Language Acquisition Principles — Practice

Question 1

Which language acquisition theorist proposed that children acquire language through imitation of adult speech and reinforcement of correct responses, treating language as a learned habit like any other behaviour?
(a) B. F. Skinner
(b) Noam Chomsky
(c) Eric Lenneberg
(d) Jean Piaget

Accepted Answer

Skinner's behaviourist account, developed in 'Verbal Behavior' (1957), treats language as behaviour shaped entirely by imitation and reinforcement, with nothing language-specific assumed inside the child.

Answer: (a). Trap (b) is the opposite position — Chomsky proposed an innate Language Acquisition Device, not an imitation-based account. Trap (c) is unrelated — Lenneberg proposed the critical period hypothesis, a claim about the age-limited window for acquisition, not about imitation or reinforcement. Trap (d) is a cognitive-development theorist (stages, assimilation, accommodation) whose primary claims aren't about language acquisition through imitation and reinforcement specifically.

Question 2

A three-year-old says 'I runned to the gate' and 'she has two foots.' What do these errors most strongly suggest about the child's language development, and which theory do they support?
(a) The child is actively applying a general grammatical rule even to irregular words, evidence that supports Chomsky's innatist view over pure behaviourist imitation
(b) The child has been directly imitating an adult who consistently makes the same errors, supporting Skinner's behaviourist view
(c) The child likely has a hearing impairment preventing accurate imitation of adult speech
(d) The child is simply too young for the critical period to have started

Accepted Answer

'Runned' and 'foots' apply the regular past-tense and plural rules even to irregular words no adult would ever model this way — evidence the child has extracted and is actively testing a general rule, not imitating what she's heard.

Answer: (a). Trap (b) fails because no adult reliably produces 'runned' or 'foots' for a child to imitate — the errors are systematic and rule-governed, not copied. Trap (c) is an unsupported leap; nothing in the scenario indicates a hearing impairment, and this pattern is entirely typical of ordinary language development. Trap (d) misapplies the critical period hypothesis, which concerns a broader age-limited acquisition window, not an explanation for this specific type of error.

Question 3

Chomsky's term for the abstract, innate grammatical structure he argued is common to all human languages, and which underlies every child's capacity to acquire whichever specific language they are exposed to, is called:
(a) Universal Grammar
(b) Verbal Behavior
(c) Zone of Proximal Development
(d) Comprehensible Input

Accepted Answer

Universal Grammar is Chomsky's term for the innate, abstract grammatical structure shared across human languages, which the Language Acquisition Device uses to rapidly extract a specific language's grammar from limited input.

Answer: (a). Trap (b) is the title of Skinner's 1957 book, the opposing behaviourist account, not a Chomskyan term. Trap (c) is Vygotsky's concept describing the gap between what a learner can do alone and with guided support, unrelated to Universal Grammar specifically. Trap (d) is Krashen's term for language input pitched slightly above a learner's current level, a different concept from Chomsky's innate grammatical structure.

Question 4

The 'poverty of stimulus' argument, used to support Chomsky's innatist account of language acquisition, is based on the observation that:
(a) the speech children actually hear is often fragmented, incomplete, or ungrammatical, yet children still reliably arrive at a full, grammatical language system
(b) children from lower-income households acquire language more slowly than children from higher-income households
(c) children exposed to less television acquire smaller vocabularies
(d) bilingual children receive less input in each individual language than monolingual children receive in their one language

Accepted Answer

The argument is about the QUALITY and completeness of the speech signal relative to the sophisticated grammatical competence children reliably achieve — not about economic poverty or the quantity of exposure in any literal sense.

Answer: (a). Traps (b), (c), and (d) all misread 'poverty' literally as economic hardship or reduced quantity of exposure — a common term-confusion trap — rather than the technical linguistic claim about how comparatively poor and inconsistent real child-directed speech is relative to the rich, rule-governed grammar children end up with.

Question 5

Which position holds that children bring an innate readiness for language, but that this capacity is activated and shaped through meaningful interaction with more competent speakers, such as scaffolded conversation with a parent or teacher?
(a) The social-interactionist perspective
(b) Skinner's pure behaviourist view
(c) The critical period hypothesis
(d) The Grammar-Translation Method

Accepted Answer

The social-interactionist perspective explicitly accepts an innate capacity (agreeing with Chomsky's basic insight) while insisting that meaningful, scaffolded social interaction is what actually activates and develops it — a synthesis position, not a pure nature-only or nurture-only account.

Answer: (a). Trap (b) is wrong because pure behaviourism denies any innate language-specific capacity, which contradicts the scenario's premise. Trap (c) concerns an age-limited acquisition window, not the interactional mechanism described. Trap (d) is a classroom teaching method (covered in Chapter 2), not a theory of how acquisition itself happens.

