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What is Language?
Language. It’s all around us. It’s vital for our everyday existence.
It is a system that consists of the development, acquisition, maintenance and use of complex systems of communication, particularly the human ability to do so; and a language is any specific example of such a system. The scientific study of language is called linguistics.

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the study of language - how it is put together and how it functions. Various building blocks of different types and sizes are combined to make up a language. Sounds are brought together and sometimes when this happens, they change their form and do interesting things. Words are arranged in a certain order, and sometimes the beginnings and endings of the words are changed to adjust the meaning. Then the meaning itself can be affected by the arrangement of words and by the knowledge of the speaker about what the hearer will understand. Linguistics is the study of all of this. There are various branches of linguistics which are given their own name, some of which are described below. Linguists are people who study linguistics.

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The Search for a Unified Theory of Language Learning

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The Search for a Unified Theory of Language Learning

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1. Plato's Problem
2. Cartesian Linguistics
3. Locke's Tabula Rasa
4. Skinner's Theory of Behaviorism
5. Chomsky Universal Grammar
6. Schumann's Acculturation Model
7. Krashen's Monitor Model

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The writings of Plato stretch all the way back to the beginnings of Western philosophical thought, but Plato was already posing problems critical to modern linguistic discourse.
In the nature versus nurture debate, Plato tended to side with nature, believing that knowledge was innate.

This was his answer to what has become known as Plato’s Problem, or as Bertrand Russell summarizes it: “How comes it that human beings, whose contacts with the world are brief and personal and limited, are nevertheless able to know as much as they do know?” Being born with this knowledge from the get-go would naturally solve this little quandary and consequently he viewed language as innate.

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Centuries later, the French philosopher Descartes took a crack at linguistic philosophy. In his opinion, language acquisition was a simple and easy process, barely worthy of his attention. Like Plato he believed in the innateness of language because he thought it reflected the general rationality of human beings.
But rather than Descartes himself, it was the rationalist movement that he symbolized and that was thriving in the time period when he lived that was most important for linguistics. This “Cartesian” movement, according to Chomsky (who we’ll get to later), noted the creativity involved in everyday language and presented the idea that there were universal principles behind every language.

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In the middle of the 20th century, B.F. Skinner took Locke’s ideas of sensory input and ran with them.

According to behaviorism, a radical variant of which was put forward by Skinner, all behavior is no more than a response to external stimuli and there’s no innate programming within a human being to learn a language at birth.

What differentiates Skinner from those who came before him is the level of detail he went into when connecting behaviorism and language learning. In his concept of what he called “operant conditioning,” language learning grew out of a process of reinforcement and punishment whereby individuals are conditioned into saying the right thing. For instance, if you’re hungry and you’re able to say “Mommy, I’m hungry,” you may be rewarded with food and your behavior will thereby be reinforced since you got what you wanted.

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Most people familiar with Locke’s philosophy have heard of his concept of tabula rasa, or the blank slate.
To state it briefly and in a simplified manner, this is the idea that all knowledge comes from outside ourselves through sensory experience rather than through innate knowledge that we have at birth. This naturally carried over to language theory with Locke rejecting the idea that there was an innate logic behind language

Obviously these theories don’t touch too much on the practical, everyday level of language learning. They’re far less detailed and more philosophical than the modern scientific theories we’re used to. But they have important implications. If Plato and the Cartesians are right, then the emphasis in language learning must lie on what we already know, using our innate abilities to come to an understanding of the particularities of a specific language. If Locke is right, then we must focus our attention on sensory input, gaining as much external input as possible.

In the practical, everyday world, all of this can easily be done with FluentU. FluentU takes real-world videos with familiar formats—like movie trailers, music videos, news and inspiring talks—and turns them into personalized language lessons.

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6. Schumann’s Acculturation Model
John Schumann’s Acculturation Model describes the process by which immigrants pick up a new language while being completely immersed in that language.
This theory doesn’t deal with the process of language learning as we normally think of it (such as how we acquire grammar or listening skills), but rather focuses on social and psychological aspects that influence our success.

For instance, an immigrant is more likely to acquire their new target language if their language and the target language are socially equal, if the group of immigrants is small and not cohesive and if there is a higher degree of similarity between the immigrant’s culture and that of their new area of residence.

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Around the same time as Skinner there came another linguistic powerhouse who would leave a lasting impression on the field of linguistics. Namely, Noam Chomsky.

The theory that Chomsky proposed would be called Universal Grammar and it would assert nearly the exact opposite of what Skinner had offered in his theory. Where Skinner saw all learning coming from external stimuli, Chomsky saw an innate device for language acquisition. What Skinner understood to be conditioning according to particular events Chomsky, understood to be the result of the universal elements that structure all languages.

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Stephen Krashen’s Monitor Model in fact consists of several distinct hypotheses which make up what is probably the most cited theory in second language acquisition. There’s so much to take away from Krashen’s theory that I’ll just let you peruse the link given for details and give a rundown of the highlights here.

Language acquisition is subconscious and results from informal, natural communication.

Language learning is conscious and driven by error correction (more formal).

Grammar structures are acquired in a predictable order.

Language acquisition occurs with comprehensible input (i.e. hearing or reading things that are just slightly above our current language level).

A monitor is anything that corrects your language performance and pressures one to “communicate correctly and not just convey meaning” (such as a language teacher who corrects y