Tuesday 7 April 2020

CONFLICTING ON NURTURE VS NATURE’ VIEW IN LANGUAGE PRACTICE



SELNISTIA HIDAYANI


God gives people brains to stimulate and to respond many phenomenon surrounding them. They could be social, cultural, or language phenomenon. It means that the environment could impact on the way of thinking and acting. It shows that human gets his language by the nature (Chomsky) and learns language by looking at people habits (Skinner) in Dardjowidjojo (2005: 235). Their theories seemed againts each other although they could be each related.
While being babies, spontaneously, they could produce some simple sounds. Their sound production grows at the same time with our body’s growth. Their speaking ability grows in line with their speech organs’ growth. In the other hand, people try to learn something new from their environment. Therefore, adult people always motivates and introduces them to know more about many things. They deliver ideas of words’ concept and examplify a pattern of sentences. Or, they drill their children to practice some words or sentences in order to realize the students’ performances. As the result the goals of communication will be fulfilled.
One of English skill is speaking. Speaking in globalization era is an important competency that should be mastered by every English graduates. It has an important role in job opportunities. Moreover, Indonesia is open market for many countries. It applies International free trading. But, this skill becomes one of problems for Indonesia students. They still have no sufficient skills particulary in speaking. Some people including teachers said that most students could not speak English shopisticated. Does it become general issue?. Of course, it is interesting since several experts such as Chomsky and Skinner have different idea of this skill.
Skinner’s theory begins his experiment in a mouse while getting its meals. He examined gradually, from the easier into the dificult one. He found its activity describing a repeated practice to get the meals. Its way of getting the meals shows a pattern although it does not do regularly. His perspective asserted that drilling is an important element in foreign language teaching such as oral approach and audiolingual approach (Dardjowidjoyo, 2005: 235). Then, his finding is known as verbal behavior (1957).
In other hand, Chomsky made note to argue Skinner’s theory above. Chomsky’s opinion is that language acquisition does not come from nurture (behaviorism) but from nature (Language Acquisition Device/ LAD). Children achieve their language skills in as the same time as their gesture skills. He argues that they have a set of LAD (Dardjowidjoyo, 2005: 235). He states that only human beings who have LAD so that they can not equity to the animal. They are different creatures. Dardjowidjoyo (2005: 237) said that people need both nurture and nature to acquire a  language.
Nature must be supported by nurture. Then, peope’s language skill could be reached well. LAD also help them to the appeareance of words (Alwasilah, 2010:89). Devitt and Sterelny (1987: 175 in Alwasilah, 2010: 89) stated that thought is dominant to vocabulary. In this case, vocabulary also will influence peope’s thoughts. Therefore, between word and thought relate each other. For example, a baby who has LAD lives in environment in which there is no one speak Indonesia. The baby lives without Indonesia language, he or she possibly until adult might not speak Indonesia. It means that Language competency can not be mastered if there is no practices and environment included. This fact explaines that LAD works through practicing.


References:

Alwasilah, Chaedar. 2010. Filsafat Bahasa dan Pendidikan. Bandung: PT REMAJA ROSDAKARYA
Dardjowidjojo, Soejono. 2005. Psikolinguistik Pengantar Pemahaman Bahasa Manusia. Jakarta: Yayasan Obor Indonesia




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