Theory Freak

The very interesting linguistic courses I took at University of Peradeniya exposed me to range of theories about language acquisition. Noam Chomsky's universal language and Skinner's behavioral approach were our focus. We thoroughly examined the similarities, dissimilarities, pros, cons of both theories. Chomsky’s theory applies to all languages as they all contain nouns, verbs, consonants and vowels and children are ‘hard-wired’ to acquire the grammar. Evidence to support Chomsky’s theory Children learning to speak never make grammatical errors such as getting their subjects, verbs and objects in the wrong order.  If an adult deliberately said a grammatically incorrect sentence, the child would notice.  Children often say things that are ungrammatical such as ‘mama ball’, which they cannot have learnt passively.  Mistakes such as ‘I drawed’ instead of ‘I drew’ show they are not learning through imitation alone.  Chomsky used the sentence ‘colourless gre...

Many of the speeches, books and articles on leadership are made on it's importance in a business environment. Good leadership can revolutionize a business, bring profits, motivate employees. However the personal benefits of Leadership is often forgotten.  Parents play a pivotal role in nurturing a leader. So in a way LEADERS ARE BORN through childhood experiences. Parents should let children make their own decisions. This doesn't mean that parents should not look after or shouldn't be cautious of their children's behavior. Children should be advised, supervised, but parents should not go on saying "This is how you must do it!!" or "You are doing it wrong" or "You stupid child". These kind of negative criticisms are very harmful to a child's process of becoming a leader. Instead parents can say "There is another way you can do this!" or "Shall we try this way as well!". Don't ever call your child "stupid...