Topic: Fundamental Difference / L1 versus L2

Wow, reading the last part of Chapter 3 of John's book makes me more comfortable.  According to Chomsky's UG claims, adult foreign language learners cannot achieve the same level of grammatical intuition of sentences as native speakers.

Even though Chomsky mentioned that UG is just for the L1 and not for L2, it is still bad news for second language learners. However, Bley Vromn's contention is that adult foreign language learners have different cognitive mechanisms than native children's.

That is big relief to me, phew~~

There are lots of researchers who can relieve me more. Flynn, Whith and Felix claim that the L2 learners can acquire a second language with their own cognitive mechanisms.  These are general problem-solving systems which have been activated in their first language.

I really agree with their ideas.

My co-teacher, Noah, told me that I frequently make lots of strange expressions in the perspective of native, but he can understand what I am trying to say. However, there still are grammatical mistakes in my utterances.

I already knew some of the mistakes, but sometimes they are stuck in my tongue and my writing. I can’t figure them out intuitively. I don’t know what type of cognitive mechanism is operating in my brain.  Clearly my cognitive mechanism system needs more fuel for operating towards a more accurate way. Whenever I make the same mistakes, I really want to check how my brain looks and find some virus which ate my memories of the cognitive mechanism

Native speakers and adult second language learners have different cognitive mechanisms that can be achieved with their problem solving competency. That mechanism helps them approach UG that native speakers have.

According to Long's claim, second language learners’ acquisition of linguistic knowledge is based on the acquisition of certain linguistic rules.

However, in second language perspective, the rules may not be controlled by UG.

In Long's view, he is also admitting how many social contexts are important towards SLA field. The opponents against Chomsky pointed out the process of cognitive mechanism within social contexts. This idea could have been an alternative in SLA field in the past, but I think, many people also agree with how important social contexts influence SLA.