ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we start to consider individual theoretical perspectives on second language learning (SLL) in greater detail. Our first topic is the Universal Grammar approach, developed by the American linguist, Noam Chomsky, and numerous followers over the last few decades.We have concentrated on this particular linguistic approach because it has been much the strongest linguistic influence on second language acquisition research in recent years, and has inspired a great wealth of studies, articles and books on second language acquisition, both empirical and theoretical (for full length treatments, see Herschensohn, 2000; Hawkins, 2001;White, 2003).
