as it is. Affective Filter supposedly determines how receptive to the input a learner is going to be. This filter captures relationship between affective variables and acquisition process.

Q9. Criticism on Krashen’s Theory

It was criticized for having methodological problems. Its main weakness was presenting hypotheses as empirically valid models when those have not been tested. (same answer as Question )

Q10. What is Krashen’s Monitor Model based on?

It is based around five basic hypotheses:

1. The Acquisition-Learning hypothesis
2. The Monitor hypothesis
3. The Natural Order hypothesis
4. The Input hypothesis
5. The Affective Filter hypothesis