Mentalism And Nativist Theory Of Transfer

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Very briefly we are going to make a description of several theories which played an important role in the birth of the concept of transfer. Hence, we should consider two theories: Conductivism or Behaviourism and Mentalism or Nativist theories.
Bueno González (2001: 157) presents the above-mentioned theories explaining, on the one hand, that Conductivism or Behaviourism, as Skinner (1957) defined it, is based on responses to different stimuli, which are called Operant Conditioning behaviours; and on the other hand, that Mentalist or Nativist theories are concerned with the innate capacity of learning a language. As Chomsky (1965) proposed, human beings are predisposed to speak and acquire a language by means of the so-called LAD (Language Acquisition Device), and they produce surface structures grounded on deep structures.
Within the Nativist theory, Chomsky also put forward two ideas: the difference between Competence (what students comprehend) and Performance (what students produce). These ideas were …show more content…

As in the classroom, they are not allowed to be quiet or use gesture, they, more often than not, resort to a mixture of the second language and the mother tongue. This use of the mother tongue may be positive or negative, depending on whether they transmit structures, functions or uses of languages which are shared between both languages or not. He also expounds that “the phenomenon of transfer will reveal itself in the attempt to realize in the same way as in his mother tongue”.
As mentioned earlier, interlingual errors are similar structurally or semantically to the equivalent in their mother tongue. This similarity may provoke Positive transfer or Interference. Hence, Interference and Transfer, as Dulay, Burt and Krashen (1982: 171) describe, “imply […] certain explanations of these

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