1. Introduction
The following reaction paper is based on two articles about First language acquisition
from two different texts, which are: D.E., & Freeman, Y.S. (2004), Essential Linguistics:
What you need to know to teach reading, ESL, spelling, phonics, and grammar, and Brown
H.D. (2007), Principles of language, learning and teaching. The following reaction paper is
going to highlight the main important theories about Language acquisition. The impressive
capacity not only for acquiring but also for developing competence, in the native language, has
always been a mystery and a matter of discussion, language acquisition has been researched
from the latter part of the eighteen century. A lot of scientists have established numerous
theories from different perspectives in order to explain how the language is acquired; scientists
have researched how and when children acquired the capacity of communicate, orally, and
have studied in deeply the different stages which took place in the process of language
acquisition. It is important to emphasize the role that teachers play in the acquisition and
development of language, in the different stages; they guide that the process is being suitable
according to the children’s age. Teachers have been studied in order to be concerned about
children language acquisition, with the aim of drawing analogies, between first and second
language acquisition, because it is important to know how the first language is acquired in
order to understand the second language acquisition. The themes related to the language
acquisition that are going to be discussed in this reaction paper will be: Behaviourism, nativist
approach, cognitive approach and universal grammar.

2. Summary
The behavioural approach, it was though that children are born with a tabula rasa, it
means that they come to the world without any preconceived notion abut language, it is a very
extremist behaviourist position. Behaviourists thought that language is learned as anything
else, when a conduct is learned and it is reinforced positively, it will be repeated and habitual,
the same occurs with the language, if a new word is produced and it is reinforced, then it will
be acquired. This process is called stimulus-response, and the principal exponent of this theory
was Skinner, who wrote about verbal behaviour (1957). Behaviourists also had the concept of
imitation, it consists in the imitation of sounds by children, it is related to the process of
stimulus-response, they need a rewarded in order to repeat sounds and learn it. The
behaviourism gave way to a new theory which is the cognitive approach, this theory states that
the learning is not just the result of the action that the environment has on the child, moreover,
human beings, are born with innate cognitive abilities. Piaget, one of the promoters of
cognitivism, was centred in the stages of cognitive development, relating the cognitive
development with first language acquisition; in 1955 Piaget described it as a result of the
children’s interaction with the environment. The cognitivism is also related with the nativist
approach, because both are referred to the language acquisition as an innate process. But the
cognitive approach is centred in the thoughts, whereas, the nativis approach is centred in
genetic and biological aspects, and these aspects predispose us to a systematic perception of
language surrounding us, having as a consequence the construction of a system of language.
Chomsky promoted nativist approach in 1965 he claimed a metaphor of the brain, it was the
existence of a “little black box”, a language acquisition device (LAD), another scientist
described a LAD with four important aspects, which are: The ability to distinguish speech
sound from other sounds, the ability to organise linguistics data into various classes and then it
could be refined, knowledge that only a certain kind of linguistic system are possible, the
ability of evaluate constantly of the developing linguistic system. Chomsky called the innate
knowledge of the language as Universal Grammar, it consists in that all humans not just have
an special cognitive capacity, but also humans beings born with basic structures of languages
present in the brain. It does not mean that we born with the knowledge of all languages, but
humans born with the capacity of acquire a language and those elements which are common in

3. all human languages, for example verbs and nouns. As is known that children have a
Universal Grammar, it is not a mystery that they learned the language they are in contact with.
But not all language is innate, there are vocabulary which have to be learned by children, it is
not predictable, it is necessary a stronger cognitive process in order to acquire certain more
complex words.
Evaluation
In a general view of behaviorism, we could realize that even though this approach is
right in some ways, as in the statement that children acquire language in the process of
stimulus and response, it also has missed others, because if children learn in this way, why
other human beings have not been able to learn in the same way? Why they are not able to
develop language properly? Besides, behaviorism also shows that children learn language with
the process of imitation, but it is really confused, because if they imitate adults, they should
not make mistakes when speaking, because adults produce irregular forms of verbs correctly,
and children tend to make mistakes like that, in their first language acquisition. Besides,
behaviourists believe that language is learned like anything else, and it is the environment that
acts on the child in order to develop the language; but we consider that it is an incomplete way
to demonstrate how children learn the language, because is not just the environment that
affects the language learning process, it is demonstrated that all children seem to acquire the
language at the same time, independently of their environment or what surround them. As we
mentioned before the behavioural approach has aspects which make it a very accurate theory,
because it explains the language acquisition in terms of behavioural influence and the
consequences of stimulus, which is the response. However it is not the only one factor which
is responsible for the language acquisition and development in children, it is impossible that
the action of environmental contact is the determinant fact which influences the language
acquisition, it is also necessary the influence of genetic and biological facts, which is suitable
with Chomsky’s Nativist theory, that predisposes humans beings to a systematic perception of
the language with they are in contact. According to our own analysis f this theme, we
concluded that the genetic influence in language acquisition is proven when two children,

4. developing into the same environment, have different results in terms of learn words and
acquire a determined language, maybe one of them could present language disorder.
Otherwise we have the cognitive approach which as is promoted by Piaget as the interaction of
children with the environment, and the different stages in the development of language
acquisition, nevertheless we do not believe in the abrupt transition between one stage and
another, it have to be necessarily a more slowly and gradual process , children have different
stadiums of thoughts, but we think that these stadiums are not accurate in all children, because,
although they have a similar development, the process of language acquisition is a personal
matter with could be different in every single person. Otherwise, Universal Grammar is called
the innate knowledge of language. In a way, we agree with the statement that the brain is
predisposed to learn any language and children learn the language that surrounds them
because languages have lot of things in common and we should learn it. There are universal
words that exist in almost all languages and we are able to develop the capacity of learn and
acquire them.