English for the real world

English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) refers to the use of English as a medium of communication between people with different mother tongues. For example, the language used between a French, a Russian and an Argentinian chatting at a coffee break of an international conference held in Germany


ELF has its own characteristics; I mentioned some of them in the presentation on Teaching Pronunciation two weeks ago.

This concept is very important, especially if you are teaching English to learners who need the language to communicate with people from different nationalities (for example, the cases of English for travel, Business English, English for the hospitality industry, etc).


Here I'm posting two videos on the topic, explained by David Crystal. Veeeeeeery interesting!!

tutorial de como subir una presentación power point a tu blogger

Presentation on Teaching Pronunciation

Teachpron todo from Ceci Sosa

Emma Watson at the HeForShe Campaign 2014 - Official UN Video

Emma Watson delivering a speech at the NU. Apart from being adorable, she says very interesting things.

You can find more versions of this video on youtube, with or without subtitles; and you can adapt it and use it with intermediate and upper lessons !

hope you like it

Poor man !

A bit of humor ! Remember to buy something nice to your mums !!

And more ways of !

How Children Learn Language

Chomsky’s theory of language acquisition was and still is controversial. The purpose of this essay is to briefly go back over some of the main aspects of his theory so as to reflect upon their light.

By the mid 20^th century, Chomsky came up with his nativist theory as a response and critique to the accepted behaviourist theory of language, which posed that reinforcement was essential in language acquisition (for correct grammar to be repeated and incorrect grammar to be eliminated). Chomsky differs from Behaviourism mainly in that he understands that human language acquisition is an innate biological ability that all humans possess; in this regard, reinforcement would play a secondary role.

Chomsky postulates that human beings are equipped with a mechanism, which he calls Language Acquisition Device. This device is responsible for the acquisition of any human language in any child. According to him, the LAD analyses the primary linguist data (input) the child hears, so as to set the parameters of the Universal Grammar. 

Universal Grammar is a set of principles and parameters shared by all human languages. According to Chomsky, children can acquire their first language, naturally, without special instruction, because of UG. He states that UG facilitates acquisition because it consists of innate grammatical categories (pronouns, nouns, verbs, etc.) which are activated in accordance to the stimulus the children receive. Such stimulus is said to be poor and scarce, however, “our knowledge of grammar is complex and abstract”. This represents one of the main tenets of Chomsky’s innatist theory. He says that “the things that are missing from the input are added by the UG”. The reason why we can get to have such a complex knowledge of grammar out of limited and imperfect stimulus is attributed to the innate properties of the mind.

The way I see it, it is very difficult to go deep in Chomsky’s views since they are complex and require a lot of research. In my opinion, some of his postulates may be arguable, especially because there is no concrete evidence of them. Even though his postulates may be difficult to picture, I agree with his poverty of stimulus argument. I think that if language acquisition was merely dependant on input, it would be impossible for children to acquire the tools to produce the amount of sentences they utter. 

In addition to this, I think the poverty of stimulus argument does account for the fact that language acquisition could be innate to some extent. This element in Chomsky’s theory proves that language acquisition is more than just imitation. There must be an internal process, as Chomsky states.  Furthermore, apart from being surprising, the fact that children from all cultures of the world follow a similar pattern in their language development (production of the same kind of grammatical mistakes,  readiness to acquisition, non-production of certain grammatical errors such as word order) could explain the existence of a universal grammar innate to human beings.

On the other hand, I do not agree with Chomsky on his view about input and experience. In his theory, he states that experience is just needed to activate the innate processes for language acquisition. However, I think those factors have a more important role in acquisition. The primary linguistic input involved in language acquisition is different from other kind of input (such as dialogues in a tv programme). I think the tone of voice, the rhythm, and the gestures which accompany the input in motherese play a significant role.

As a concluding remark, I think that language acquisition is such a complex process that not one theory can account for it fully. Skinner was criticized in the same way Chomsky was. The same applies to Piaget and Vigotzky’s claims. In my opinion, language acquisition involves innate aspects that facilitate it and are common to all children. At the same time, I think that the experience and the social environment of the child also play a part; not only in providing him with the appropriate linguistic input, but also in supporting the child’s language development.

I hope you'll like this video. It's Steven Pinker talking about the talent children have to for learning language
How Children Learn Language