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Learning a Foreign Language

Stuff You Should Know

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The Opposite of Behaviorism

B.F. Skinner was a big proponent of this and he wrote that language learning was akin to verbal behavior. There's our brains are basically pre-wired to not only give rise, but then also interpret and use what's called a universal grammar. Noam Chomsky said we have some sort of inborn ability to speak languages to one another. He talked about the language acquisition device, which is not a sort of a real body part, but it's like a hypothetical tool.

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