Nativism - Exam Answer

English Language: AQA A Level, topic 2.2.5

Here's how you move up the Assessment Bands in your examination:

At level 3, I can show detailed knowledge:
You should aim to write like this: “Within his theory, Chomsky states that children make virtuous errors (errors which are made with good intentions e.g. ‘I hurted his feelings’.) In addition, he states that children have a universal grammar which states a set of rules on how to structure language. His theory is supported by the fact that many languages follow the SVO syntax – Brown’s research states that 75% of languages use this syntax.”

At level 4, I can challenge this:
You should aim to write like this: “However, there has been some debate over Chomsky’s thoughts. It can be argued that children make lexical mistakes in the sense they miss out words rather than syntactical mistakes.”

At level 5, I can evaluate this:
You should aim to write like this: “Chomsky’s theory is often dismissed by critics because it is based on hypothetical thinking rather than real-life children. As such, leading linguistics like Tomasello have dismissed Chomsky as an ‘armchair linguist’. This criticism of Chomsky’s research throws into question the validity of his theory, however, his research does critique interactionalist theories...

... As Pinker points out, nearly every utterance a child produces is a brand-new combination of words, and therefore questions whether a child can learn from imitation. Overall, Chomsky’s theory is limited due to not having scientific evidence, but is still very important in considering how a child learns language.”

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