Question 6

In typical first-language acquisition, the order in which the four language skills develop is best described as:
(a) listening and speaking are acquired first, with reading and writing developing later and requiring more deliberate effort
(b) all four skills develop simultaneously and at an identical pace
(c) reading is always the first skill a child acquires, since it forms the basis for later speech
(d) writing precedes speaking in most children, since writing is more consciously taught

Accepted Answer

Across virtually every documented case of L1 acquisition, oral skills — listening, then speaking — are acquired first through immersion, well before reading and writing, which require deliberate, later instruction.

Answer: (a). Trap (b) contradicts the well-documented staggered order. Trap (c) reverses the actual order entirely — reading is a later, not first, acquired skill. Trap (d) also reverses the order — writing is the last of the four skills to develop, not the first.

Question 7

The critical period hypothesis, first proposed by Eric Lenneberg, is most strongly supported by evidence for:
(a) first-language acquisition and native-like pronunciation, with weaker evidence for a similarly hard cutoff on second-language grammar or vocabulary learning
(b) second-language vocabulary learning specifically, with no relevance to first-language acquisition at all
(c) an absolute biological cutoff at exactly age seven, after which no further language learning of any kind is possible
(d) written language skills only, with no bearing on spoken language

Accepted Answer

The hypothesis's strongest support is for L1 acquisition happening effortlessly within a limited age window, and specifically for achieving native-like pronunciation — evidence for an equally hard cutoff on L2 grammar or vocabulary is comparatively weaker.

Answer: (a). Trap (b) reverses the actual evidence split, understating L1 relevance and overstating L2-only application. Trap (c) invents an overly rigid, literal age cutoff and a false 'no further learning possible' claim that overstates what the hypothesis actually asserts. Trap (d) reverses the domain — the hypothesis principally concerns spoken, oral, native-like acquisition (especially pronunciation), not written skills.

Question 8

Which of the following is a genuine, well-documented difference between typical first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) acquisition, beyond simply 'L2 is generally harder'?
(a) L2 learners already possess an existing language system that can both assist and interfere with the new language, while L1 learners have no such prior system
(b) L1 learners never make grammatical errors during acquisition, while L2 learners always do
(c) L2 acquisition always occurs faster than L1 acquisition, regardless of context
(d) Affective factors such as anxiety and motivation play no meaningful role in either L1 or L2 acquisition

Accepted Answer

L2 learners bring an existing L1 system to the task, which can transfer helpfully (shared concepts) or interfere (transferred errors, L1 sentence patterns applied to L2) — a structural difference with no L1 equivalent, since L1 learners start with no prior language system at all.

Answer: (a). Trap (b) is false — L1 learners make plenty of developmental errors, including exactly the overgeneralisation errors this chapter discusses at length. Trap (c) is an unsupported overgeneralisation; L2 acquisition speed depends heavily on context, exposure, and instruction quality, not a fixed universal rule. Trap (d) directly contradicts this chapter's point that affective factors matter measurably MORE for L2 outcomes than they typically do during L1 acquisition.

Question 9

A Class VII English teacher is deciding how to introduce the past continuous tense. Option A has students memorise the rule ('subject + was/were + verb-ing') and complete twenty isolated fill-in-the-blank sentences before ever discussing a real topic. Option B has students first read a short narrative naturally using the past continuous tense, notice the pattern through guided questions, and then use it themselves to narrate a real event from their own day. Which option reflects CTET's critical perspective on grammar, and why?
(a) Option B, because CTET's syllabus holds that grammatical competence develops through meaningful, contextual communication rather than through isolated rule-memorisation taught in advance
(b) Option A, because explicit rule memorisation before practice guarantees the fastest route to grammatical accuracy
(c) Both options are equally valid according to CTET, since they teach the identical grammar point
(d) Neither option is appropriate, since CTET's syllabus holds that grammar should never be explicitly addressed at any stage of language teaching

Accepted Answer

Option B — noticing the pattern in a real narrative, then using it for genuine, personal communication — is exactly the contextual, communicative sequence CTET's critical perspective on grammar endorses over rule-first drilling.

Answer: (a). Trap (b) explicitly endorses the isolated, rule-first drilling CTET's own position rejects, and its 'guarantees the fastest route' claim isn't supported by the acquisition evidence this chapter documents (overgeneralisation errors, poverty of stimulus). Trap (c) falsely equates two approaches this entire chapter distinguishes philosophically. Trap (d) overstates CTET's actual position into an extreme it doesn't hold — CTET does not ban addressing grammar at all, only isolated, rule-first, pre-communication grammar teaching; contextual noticing, exactly as in Option B, is the endorsed practice.

Practice — Language Acquisition Principles

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