Chomsky's theory proposes that children are born with an innate Language Acquisition Device containing Universal Grammar that allows them to learn the structure of any language. It is a nativist theory which assumes children have internalized knowledge of language that allows them to be creative users. A key aspect is the existence of a critical period for language learning during which children can acquire language spontaneously without formal teaching. The case of "Genie" - a girl who was isolated and unable to speak until age 13 - was studied but did not conclusively prove or disprove the theory due to questions around her mental development and whether she had passed the critical period.

1. Noam Chomsky’s Theory: The Critical Period

2. Introduction Comsky’s theory represents a revolutionary point of view since it includes features never seen before such as the Language Acquisition Device (LAD) which the belief says that is made up of a set of general principles called “Universal Grammar” that can be applied to all the languages in the world starting from a finite number of rules and words to create infinite syntactic structures. I chose Noam Chomsky theory because his theory is controversial, all theories that have been once this controversial have been found real years later.

3. Learning Objectives 1- To understand and make a deep study on Chomsky’s Theory to know how it functions and what it states. 2- To establish a clear difference between the main classification of the various theories of language acquisition.

4. Main classification of Language Acquisition Theories Nativist: Native capacity to acquire a language Environmentalist: Language is acquired because there is an environment that makes it easier to do it. Interactionist: Language is acquired by the interaction with children’s surroundings.

5. Statements of this theory Noam’s Chomsky’s Theory is a nativist Theory that assumes that children are born with a language acquisition device( LAD) that allows them to create syntactic structures with the new words they have learned, that means the children have an internalized knowledge of the language that as native speakers of that language they possess. It is what allows the children to be creative as language users.

6. Statements of this theory Linguistic competence and linguistic performance Deals with internal knowledge of the language Deals with language production

9. “ GENIE” The forbidden Experiment On November 4, 1970, the social services of the City of Los Angeles found a 13 years old girl, a child unable to speak after having spent his life locked in a dark room and subhuman conditions. As described by the witnesses in that room was nothing but a potty chair, some TV-Guide magazines and the wire cage in which her ​​father forced her to sleep every night.

10. “ GENIE” The forbidden Experiment When psychologists examined the girl they found she walked with difficulty and behaved like a wild creature, spitting, scratching or trying to masturbate compulsively. She had a vocabulary of twenty words, most commands like "stop!", "No" or "no more".

12. Weaknesses of this theory Despite having studied the case of "Genie" (as the researchers called the girl) theres not enough evidence to prove the truth of Chomsky's theory, as they never get to know if the girl was already mentally retarded or if she already had passed its critical period for learning language.

13. References * sitemason.vanderbilt.edu *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_period_hypothesis * http://www.forbes.com/